Web-search YOU ;)

My last post was about web presence. This took me onto self-googling, now a verb. But in proper lingo, it could be any search engine.

Why do it? I think it would convince you of the value of your own website. It really is the only place where you control the content and look of your face in the digital world.

If you have a horror of looking at what a search would uncover, there must be deeper issues involved that a good therapist or a close friend may help you sort out. But for most of us, checking on what pops up when we insert our own name is not so bad.

Because, for most of us, there will be something but not a lot.

I have two close friends who informed me I would find nothing whatsoever if I searched them. Both are proud to not be on any social network, have no websites, and no arrest records. Yup, any of the above will bring up something, and they assured me there shouldn’t be anything that pertains to them. So I took the dare.

WRONG.

If you have a common name and surname combination, you will have to wade through many links to find the right you. Both of my not-on-Facebook-etc. friends have distinctive names, and oh-mama, I found them right off the bat. I found where they live, what they paid for their home(s), names of people in their immediate families, and more that I will not list because they chose not to be searchable, so why make it more grating than it is.

There are ways to eliminate some of these finds by opting out, but more info aggregators constantly pop up. It a game of whack-a-mole, or whack-em-all, which is exhausting and unachievable.

This bring me back to those who want (or need for professional reasons) to be found on the net, but would like the finds to be accurate representations. Self-googling has shown me that my age was confused with my husband’s, thus aging me prematurely. (Though my age was given to him, which he thought rather nifty.) I supposedly lived in the past in cities I never did, (but lived near them in a shared zip code) and a few more inaccuracies. Thus, I know the “facts” aren’t right.

The social networks provide free exposure, but they determine the aesthetic. If your place of employment has your name and photograph, this, too, is graphically a reflection of their sensibilities.

And so the only place where you are really you, or the public you that you care to be, is your own site.

And if you really don’t care who sees what wherever, have no external reason to care, count yourself off the grid and happily so, then this is of no relevance to you.

But maybe think about it after self-googling.

The Incidence of Coincidence

Still thinking of the passage of years, I wonder what are the odds that someone I knew for only a year in second grade (and haven't been in touch with at all) would pop back into my life fifty plus years later, and halfway around the globe, and we’d turn out to be living in the same neighborhood.

I know, this is “too improbable.”

Well, it happened to me.

Here we are in second grade. We were good friends living on a tree-lined street in a lovely neighborhood in west Jerusalem.

And here we are a short time ago having coffee two continents away in our lovely neighborhood café, on the west coast of the United States, and what-da-y’know, also on a tree-lined street.

If I get another rejection to my fiction novel where the editor says the coincidences in my story are improbable, I’d have to point to this blog-post and add a few even more striking “improbables” from my life. I can document them all.

Fiction has nothing on real life when it comes to the amazing weave that is the fabric of our lives.

I’d love to hear about your improbable incidences, and no need to call them coincidences.

Bio, About Me, and Stuff

Having just read yet another Bio page on someone’s website, it got me thinking.

Confession #1— that page is, invariably, my favorite page when I look someone up. I’m not referring to the people so famous there’s a Wiki page on them and books written about them. I’m thinking about the self-composed, let-me-tell-you-about-myself part of most folks’ websites. I get a lot from the personality of the narration (=voice) and the details chosen. Much more than a list of facts.

Confession #2— I’m disappointed if the page doesn’t contain a photo. Let me see your face, and you get to choose which picture you share. This is not a beauty contest. It is about revealing and sharing. Even what a website owner chooses for a bio photo tells me something.

Confession #3— I’m disappointed if instead of sharing pertinent and relevant information, you choose a list of “fun-facts.” The likes of “my favorite jelly bean flavor is cherry,” and “I once almost met the Queen of Sweden,” and nothing else, is not really a bio-fact, nor much fun. I conclude that you do not intend to give a real glimpse into what matters to you, and what makes you tick.

Confession #4— I’m never disappointed if while you told the truth and nothing but the truth, you didn’t tell the whole truth. The whole truth includes boring details and really, some things are not my business.

I tried to write a bio on my site that fits what I care to see on others. This, also, doesn’t make it right and the only way to do things. But it helped navigate this awkward task. I wrote it as if I were not the writer, nor the subject. I wrote it as if I were an interested reader.

Come to think of it, it’s how I write my stories and my blog posts.