It was all but confirmed on Thursday that Anthony Albanese would be taking the reigns as Australia’s latest opposition leader.
And while hundreds flocked to social media to congratulate the Member for Grayndler, widely-known as ‘Albo’, the politician quickly realised he had a problem.
It turns out the Twitter handle ‘@Albo’ belongs to an Italian porn comic.
“My NSFW art account. only for 18+. I’m an Italian comic artist,” reads the profile bio.
The Italian artist soon caught on to the mistake and issued the following Tweet.
hundreds of mentions and all for an Australian politician whose name is Albo too. He as an username slightly different but lots of australian keep mentioning me instead of him… 😭
— Albo draws lewds 🔞🏳️🌈 – alboart.bsky.social (@Albo) May 22, 2019
But @Albo soon turned disgruntled, upset at the lack of care being shown by Albanese’s supporters, even after a Twitter user explained “It’s cause of how we shorten words. Albanese becomes Albo. Bottle shop becomes bottlo, service station becomes servo etc”.
@Albo responded:
he has the same right of being called Albo like me, this is not the point. I'm complaining about his careless supporters that don't know even his correct name on twitter.
— Albo draws lewds 🔞🏳️🌈 – alboart.bsky.social (@Albo) May 22, 2019
For Albanese, known on Twitter as @AlboMP, it appears as though his foreign counterpart simply got to the name first.
@Albo’s Twitter page shows it was created in April 2007, while Albanese did not create his page until February 2011.
But it wasn’t all bad news for ‘Albo draws lewds’, who perhaps picked up a new client:
👍 was not aware of your art before. It looks awseome, and I found you thanks to the Aussie newspapers report on AlboMP 😂 I hope you get many new fans from this!
— Ozone (@OzoneTog) May 23, 2019
