Hey Twitter, @Zimmerman is not George Zimmerman

A mild-mannered man from Charlotte is being mistaken for another, more infamous Zimmerman. When will it stop?
Jeremy Markovich,
A public service announcement.

George Zimmerman, that George Zimmerman, had his name pulled out of the Infamous Celebrity Dustbin last week after it was revealed that he might, just might, be fighting the rapper DMX in a boxing match. The promoter later realized what a terrible idea that would be and called it off, but not before getting people all sorts of riled up:

As you can see, some people on Twitter decided, without double checking, that @Zimmerman MUST be George Zimmerman, much to the fatigued bewilderment of one David Zimmerman, a search engine optimization expert from Charlotte who's held the @Zimmerman handle long before George became infamous:

There is also Zimmermann, a company that designs and sells swimwear:

And let us not forget Neetzan Zimmerman, a former editor at Gawker who's been lauded lately for his ability to rack up millions of pageviews by knowing what pictures, videos and stories will go viral:

But back to the first, most hate-inspiring Zimmerman. Because of him, David has been fending off angry Tweets for the better part of two years now:

As a rule, this happens quite often on Twitter, when people with otherwise common names start getting deluged with the Twitter equivalent of wrong numbers, thanks to someone else who suddenly found themselves in the spotlight. The most recent example: A guy named Robbie Sherman (@RSherman25) was inundated with tweets after Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman (@RSherman_25) gave an, uh, impassioned interview after his team won the NFC title game. Robbie found himself flabbergasted, but at least one guy could sympathize:

Categories: The Buzz, Way Out

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