Proof that fandom is everywhere.

[icarus]

The writing center at our fine univeristy, where (if I get my act together) I am going to be working in a few short weeks, has a webpage.

Our fearless leader wants us to give little bios and a photo for said webpage.

Hmm. Anyone who knows me is well aware that I am paranoid of a RL/internet mix. I regularly google my own last name to be sure that I'm not out there.

I do have some sane reasons for this, but mostly it's my latent tendency to want to live in a mountain shack surrounded by barbed wire. And chickens. Chickens definitely figure in that picture.

Let's say I didn't greet the idea of "Gee, let's put your name and photo on the internet!" with a great deal of enthusiasm.

I wondered how bad the security really was. I picked up one of the tutor's names -- someone I'll be meeting with on Monday -- and dropped it into Google. I instantly found, yes, her page on the tutoring website. It was the first link in fact. Then I found her Livejournal.

Irony of ironies, she's in fandom. Reads fanfic. Mostly anime now, but she's been in the HP fandom. Knows copperbadge and mctabby and musesfool. Has a post by an old friend Cordelia bookmarked.

Also, she sounds really fun.

Think she'll be freaked out that I know all this?

How does one broach this? Because my first thought is "Whoo-hoo, whee! Yes, I realize I found you in a highly successful stalking test but, yay! You're in fandom, too!" *twirl* *dance*


ETA: In other news, wildernessguru is out in the wilderness, backpacking. The house is quiet and I will probably get my tons of Sanskrit homework done.

*sigh*

Sure is quiet around here without him.

Comments

[amethyst-lupin.livejournal.com]

Did you friend her LJ? That's what I would've done. You know try getting to know her online first... *shrugs*

Or you can always just ramble on about Harry Potter when you meet her- I'm very good at doing that.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I did! Nice to know I'm on the right track.

We meet for the first time on Monday, so I may try rambling. *chuckles*

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

You could be a specialist chicken handler (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/tayside_and_central/7038953.stm). My flist spans the world, yo -- someone on it was caught in the traffic jam.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

400 chickens were killed. This is dreadful! Do realize how tightly they had to have been packed for so many to have died?

I'm grateful some of them escaped. I only hope they know how to survive....

*Icarus inches one step closer to being a vegetarian.*

[inkscribe.livejournal.com]

Yeeeaaaaahhhh I hear you re: not intermixing lives. And on the googling. And the stalker test.

Wow ... maybe we already work together? ;-)

Congrats on the soon-to-be-job. *kermitflails with happiness for you* :-)

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Congrats on the soon-to-be-job. *kermitflails with happiness for you* :-)

I'm a little worried about the job, actually. I don't need the funds, it's the experience I want, but I'm taking Sanskrit this quarter and the professor is giving us twice the homework we got last year.

Wow ... maybe we already work together? ;-)

It seems likely.

[inkscribe.livejournal.com]

Ouch ... yes, I can see the timecrunch being a worry too, definitely. I'm sure you'll figure work it out, and like you say, the experience is good. *hugs*

[jmtorres.livejournal.com]

I self-googled! I am a transsexual. Also, I made a movie with Shelley Long. When I was 9. So presumably back when I was a boy.

*snicker*

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

You're much more exciting than I am. I'm just a personal trainer. And I sell Real Estate. I also, oh the excitement, teach 7th grade history.

Icarus

[fractalreality.livejournal.com]

I have a friend who has the same problem.

If they insist you have a page, insist that they only use your first name throughout.

Unless you have the most unusual and unique name in the world.

In which case, go with Jeff.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Jeff sounds good. *nods*

I emailed my boss with my findings:

Hi --

Hmm. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with this. I dropped [name of fandomer-tutor] name in Google (she's tutoring me on Monday), and the tutoring page was the first link. From there I easily found her personal journal. I now know that she was hit on by three guys she was not at all attracted to last week, and is currently panicking over her JET application. (Also, she sounds like a lot of fun.) But should I ever feel the need to stalk her, I'm all set.

My boss has decided to go with first names only. *g*

Icarus

[rike-tikki-tavi.livejournal.com]

The chicken line cracked me up so hard. I was watching Boston Legal and one of the plot lines was about a guy on trial for organizing cock fights.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Someone told me this story about a friend's trip to Italy.

Most people know that Italian men are a bit, hmm, forward with women.

This friend of a friend visited Italy, and while she was aware of that Italian aggressiveness, she got pretty frustrated with a guy who kept following her around.

