When I bend down, I see my navel. It's not all that exciting, but I am in one of those moods. This morning I listened to several folks I work with discussing making more appealing and attractive adult diapers. The idea seemed to really appeal to them. They discussed it at length. I, from the safety of my office, was a little horrified. While I'm all for embracing my age and station in life, I don't need to look forward to incontinence.
The diaper discussion produced a sense of nostalgia. I don't know why. So this afternoon I was googling people. Some were old friends, some were newer, some were people I was just curious about. Then I remembered my navel. I've always maintained that I'm not googleable. I decided to persist in paging through the result for my name (first and last, no middle in quotes). I appear first on page 4 and again on page 7, both for a recent article I wrote in an online academic journal. Page 4 was my bio from the 'contributors" page and Page 7 was the article itself.
The depth of my gazing was, well, deep. I paged through many, many pages. Hockey stats and Revolutionary war letters, lawyers, photographers. I might have gone to Yale or Cornell or Harvard or Lander (wherever that is). Oh, and my gravestone might be found in any number of states across the continent or indeed in England or Australia (mine is a very WASPy name). I could be a psychic or a "zoo parent."
After page 20 or so I despaired. Sure, my middle initial, name, research interests, where I actually went to school, etc. will all get you "me" more directly. Using my middle initial revealed that someone who shares my name is a child molester. On the upside, using my middle name helped me discover that a university library (besides the place I got my degree) ordered my dissertation and has is sitting on their library shelves. Bless their hearts. I may go visit it. Still and all not finding me for page after page was disturbing.
I occur again on Page 75 for a project I worked on in graduate school and then again (alarming quickly, it seemed at the time) on Page 78 for an online 'zine I contributed to some years ago. On Page 79 a course I helped develop is mentioned. A book review I did last year pops up on Page 82. I must be a 70s and 80s kind of gal. Google stopped on Page 84. I was going to go to Page 100.
I was weirdly grateful to not find myself in the Google image search. The Google image search disturbed me in its pictures of people with my name and not my face staring back at me. Best to look navel-ward.
So, blog-friends...
How googleable are you?
Do you google yourself?
Others?
How googleable do you want to be?
2 comments:
Well, my name isn't nearly as common as yours. I appear at the top of page 2, as a copy editor for one of the magazines I work on, which is accurate enough. On the first page I less accurately appear as a soccer-playing identical twin, a Celtic musician, an outstanding young alumna of Penn State, and an elementary school teacher. Not a bad lot to be associated with: not a child molester in the bunch, though someone who shares my name is oft mentioned as the owner of a pet born with a rather grotesque deformity.
My name is fairly unusual, even without the middle name. Search result one is a country singer. Search result two is with the Presbyterian church. I am search no. three and *gasp* it is a photo (stranger still, the other person in the photo, a man, is labeled as his successor, a woman).
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