Well, it would seem the internet has officially become the Kevin Bacon Game.
A friend of mine hosts a weekly podcast, I am a frequent guest panelist. It’s a music themed podcast, each episode has a specific topic. Prior to recording an episode, the host uses Facebook and Twitter to ask for “Listener Picks”- fans make their suggestions as to what songs/artists should be included in the discussion of that week’s topic.
I am not involved in the upcoming episode, but the topic will be “Best Song Intros”.
A fan, whom neither the host nor I am acquainted with personally, offered his Listener Pick for Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May” with the sometimes omitted “Henry” intro. In his first post making the suggestion, he offered the little bit of information that he already knew about it.
Then, after a while, he made another post adding information he gathered from Googling the topic. Then, a while later, he made a third post adding information he found HERE from our very own Thread on the topic from almost six years ago… and he directly quoted me!
kunilou was really the one who deserved a direct quote, having provided practically an encyclopedia entry on the song. This podcast listener paraphrased much of kunilou’s information just saying that he found it at The Straight Dope. In the Thread, I had teased/celebrated kunilou’s capacity for minutiae by responding with this little gem:
And THAT is the direct quote this stranger used in his Facebook post (directed at himself teasing himself for all of the details he was bringing to the discussion).
I sent the stranger a message on Facebook. Apparently, he is not a poster here but he has read some of our Threads in the past when Google searches have directed him here for info he was interested in. First of all, I was surprised to see a stranger on Facebook mention The Straight Dope, then I saw the quote and thought “Ummm… that kinda sounds like me. Was that me?” I sought out the Thread and sure enough! Such a weird/cool experience.
I’m always a little freaked out when I realize just how public this board is. If you Google for certain unique treatments for depression and PTSD, some of the first hits are my threads on the topic. I get random PMs all the time asking for more info and even once was interviewed for an article on TMS.
I don’t mind, in fact that’s part of the reason I started the threads, so people would have someone else’s experience to read about. I’m going to need to add a coda to the TMS thread, though, because it didn’t work for me and my last post indicates that it did. I hate breaking people’s hearts when they send me hopeful PMs.
I’ve also had it happen for non - Dope things. The last time I googled about troubleshooting my heart rate monitor, I found an eight year old thread from a runners forum that I could relate to so well… Because I started it. So basically, I learned nothing.
It got more interesting every time Randall Munroe quoted the Dope or the SDMB in his What-if column, but it hasn’t been updated in awhile. I think he quoted us at least 3 times, so either he’s a lurker here or it shows up high on everyone’s Google searches, or a little of both (he could browse a bit when the Dope naturally comes up on his searches, and then it bumps up the Dope in the search, which creates a tiny bit more browsing, etc.)
It’s a great article, subtitled, “Radio figures Ira Glass, Sylvia Poggioli, Neda Ulaby, and others have inspired restaurants, pets’ names, license plates, and songs.”
I got pretty ticked off once because someone did not pull my post.
Bear with me on this. I’m a regular reader of a (rather extensive) blog about movies and movie actors. There’s a feature on the site that analyzes why some actors’ careers fizzled out, or didn’t quite reach the level of fame that had been predicted, or in some cases just plain imploded. One week, the subject was Molly Ringwald. There’s another regular reader/poster who scans the net for posts relevant to the topic at hand, on all kinds of websites/blogs, including SDMB, then reposts them in the comments sections and provides links. So he copied and linked to a post from our Cafe Society stating (paraphrased): “Ringwald’s worst mistake was when she had a chance to meet Lillian Gish, and blew it off like a diva. Probably she was too young to know who Gish was, but still, jeez.” But he didn’t pull my post, from only a bit further down the page, in which I stated (again paraphrased): “Not her fault! She made every effort to get to that meeting, at a probably hard-to-find address, in the dead of winter, in a cab with a no-speak-English driver, late and from an emergency room because she injured her hand in a freak accident. And she darn well knew who Gish was, and was eager to meet her. Why didn’t the magazine send a car for her, if they wanted this interview to happen so bad?”
I reposted my own comments in response to his quote, without making an issue of it, but it still bugged. Mainly because it’s aggravating that people still have the wrong idea about that incident, and the post that got quoted was the one perpetuating that wrong idea, instead of the one dispelling it.
Oh, and dig this: There was another entry about Edward Furlong (one of the biggest career implosions of all time). The Mad Webcrawler posted all kinds of links, but did not include Sampiro’s posts about what Renfro and the rest of the cast of The Grass Harp staying at a Montgomery, AL hotel! Sure, Datalounge and Lipstick Alley, quote them extensively, but skip right over a post from someone who saw and heard for himself.
I mentioned this once before, but a few years ago someone at work was asking me for some advice. He didn’t totally believe me so he googled his question for a second opinion and decided that I was correct. As he read to me what he found I asked him where he was reading it and he confirmed my suspicion that it was here so I said ‘uh, look who wrote that’ and he said “Joey P”. I gave him a hard time for not believing me when I told him something but then acting on the exact same information he got on the internet even though it was still me.
His defense was that he just wanted to make sure I was correct/get a second opinion. I still think it lends credence to the joke ‘it’s on the internet so it must be true’. He tends to be a skeptic of anything on the internet and will act like everyone and everything out there is full of crap, but only when they don’t say what he already thinks.