MetaChat - Internet Doppelgängers

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14 December 2005

Internet Doppelgängers Do you have an Internet Doppelgänger? Someone with your name who is not you and who comes up when you self-google? Are they cooler than you and are you half-tempted to take credit for what they do? Or are they embarrassing and do you want to send them a nasty email telling them to stop disgracing the name?→[More:]

I have this one, and she is definitely in the latter category — a wannabe actress who has prudently set up "a complete and informative shrine for Bethany Rae Fans!" in advance for the day when she might actually have more fans than herself. The site does claim that "this is an independent fan web site, not affiliated with or endorsed by Bethany Rae" but let's just say I'm skeptical. I think my doppelgänger is the one responsible for all the cringe-inducing, third-person, self-aggrandizing, hack-level text, and especially her description of herself as having "stunning beauty, a genuine flair and talent for acting, and a devilishly charming personality".

Well, I've introduced you to my doppelgänger. I'd like to meet yours.

post by: Orange Swan at: 10:57 | 57 comments

Nothing really for my full name, but for my last name alone, these people are really really lame.

posted by JanetLand 14 December | 11:07

I don't- my last name is rather unique. There is a swimmer in Canada, and a hockey player somewhere with my last name, though.

posted by ThePinkSuperhero 14 December | 11:11

Apparently, I'm not the only David Hasselhoff in the world.

posted by veedubya 14 December | 11:12

My first name is getting trendy and my last name is both common and can be used as a first name, so there are lots of "Bethany Rae Smith", etc., types on the net. I just had to go with one doppelgänger.

I thought it was kind of interesting that we were born just three weeks apart — she used to have the year of her birth posted but has since taken it down. I guess being 32 is not considered as positive as being devilishly charming;-)

posted by Orange Swan 14 December | 11:17

There's another goatdog (meaning another person who uses "goatdog" as a handle) out there, and he's a real asshole. He lives in Lawrence, Kansas, and he's a regular commentor on the Lawrence Journal-World's website. He's a derailer: no matter what the topic is, be it potholes or Christmas or how hot it is, he'll Godwin it (in response to a poll about potholes, he compared Bush to Hitler). However, it seems that he's been deleted from their site, probably because there were so many complaints about his conduct. You can Google him to get an idea of the reactions.

As for my real name, there are too many of me out there, so I use the whole thing, complete with middle initial and Jr., and I'm the only one of those. Sometimes I want to send myself a nasty email telling me to stop disgracing the name.

posted by goatdog 14 December | 11:18

i occasionally get email inviting me to visit an elementary school because of this guy. he's apparently quite well-known.

posted by quonsar 14 December | 11:20

for my internet name, mine is apparently an Australian electronic artist or something. I'll have to email him and ask him to say "vagina."

for my full name, I have a small child with a bird on her head and a Californian photographer.

posted by jonmc 14 December | 11:21

I rule my name on the internet. With the single link exceptions of a Flight Lieutenant and an amateur swimmer in Rochdale.

Mwah hah ha haah.

posted by seanyboy 14 December | 11:24

Apparently I'm against persecution of the Falun Gong. And I was a Rhodes Scholar at Notre Dame.

Wow, the doppleganger me is a lot more impressive than the real me. Maybe I'M the doppleganger?

On the other hand, my user handle is a low fi masterpiece.

posted by selfnoise 14 December | 11:29

No way! I knew that Andrew Sarazin!

I'm a famous country music star in Australia. But I'm still the second Google result for my name.

posted by sciurus 14 December | 11:32

Mine's a Dutch Submarine Commander

posted by Capn 14 December | 11:34

*realizes that he's revealed actual name, waits quietly for FBI*

posted by selfnoise 14 December | 11:34

bah, i never self-google and i'm not going to do it now. that said, i have ran across a couple of people with my same first and last name on usenet. one was fairly normal, the other was a nut. =)

posted by weretable and the undead chairs 14 December | 11:34

Not that it would do any good if I did anyway. I know there are at least three people in my city with the same name. So I do not have a particulary unique name.

posted by weretable and the undead chairs 14 December | 11:37

Hey, there aren't any significant challengers for Orange Swan. Google turns up basically just bad fiction, bad art, bad knicknacks, and me.

Weretable, rest assured you have an ex or a friend from high school who has googled you.

posted by Orange Swan 14 December | 11:38

I count about 4 different people on the Internet with my name. I'm pretty sure that I am cooler than all of them.

posted by cmonkey 14 December | 11:42

I don't even know what my last name IS at the moment (really, I've been in the process of changing it for years now), but for any permutation I've tried googling of either my preferred name or my legal name, there's no one.

Which is to say there's only me as I don't give out my last name online.

Being that I have a "foreign" first name and two reasonably uncommon family names, the statstical likelihood that there is another person running around with the name I was born with is really really realy really REALLY slim. As in, it's just not possible.

