Pay your respects to the real John Lewis, Twitter’s most patient user

ByCraig Haley

This festive season, spare a thought for the man dubbed the “most patient Twitter user on the planet”. Mr John Lewis from Blacksburg, Virginia.

Mr Lewis was one of the early users to grab a Twitter account, way back in 2007. Back then, a good Twitter handle was a lot easier to find, and John managed to snap up the type of handle that everyone craves. His own name. In this case, @JohnLewis.

In fact he got his Twitter handle so early, that he appears to have beaten John Lewis, the popular UK chain of department stores, to the punch. The department store brand had to settle for @JohnLewisRetail, before changing it to the even-less-social-media-friendly @jlandpartners.

And therein lays the problem. In Twittersphere, we expect our favourite stores to have their Twitter handles set to their brand names. So when Twitter users want to tag or direct messages to John Lewis the department store, they’ve been inadvertently tagging John Lewis from Virginia. For years.


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That may be enough to drive anyone crazy, but not John Lewis from Virginia, who has spent the last several years replying to all those mis-tagged Tweets with his own special blend of quick witted sarcasm, deadpan humour and civility. And in many cases, he even directs confused Twitter users to the actual John Lewis Twitter page.

That may be bad enough to deal with at any other point in the year, but things really get interesting for John during the mid-point of November, when John Lewis the store launch their much anticipated Christmas advert.


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That’s when John gets really bombarded, with a huge surge of comments, criticism and everything in between, that join the ever-present flow of customer complaints, queries and demands he faces all year round.

But John remains unfazed, like he has every other year, with some great Twitter moments over the last 24 hours –


 
And here are some of our other favourite John Lewis moments -m

In 2013, John Lewis (the store) even sent John Lewis (the man) a thank you tweet and (presumably) a gift for his ever enduring patience.