I have a couple of times, but then after never finding anyone talking about me, I have stopped.
I didn’t realize it was a “vanity search.” The first thing I usually do is search for my own posts to see if any new replies have appeared. Those are the threads I’m most interested in following, so I don’t consider it vanity, just a quick way to find those posts. Now, putting your name in the keyword instead of the user box, that’s vanity.
You bet. Salves my fragile ego to be mentioned, plus it’s a usefull tool in trying to figure out what happened while I was blacked out.
I don’t see anything wrong with vanity. Any harm would be in taking it too seriously.
Oh gosh, yes, I go ego-surfing at least once a month. Frustrating thing is, there’s another writer with my same exact name (we’ve become friends, and call each other "Evil Twin), and both my first and last names are commonly used words . . .
No, I’m too lazy. And not that interested. Also, people tend to call me “Cranky” and like drastic, I think I’d get a lot of false hits.
I hope that if my presence is called for in any thread, someone will email me and let me know. A Toronto doper was kind enough to do so when I failed to notice a thread about my visit there!
Someone wanna be my bitch and email me for all breastfeeding, college admission, wood, and immigration threads? These are my areas of expertise.
I do it all the time just to find the threads that I am participating in on the board.
So I just put in Zebra and search for last week.
I do it pretty regularly. I found that in addition to getting replies to my posts, people sometimes just mention me out of the blue, and it’s good to keep up with that sort of thing.
I would, except you cannot search for a word less than four characters long. My narcissism remains stymied.
Yup, I do, to see if anyone has replied to one of my posts or quoted me. Not that I’m quoted often mind you, but it sure is fun to see when I am! And I dont’ think my username will show up in random conversation. 
once in a great while, but usually to find a thread i posted in but lost track of.
You know, I do a Username search since yesterday first thing when I log on for the day, so I won’t leave someone hanging on a thread I posted to.
I never thought to do it on my username in the whole thread search box though.
Thing is, I always sign my name Tris at the end of a post, so it would hit every post in every thread. Most posters abbreviate my name when they refer to me, too, so my full name probably wouldn’t hit at all.
I don’t think people refer to me all that often, aside from the threads in GD. Surely my name is never mentioned in the Pit.
Tris
“Swat my hind with a melon rind, That’s my penguin state of mind.” ~ Opus ~
no, i get enough rejection in real life…
I scream, you scream, we all denounce Jesus for Ice Cream!
No, I don’t do vanity searches. Unnecessary strain on the SDMB server. And I’m very humble. And I have a lot to be humble about.
It didn’t even occur to me to do a vanity search on the web until someone else brought it up. Mostly I only found posts on usenet under an old name.