Actor Rainn Wilson (you may know him as Dwight from) The office) had a grand plan to take his hilarious form of climate advocacy to Twitter this week. However, that plan was quickly thwarted – another casualty of the name-changing drama that recently blossomed on the platform.
Wilson took to Twitter on Wednesday to announce that he was changing his name on social media to “Rainnfall Heat Wave Extreme Winter Wilson.” “As a cheap little stunt to help save planet Earth, I changed my name on Twitter, Instagram and even my fancy stationery,” Wilson said in a statement. video. He points to a memo pad with scribbled changes to his printed name so that it reads, “Acid Rainn Kills Trees Wilson.”
About 35 minutes later, Wilson tweeted“PS THEY DON’T LET MY NAME CHANGE BECAUSE, ELON!”
Twitter also blocked me from changing my screen name to ‘Justine Dying from Heat Calma’. Good luck to anyone trying to add your new name to the free for everyone on Twitter, as Elon Musk gave users the option to self-authenticate for $7.99 a month. After the parodies of Jesus Christ and Donald Trump appeared verified on Twitter, Musk has reportedly paused naming and verification rights.
Fortunately there are alternatives. On Instagram, Wilson’s display name reads “Rainnfall Heat Wave Extreme Winter Wilson” in all caps. Maybe I’ll just go old-fashioned and print myself a name tag.
The crazy monikers come from a fun name generator arcticrisk.org/name-generator. I typed my cat’s name into the website, and he’s now going through “Collapsing Economies Calma.” The tool was developed by Arctic Basecamp, which tents every year at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos to raise awareness about how climate change is changing the Arctic. Wilson’s name change coincides with a United Nations climate conference taking place in Egypt this month.
“Our mission at Arctic Basecamp is to raise awareness about the global risks of weather changes in the Arctic. It’s bad news not only for the Arctic, but for us as well. That’s why I changed my name and so should you,” Wilson says in his video.
Wilson also advocates for a number of other celebrities, including “Cardi the Arctic B melting” and “Samuel Earth’s getting hot as L. Jackson.”