Googlegangers
The New York Times has an article today about how people who are Google-ing their names are reaching out to other people who also have their name.
I found this article very interesting. About a month ago, I received an e-mail from someone who had Googled my name. The story is that this person was formerly married to someone who had the same first name as me, and gained my last name through marriage. (For those of you who know my name in real life, you will recognize that neither my first nor my last name are particularly common, and together, my name is very rare.) He decided to write me to share the coincidences with my name, and, intrigued, I wrote him back. (Is this creepy??) He tells me he works in Iraq as a contractor, and also has a computer science background (it is obvious from a Google search of my name that I was a math and cs person). We’ve sent a few e-mails back and forth now.
It’s an interesting idea. What makes us think we have a connection to someone just because we have the same name? And what makes us immediately trust them?
This work, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
jpines
April 13, 2008 @ 7:40 pm
I thought this article rang so true for me. There are two college athletes with my name, a track star and a goalie, and I check up on them every once in a while (I discovered them by googling myself). In fact, I once sent a local college news video of the soccer goalie to my father just for laughs (I actually discovered the video while doing a google search of myself as part of a reaction to a reading we had for this class), and he not only watched the entire thing but also called me and sounded as if he was super proud of me! It was so bizarre. So not only do our own egos affect our perception of people with our own name, but perhaps our wishing that our children succeed can also be applied to people with the same name.
dweinberger
April 14, 2008 @ 6:38 am
Without Google, how would I have discovered Attila Weinberger, Romania’s top blues guitarist and very likely my cousin? (Yes, it’s his real name.)
skass
April 14, 2008 @ 9:56 am
I have one as well, though I initially discovered mine without the assistance of the Web. I played competitive ice hockey from age 6 to 18. At the same time, there was a Sean Kass in the Detroit area making quite a name for himself as the leading scorer for an ice hockey team called the Motor City Chiefs. I learned of his existence when I saw his name in the USA Hockey magazine. For a while, a few of my friends thought it was me. Apparently the “motor city” part didn’t tip them off that it might be a case of mistaken identity. Nonetheless, the Web has allowed me to learn more about my doppelganger than I would have otherwise known. Thanks to the Web, I now know that he went on to play division I hockey for Ohio University, where he was a second team all-american. Sadly my hockey career was not quite as distinguished. After losing in the county finals in consecutive years as a member of the Manhasset River Rats (great name for a hockey team), I switched to purely recreational play.
nikae
April 15, 2008 @ 10:15 am
I have no Googleganger — and I kind of doubt I’ll get one any time soon! This is kind of interesting from a privacy/anonymity perspective. While I’m at no danger of being confused with someone else who I wouldn’t want to be mistaken for, there’s also no shield to hide behind. If everyone who turns up under my name is me, I’m a lot less anonymous than, say, a “John Smith” who can simply never even be identified through a Google search. I’m even somewhat less anonymous than those people who have only one or two “Googlegangers.”
jpines
May 9, 2008 @ 11:00 am
This guy who went around the world to meet and interview other people with his name after googling himself and made a movie called “google me the movie”: http://youtube.com/googlemethemovie