Rainn Wilson has changed his name to an absurdly-long mouthful in an attempt to raise awareness about climate change, something people are unsurprisingly mocking.
However, though Twitter users can make fun of him all they want, isn’t that just further proof that he’s successfully getting people talking about the issue? By our metric, this is a total W for the actor who is now called * checks notes * Rainnfall Heat Wave Extreme Winter Wilson.
Wilson’s announcement about the name change coincided with the United Nations Climate change conference COP27 in Egypt this week. And it’s also uncertain whether Wilson will make an official legal change to his name with the accompanying government documents to prove it, as Forbes pointed out.
Wilson discussed his name change in a video on Twitter in promotion of a website, ArcticRisk.org, which has a name generator to make your own climate-awareness alter-ego.
The Office star also explained in a follow-up tweet that due to Twitter’s recent policy change restricting verified accounts from changing their names, he wasn’t able to update his profile name on Twitter.
However, Wilson did alter his name to the aforementioned “RAINNFALL HEAT WAVE EXTREME WINTER WILSON” on Instagram. During the Twitter video, Wilson also suggested his alternate name could be “Rainfall Heat Wave Rising Sea Levels And We Have To Do Something About It Now Wilson.”
It was not long before people on Twitter began to mock Wilson, despite the fact that the original name change gag was probably meant to be somewhat self-deprecating and silly, to begin with.
“[S]ame energy,” one Twitter user wrote while sharing a video of climate protesters who glued themselves to a Goya painting.
We’re not surprised the cynics over on Twitter are making such comparisons, even though a joke name-change is a bit more lighthearted than splashing tomato soup on the Mona Lisa, in our opinion.
“THIS IS SO PERFORMATIVE OMG” another commentator wrote.
Another Twitter user could only conjure crying-laughing emojis in reaction to the fact that Wilson’s Wikipedia article has apparently already been updated to reflect the absurdly long name.
Though the page has already been changed back to “Rainn Wilson” when we checked Wikipedia ourselves, the cache displayed on the Google search result screen for the article proves it really was altered at one point.
Another Twitter user used a choice meme to describe Wilson’s stunt as “corny-ass s**t.”
Numerous fans from The Office used the news of Wilson’s name change to relive some of Dwight Schrute’s most memorable moments and one-liners.
We’ll be sure to keep you up to date on all the latest Rainn Wilson and Twitter news.
