While attempting to make an account on MaxPreps - a website that posts high school sports scores - a woman named Natalie Weiner found herself in quite a pickle: she was blocked from creating an account because "offensive language" was discovered in the last name field. Natalie shared a screenshot of the error message on Twitter, writing "this is without a doubt the best thing that's ever happened to me." She also tagged MaxPreps in a follow up message, that said, "help my last name is too offensive for your site."
Natalie's message spread like wildfire across Twitter, accumulating over 80,000 likes and over 17,000 replies in just two days. It turns out, there are a lot of people out there who relate to Natalie's struggle with having an "offensive" last name. Natalie shared some of the responses she received. "Those of us with offensive last names are here and we will not be silenced," Natalie said. Kyle Medick replied that he gets "this a lot surprisingly" and James Butts shared that "as a person named James Butts, I know these problems."
Two different men with the name Matt Cummings related to Natalie's tweet in a real way, but at least they found each other. "Been there," the first Matt Cummings wrote, while the other replied with a spot on gif of Tom Hardy. "Oh me too man," the second Matt Cummings chimed in.
"As a Dickman I know the struggle is real," Mike Dickman shared.
It must be super frustrating to be unable to create accounts using your real last name, but at least we got this hilarious twitter thread out of it. Keeping our fingers crossed that Natalie - and all the other Weiners, Cummings, Dickmans, and Butts out there - get this sorted out soon.
Photo: Natalie Weiner