I have search results, therefore I am.
Monday, January 4, 2010 at 5:00AM
Dayne Morris in Geekery, Life, Opine

Search yourself. Go ahead, do it, it's fine. In fact, you should know how much of yourself is on the interwebs.

Once upon a time I would search myself and the only results about Dayne Morris were: a link to the lab research I was doing at SIUC in Environmental Engineering, a link to my Classmates.com profile (a worthless waste of money don't even bother with it), and a couple million links to Taylor Dayne stuff. Not bad, eh? It is a symptom of having a less than usual name, which I love.

Unfortunately the last year or so has seen an incredible increase in the number of people named Dayne. Unfortunately on the one hand because I like to think I'm unique, fortunately on the other hand because then people can't be sure if it's me. Plus I've noticed less people assuming my name is Dave when I introduce myself. That's a perk.

The first problem is any search engine asking if I mean Dwayne. No, if I meant Dwayne, I would have typed Dwayne, but I digress.

For instance, one of the most recent I've seen is an article blabbing on about the economy: What will signal consumers are back? Which was an AP article, so it has spammed the internet.

Another, a pornstarlet named Morgan Dayne (safe for work).

Some dude with a monkey for his facebook profile pic.

Some sort of football player named Ron Dayne.

So that's that. Accompanied by the efforts I've gone to to try to remove myself from search results I don't want to show up in (which invariably leaves a trace in itself); I've been able to expose myself only where I choose. Handy if you know how to work it. So, check yourself out. See what kind of trail you've left. That reminds me, I haven't had a stalker in a while, maybe I should reconsider.

Thank Zeus that comedian guy (who doesn't know how to spell his name) doesn't show up in my results.

Article originally appeared on Dayne M. Morris (http://daynemorris.com/).
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