So she stopped him and said, "I'm not interested. Quit following me around." I wasn't told if she said it in Italian or not, but it didn't stand a chance of working either way.

At long last, she was so fed up, she got in his face and just gave him a piece of her mind. He persisted. Out of sheer frustration she switched from yelling at him to squawking and flapping her arms around like a chicken.

He looked at her like she was crazy -- and left. Guess it spoiled the romance.

The moral of the story is clear.

When in Rome, act like a chicken.

[lebannen.livejournal.com]

It's not really the same thing, but I got bored of googling myself and my family one day, and tried to find the people on my flist. Going entirely by information from public posts (it would have been cheating too much to directly rely on locked ones!), I found the work email, office address and (academic) publication details of someone I only knew by first name. There were multiple reasons why she later changed her lj name and went completely friendslocked, but I suspect that my having told her about the ease of that fishing trip was a pretty big part of it.

I find it slightly odd even now that I'm sufficiently googleable that my aunt could post a happy birthday message to my photo journal, when she barely knows how to open a browser, and there are some message board posts made in my real name that I'm not too happy about leaving lying around either. But I knew I'd made those posts in my real name, and the photo journal at least is something I am constantly aware of being public.

What I'm trying to say is that I think it's better to know than to not know about that kind of traceability, and while I don't know how to say something like that in person - I've only ever done it over IM - I think it's something that should definitely be said.

And also, yay for finding a cool internet fandom person in person!

[wishwords.livejournal.com]

Hmm, that's interesting. I wonder if I could find someone to do that with my public journal info? There are certain things I expect people to be able to find and other things that I hope I've hidden well.

[lebannen.livejournal.com]

The big thing in that case was that she'd written some fic, and posted it in public, that was sort-of based on 'I'm bored of what I'm doing at work this week, it would be more exciting if two pretty men were doing it instead and incidentally getting naked at the same time', and it was public knowledge that she was an academic in a particular region of the country. It didn't take long to find someone with her first name, doing that work she didn't like, at a well-known university. So some of the information came from comments rather than just her userinfo, which I'd read because I wanted to know about the inspiration for the story, and anyone else could have found at a later date.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Wow. Though I'm more impressed with your sleuthing than anything else. Still, it makes me wonder about details I've given in some of my posts.

Icarus

[lebannen.livejournal.com]

Offhand, I can't think of anything that would make it easy to find you using online methods. Of course, it would probably be quite easy to recognise you by hanging around outside sanskritsanskritsanskrit classes for a while, but that would involve considerably more resources than I personally am willing to expend....

I think the fact that you *have* been careful to keep your real name off the internet should be enough, really.

[winterthunder.livejournal.com]

Hmm. When googled, I appear to be everything from a student to a real estate agent to a volleyball player. Interesting that few people would connect the ones that are actually me...

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Hooray for being lost in the crowd. *g*

[wishwords.livejournal.com]

Ask if you can use a photo of your favorite pet and stick to facts about your classes in the bio? Or even make up a humorous bio that sounds like an excerpt from Indiana Jones: "Icarus spent sixteen years climbing mountains in Nepal, studying with the world's only purple yeti. After finding the meaning of life she took up deep sea diving to learn the secrets of mega shark religion." You know, something weird.

And yeah, I'd mention that you googled her to see if the university page came up and by the way, noticed she was in fandom.

[ix-tab.livejournal.com]

When I google myself I get a comment I left on an Indonesian website about 7 years ago, and my deviantart page that I grew bored with after a day that I haven't done anything with since 2004. And some sort of fanlisting, except that I can't figure out what it's for.
Apparently I'm the only person in the world with my name, or at least the only one active on the net. But admittedly I'm not ultra private on the net. I often use my first name, and occasionally my last name, though not that much. I don't do photos, though.

If she's in HP fandom, she'll just be happy to meet other fen that don't speak in chatspeak!
(Oh HP fandom. I love you. Why do you treat me so bad? Why so much chatspeak fic?)

[schmevil.livejournal.com]

*Why* does she have her name on her lj? That's such a total no-go for me. But considering her name is out there for all to see, she can't be too concerned about keeping her fan-life private. So I wouldn't worry about a bad reaction from her. Unless she's just stupid...

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Actually, it wasn't in her LJ. Or rather, it seems that she had it at one time and deleted it. LJ had the old info cached on the server. Her name was unique enough that these turned up in an easy search.

My name is so common it might as well be Mary Sue. :D

[schmevil.livejournal.com]

That there is a lesson for all internet users.

Googling me is pretty much useless. Yay for common names.