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We Asked Jon Snow What It's Like to Trend on Twitter

Jon Snow’s Twitter account is a perpetual case of mistaken identity.
Photo: Jon Snow.

Jon Snow, the Channel 4 news anchor in the United Kingdom, is tired of your tweets asking him if winter is coming.

All he has in common with the bastard Jon Snow, the character from HBO's fantasy series Game of Thrones, is a name. On Twitter, apparently that's enough to draw a lot of attention from Game of Thrones fans.

The fact that he's a verified Jon Snow, and a celebrity in his own right, makes him more visible on the social network. If you search for "Jon Snow" on Twitter, he's the first account to pop up, right above @LordSnow, whose avatar is the character from the show.

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I'm sure Snow (the news anchor) would rather talk about his interview with Member of Parliament Diane Abbott about airstrikes in Syria. Instead, he has to deal with many tweets about dragons and direwolves, and now us.

Winter is NOT coming: I have NEVER been dead: I am a JOURNALIST: I am alarmed that my namesake has me trending!

Jon SnowNovember 24, 2015

Snow (the news anchor) tweeted the above after his name became a trending topic on Twitter last week, most likely because HBO revealed the first promotional poster for Game of Thrones' next season, which features none other than Jon Snow. As you can imagine, having your name become a trending topic on Twitter will give you a lot of attention, whether you wanted it or not. Snow's tweet made him sound a little fed up, so we reached out over email to see how he was handling the latest onslaught of Game of Thrones fans.

MOTHERBOARD: How often do people on Twitter mention or message you, thinking you're the character from Game of Thrones? Is it interrupting you or making Twitter (more) unpleasant to use?

Jon Snow: Those that I actually spot … about twenty times a day until this week when, driven by a lot of Spanish el Game of Thrones fans for some bizarre reason, it was in the many hundreds or thousands.

What do people want from you or ask you most of the time?

Is winter coming? So I tell them, it's here already isn't it, no it's not, it's come!

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Can you tell us a little about yourself and what you do, so we can confirm you're not Jon Snow the fictional character from Game of Thrones?

Well I have never died. I have been seamlessly alive. I have never attended a Red Wedding. And I am not a bastard!

Do you own a very large wolf?

I used to have a spaniel but last time I looked it had died—about er, 15 years ago.

Did you ever read the Game of Thrones books or watch the show? What do you know about Jon Snow from Game of Thrones? Do you know nothing, Jon Snow?

Essentially, I'm afraid that I do know nothing. I like to say that I'm a journalist—thus I know a lot about a little, and not very much about anything. Which I suppose adds up to knowing nothing at all.

Do you think Jon Snow (from Game of Thrones) is dead? There's no way he's really dead, right?

He's worth far too much alive, to be dead. I think he's dead-ish, and about to be alive-ish… knowing him, as I now do. All that glitters is not gold and he's a lot of that. I think he's coming back even more super than he was, even more natural. So much so that in some way he will be super-natural… a bit, at last, like me!