What if the handle you came up with years ago suddenly shares the same title with the world’s most popular new TV show? That’s what happened to a Twitch streamer who just happens to be named “squidgame” — and who found herself locked out of her Instagram account just as the Netflix show of the same name has taken over the planet’s eyeballs.
As per Insider, back in 2012, one Lydia Ellery chose what happened to be two random words that don’t seem to go together for her Instagram account. After all, what even was a squid game back in the innocent days of the Obama era? Since then, she’s become a big deal on Twitch, amassing over 42,000 subscribers on the self-streaming service. She even became part of the streaming collective known as Yogscast, which boasts over 7 million subscribes on YouTube.
But on Friday, Ellery found herself locked out of her Instagram account, which bears the same name as Squid Game, the postapocalyptic South Korean show, about cash-strapped people who enter deadly games to get big money. She had some theories why she was booted. “Ermm I think so many people have been trying to log into my account or reporting it (squidgame) that instagram have banned me,” she wrote on Twitter. “Very not cool.”
Ermm I think so many people have been trying to log into my account or reporting it (squidgame) that instagram have banned me. Very not cool.
— Lydia (@SquidGaming) October 8, 2021
Ellery later wrote that she was being “inundated” with messages from fans of the show soon after her ordeal became big news on Reddit.
Number 1 on the front page of Reddit due to Instagram banning my account! I was being inundated with messages from fans from the show but now Instagram have completely blocked me from using it pic.twitter.com/2rsUqtYcGP
— Lydia (@SquidGaming) October 8, 2021
She later told Insider that she’d gotten back into her IG account, only to discover that her account violated its policies, claiming it was “impersonating someone else.” As of Monday night, Ellery had no yet publicly revealed whether or not she’d corresponded with them further. On Sunday, she thanked people for drawing attention to her issue and that she was not “sure what to do about my SquidGame name.”
The lesson? If you come up with a clever handle fusing two unrelated words, many years later Netflix may create a hit show of the same name. Or just keep living your life in case something that random and freaky never happens.
(Via Insider)
