No matter how bad your week is going, spare a thought for a nice American man who happens to be called Scott Morrison, because it means he cops abuse every day of the week.
Morrison – the other Scott Morrison, the one who isn’t our prime minister – is a married father of five living in Florida. He works in marketing, and has had the nickname “ScoMo” for years. In fact, he even has the Twitter handle @scomo, which might explain why Aussies tag him every single day when they mean to @ our PM.
https://twitter.com/ScoMo/status/1214551063694643200
“I receive abuse nearly every day on Twitter, and sometimes now on other social media platforms,” Morrison told PEDESTRIAN.TV.
“Most of the messages sent to him [Prime Minister Scott Morrison] aren’t very nice.”
Florida Morrison said he’s been mistaken for Aussie Morrison pretty much since 2017. (To make things easier in this article, we’re going to refer to them as Aussie Morrison and Florida Morrison.)
“He obviously wasn’t the PM yet, but was clearly public enough that many people had an opinion what he was doing,” Morrison said. (Yeah, and that opinion was usually “do better”.)
“Now, I’d get dozens of tweets weekly meant for him. It was a bit surreal at first. But, I quickly saw the humour in it and often will reply hoping to give the sender a laugh. I never pretend I am the PM. I just respond as if they meant to send that tweet directly to me.”
So how did he get the ScoMo nickname? Surely that’s just an Aussie thing, right?
Wrong. Turns out Florida Morrison was gifted the nickname back in 2007, when he began working from a company where one of the co-founders was also called ‘Scott M’.
“I kept getting emails meant for him – which was a great way to see what is really going on with the company,” Florida Morrison said.
“It got confusing, so someone named me ScoMo, and the name stuck. In my professional world, many people call me ScoMo.”
It’s also worth noting here that Florida Morrison is, quite literally, a “Scotty from marketing”, a nickname Aussie Morrison reportedly hates but which the other Morrison leans into. Check out his Twitter bio:
Yep, even his website is IamScottyFromMarketing.com. Look, more power to him. If you can’t beat the joke lean into it, right?
“Many have suggested I replace the PM, or at the very least head to Australia some sort of head-to-head battle; ScoMo vs. ScoMo,” Florida Morrison said.
“On occasion, someone will praise his efforts as PM. But not often.”
Since criticism of the Aussie ScoMo went into overdrive during the bushfire crisis – for very, very fair reasons – we had to ask his US counterpart how he thought our prime minister handled the crisis.
“The bushfires are tragic. Even here in the States, many have done what they can to help support victims and rescue efforts,” Morrison said.
“As for the PM, I honestly don’t have any thoughts on how he is handling the bushfires. I haven’t paid close enough attention to what he is or isn’t doing. Most who message me about it think he’s doing a poor job or that he doesn’t care enough. Is that true? Perhaps. I don’t really know. But, my guess is that his job is much harder than most people realise.”
Probably. But so are a lot of jobs – and they don’t come with parliamentary pensions. Toodle-oo.
