Now that we’re naked and exposed to the creeping crawlers (and since I can’t vanity search here because my name is too long ) I was curious as to what might come up.
I’m proud to say, that with all of the other Harry Potter fan-fic writers and whatnot who apparently use the same name (I promise they aren’t me), that the #1 result is my profile on the offboard Mafia forum. I look forward to my fellow Mafia addicts helping me to retain my standing. No pressure.
But when it came to figuring out what, out of all that I’ve spewed onto the Dope in the past 5+ years, might show up first, I was definitely surprised. It appears to be a link to a particular post of mine in the “Should there be a stigma on masturbation?” thread from awhile back.
But when I accidentally closed the search tab and ran the same search again, the Dope post didn’t show up anywhere anymore, but a few pages later in that search I think I found the culprit…foolsguinea had linked to it on (his? her?) LiveJournal.
It will be interesting to see what ripples the Google exposure will have on individuals and the boards at large. I don’t think my posting habits will change, but then again I haven’t been passed up for a job because of anything I’ve said here…yet.
Jragon is a pretty obvious name, so it’s used in a LOT of places, a lot of times I have to go with Jragony, which is taken needless to say it’s a lot of names with a lot of posts I’ve never seen. I’ve mostly given that up now and use Jsor. Jsor (sometimes J’sor, but apostrophes are usually forbidden) is pretty uncommon, I get a lot of organizations coming up and one really high ranked Pokemon player from Pokemon central or something, but mostly the results (steam, petroglyph etc) are me.
My last username, Jragonmiris (I’d used Jragon and Jragony on WoW already and the -miris sounded warlocky) only gets results by me, and one I didn’t post but I was told by my mom she posted it on some student credit thing on my behalf because she didn’t have time to notify me, and it’s just a copy+paste so I’m not too bothered by the one odd result.
Edit: though it should be obvious I mean various web usernames, no, I don’t have 3 socks that never post with ridiculously similar names.
The first page is a jumble of Ubuntu forums, FFF, eSnips, my LJ, someone else’s LJ, and that goddamn baking joke that I can’t seem to get away from. In 7 pages of hits, there wasn’t a single hit from the SDMB.
The first hit is over at Opal’s Fathom Board, which I hardly ever visit. Subsequent hits are for Feud threads here in The Game Room. My name is pretty unique!
A google search finds me on Cnet, FFF, links to product reviews, iRobot, Wunderground, Photobucket, AutoDesk, Ebay, Wikipedia, etc. etc. The first Dope reference is a Threadspotting.
Just googling my username leaves me in stealth mode. “What Exit?” is much too popular a term on the Internet for my posts to show up. It is even an entry in the Urban Dictionary.
Including “Straight Dope Message Board” shows no more than what was there last week. Using SDMB or boards.straightdope.com also add very little.
I wonder how much things will change when Google actually indexes the SDMB.
There seem to be a lot of Sigmagirls! The first hit is at Scrapbook.com, and that’s not me! The second is at babycenter.com, “the most complete online resource for new and expectant parents,” and that definitely is not me! (shudder.) I also am not the Sigmagirl at Men’s Tennis Forums (?), nor am I a Zeta Beta Zeta pledge. That’s not me on blogger.com, either. And that Sigmagirl at Chippendales online who likes Sexy Kevin . . . no, nope.
There’s someone with my username at Webshots and a Jimmy Eat World board (my username comes from an old song of theirs, but it’s not me) and one RSS feed looking thing from here that shows up a jacked-up version of the Pit.
7,000,000 hits, 2,000,000 without “Northrop” (for the corporation), “Dune” (for the planet) or “Stanislaus” (for the character). Searching for Grumman, my first name and last name returns hits from the defense company.
Hmmm…nothin’ on me so far. Though I’ve learned there is a Whynot, MS and a Whynot, NC. There’s also a NY based jazz bassist/guitarist from the Netherlands named Whynot Jansveld, and an OK blues band named WHY NOT (um, Oklahoma, that is. I don’t know if they’re okay or not). There’s a computer “tool” (I think it’s software) named Why Not, and a Hillary Duff song, as well.
There are a few profiles at newpapers, Amazon and others for usernames of some variation of capitalization, spacing and punctuation of the words, but none of them are me. No SDMB stuff by page 10.
The majority of hits are apparently misspellings of the word “carried.” Then there’s a bunch of stuff for a roleplaying game I designed. Various links and things to an old OKCupid profile of mine. One mention about a Mafia game I had to sub out of. A few people here and there who use the same name but aren’t me.
) I was curious as to what might come up.
