Our head hurts already, and that’s before we’ve had our first glass of mulled wine, but the Virginia Tech professor John Lewis – who often gets confused on Twitter/X for the popular department store – has finally had his say on this year’s John Lewis Christmas advert.
Often heralded as one of the first signs that the festive season is fast approaching, the commercial this year tells the story of a Venus flytrap named Snapper who wreaks havoc in the family home, to the song “Festa” by the Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli.
The ad also doesn’t feature a ‘dad’, but rather a mother and grandmother, with John Lewis explaining that they “always attempt to show a broad representation of British life” across their marketing and that it is a “very realistic scenario for thousands of families in the UK”.
Though of course, in addition to the advert itself being a tradition at this point, in the world of social media, it’s to be expected that Mr Lewis will get a misplaced tweet as a result of having the handle @johnlewis (the store’s handle is @johnlewisretail, by the way).
Giving his take on the ad, Mr Lewis wrote: “I’ve had some interesting Christmas tress before, but…”
It’s the first tweet the academic has posted to Twitter (now known as X) since April, when he commented on the Elon Musk-owned platform stripping him and other verified users of their blue ticks if they didn’t want to pay for the once coveted icon.
“Whatever will I do without my #BlueCheckMark? My identity is destroyed. I have no reason to go on,” he said, likely with a good degree of sarcasm.
Back in November 2022, he went viral after telling Musk not to suspend the Twitter account for John Lewis (the shop), saying "they are not doing a parody of me, it's a homage".
While Mr Lewis has broken his Twitter/X silence this week, the last time he offered a helping hand for someone who tagged the wrong account was back in March.
It is not known if he’ll return to redirecting complaints and questions to the department store’s account this year.
When indy100 approached Mr Lewis for a comment or interview, he declined, saying he was not “doing interviews, even written, about this topic this season”.
Please don’t log off this year, John – we could do with your tongue-in-cheek fun on our timelines as some brief comic relief while browsing the hellscape.
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