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By now most of us have indulged in that onanistic satisfaction of curiosity known as "googling one's self." On that assumption I am initiating a project/experiment in which I attempt to find people merely by mentioning their names in this post.
Here are the names:
Shannon Crawford
Grant Gosler
Thomas (Tom) Hines
Jeff Jackson
Dixi Lee
Iñaki (Ignacio) López Ordóñez
George Martinez
George Moseley
Rocío Peña
Mathew (Matt) Poplawski or Poplowski
Graham Ross
Jenny Schlief (found herself on 14 December 2006)
Deewayne Sowels
James (Roy) Stanfield
I realize I could track down a number of these people through their own websites, their MySpace or Friendster accounts, my own friends and family, etc. That's not the point. The idea is to see if they can find themselves. The only help I would ask is that those of you with blogs or websites of your own link to the permalink for this post in order to increase its perceived relevance to Google.
To those of you on the list, hi. It's been a while. If you care to let me know that you've found yourself here, please leave a comment, or use the public email for this blog, which is: nofolete(at)gmail(dot)com.
Tangentially, I am adding two new categories to our del.icio.us account, "us" and "not_us" based on the Google results for "nofolete." A number of the results are from spammy and lamely redundant tag aggregating sites (most references coming from our Flickr or del.icio.us accounts). Since the links there are rather short lived I will ignore them and focus on the results that seem more permanent.
Can you tell I've been sick and have spent too much time in bed daydreaming?
ReplyDeleteIt was interesting watching myself create this post. The whole time I had a weird "gosh, I hope nobody catches me doing this" sort of feeling. Which is odd isn't it, since my intention from the start was to make this public. So public in fact that in theory people I haven't seen or spoken to in as little as three to as many as twenty years would be able to find it on their own. It is a feeling similar to the one I get when I stumble upon the Friendster or MySpace page of someone I know, or worse, used to know. But there's more to it than just that. There's the sneaking suspicion that I am just a piece, a cog maybe, or better still a micro-controller or mere transistor in some larger autopoietic system.
Do those of you who blog or maintain a personal website ever feel that it is making itself? I don't quite mean in a Frankensteinish "it's alive!" sort of way. Just that the thing itself has its own demands and requirements. Why else would I have felt the need to create those "us" and "not_us" categories? In the face of an almost infinitely permeable medium which is the internet, the entity or "center" (to borrow from Christopher Alexander) which is the blog demanded stronger, more complex boundaries. Likewise, when you google yourself you feel that there is something out there, with pretensions of representing you, but in want of some guidance, some shaping.
Anyhow, let's have Melville set us straight:
"So soon as I hear that such or such a man gives himself out for a philosopher, I conclude that, like the dyspeptic old woman, he must have broken his digester."
OK, so I definitely relate to the fear of being caught in the act that you mention, seeing as how I hijacked the name for my OKcupid profile from your site here, and so ended up being the bulk of your "not_us" category. That's very embarassing!
ReplyDeleteLet me explain - I was invited to that site in order to discover if I would escape an impending Zombie invasion (which it turns out according to them I most defintely will not). In order to find that out had to create a profile. Have you ever had the experience of trying to come up with a screenname that no one has claimed? This was the situation, and so having just come from reading one of your posts, thought I would give nofolete a try. Kudos to you for creativity, it was not taken! And, perhaps I identify with your character, clumsy as an elephant but with that winged gracefullness too. It's charming. Anyhow, I feel as guilty as a thief, but it is good to know my chances for surviving an attack by the living dead (and to know that I have definite socialist tendencies). Thank you, Nofolete! I can now prepare myself accordingly.
Incidentally, I have burned that account, so no further google traffic will be diverted from your wonderful blog. My inbox turned out to be a receptical for lusty messages from guys older than my dad anyway - yeck. :)
Zombie attacks eh? I can understand. In these modern times zombie attacks are the most troublng events against which we should all be prepared. I admire your foresight.
ReplyDeleteSorry about the old man e-mails. Scarry.
Dane!
ReplyDeleteI was just talking about that book sculpture you did to a curator here in Houston!!!
And then I googled myself and found you! How weird.
I have a blog to called "partyarefun". I don't post too often too it, but...
Miss you!
Jenny Schlief
ps my grammar is awesome in that post.
ReplyDeleteWow, Jenny. You win first prize! I didn't think anybody would actually find themself. That's some determined googling, by the way, back on page four. But then most of the hits are actually you, all the way to page five.
ReplyDeleteCute bunny ears.
I would love to find Deewayne
ReplyDelete