My preferred name though... I'll probably share that with a bunch of Swedish girls, all of whom I'll probably deem to be insolent.

posted by grapefruitmoon 14 December | 11:43

gaspode of course pulls up the book character after which I'm named. My name gets me as the first hit (slightly out of date information though) and someone else second. Then me third. Not so interesting.

posted by gaspode 14 December | 11:44

The people with my real name are about as boring as I am professionally (or interesting, if you think what I do is interesting). Well, one of them is a photographer for the Army Corps of Engineers in Albuquerque, which is kind of interesting in a weird way.

posted by matildaben 14 December | 11:53

I have a rather unique name and was shocked that not only do I have a doppelganger, but that he lives in Toronto as well. He's cooler than me in that he's in a band, but I'm smarter and better looking.

We've each gotten email intended for the other. As a result, I no longer use my full name on the net, specifically so people from my past don't look me up, which I find creepy, and email the poor guy with questions of whether I'm still a handsome genius.

His mail has been rather boring. Usually along the lines of "You ever do anything with all those piano lessons you ugly moron?"

posted by dobbs 14 December | 11:58

Somebody online has the same first, middle, and last name as I do and is apparently addicted to the internet like I am. He has squatted every variation of my/our name at any of the mail services (comcast, gmail, aol, and yahoo) I've used. I've tried the full name, first two initials and last name, first name middle initial and last name, etc. etc. I was hoping to have one address with just my name to use for my resume. Now it's just become sport for me to get somewhere before he does, which I never do.

posted by Slack-a-gogo 14 December | 12:00

Weretable, rest assured you have an ex or a friend from high school who has googled you.

Didn't go to high school. As for the other, I suppose it is possible. I never Google them though.

posted by weretable and the undead chairs 14 December | 12:03

No one has my name. Which is good in some ways, but it's such a pain to recite over the phone. I'd rather have a plain-jane boring name.

I do crop up here and there, in this letter to a newspaper, for example. (Guess who I am - no cheating!)

posted by flopsy 14 December | 12:05

My last name is a Pronoun (?) so get lots of Britney Spears and pr0n results. My name, location, and academic affiliation eventually makes the rest of my information googleable.

posted by porpoise 14 December | 12:12

Heh. Most of the hits for my first and last name are all me, baby! I suspect that's how Jonmc ran into the pics of me in the hot tub.

My handle's innocuous enough to get people like Trisha Yearwood (who just married Garth Brooks, finally) and other folks. I think I'm the only one connected to porn, though.

posted by TrishaLynn 14 December | 12:23

I have at least a couple, including a lawyer and a voice talent. But I've got Google wrapped around my finger, name search-wise.

A couple years ago, I dueled for #1 with an Andrew Huff who wrote an article on environmental issues out West somewhere. Strangely, the article seems to have dropped off the 'net.

posted by me3dia 14 December | 12:25

Trisha married Garth?

She can do better.

posted by jonmc 14 December | 12:25

My real name (Not the Middle-name / surname combination I've used for the last 30 years) turns up more hits including this beauty.

"Two Sheffield children lay terrified in their beds last night when they saw four unidentified flying objects in the sky," read the report. "William Bamforth, 11, watched in fear as the UFOs flew past his bedroom window. His nine-year-old sister Jackie hid under the bedclothes petrified by the strange sight." The schoolboy, speaking from his home in Hackenthorpe, told the paper: "They were round and bright, with fire shooting out at the back. They coludn't have been shooting stars because I have never seen a star that moved and shot fire out."

posted by seanyboy 14 December | 12:30

Dame comes up will too many results. Because I have a hyphenated last name, I am the only person who comes up when you google my full name, but since my first names are really common, especially in combination, just them gives you a squizillion results. So it's either just me or a giant crowd.

posted by dame 14 December | 12:39

I've got a fairly unusual name and there was only one impostenator, in Ireland on a petition list.

If you get a chance to read Dave Gorman's book about his hunt for other Dave Gormans (or even better, get a chance to watch the TV series) you're in for a treat.

posted by dodgygeezer 14 December | 12:40

My real name is shared by a superbowl winning NFL linebacker so I've become pretty much impossible to google in the last few years. My co-workers give me crap about it when his team plays the Steelers.

posted by octothorpe 14 December | 13:11

For my real name, I've got this valiant SCA member:

≡ Click to see image ≡

As for brainwidth, google suggests, rather suprisingly, that I'm the only one using that handle.

posted by brainwidth 14 December | 13:12

I have no doppleganger for either Specklet or my full name.

However, when I was eighteen, I legally changed my last name to O'Carolan, in honor of this guy, and of my Irish hertitage.

posted by Specklet 14 December | 13:32

This Richard Horsman does some pretty cool work.

posted by PinkStainlessTail 14 December | 13:33

Nothing comes up with my full name (first, middle, last - maiden or married). Lots of people without my middle name (10,500 links). I used to be the fourth link for "deborah" on Google, but now I'm not even in the top 100 (that's as far as I looked). I'm fourth and sixth if you Google for silverbees.

posted by deborah 14 December | 13:35

My doppelganger is a famous yoga teacher; she's much older than me and I allow her to coexist. However, there's also a children's book author, and she spooks me out, as she's apparently living the life that was meant to be mine, and I see she's even using fliss in her url, which is my nickname, and I was supposed to write children's books for a living, not her.

I grew up being the only Felicity and I'd like to keep it that way, damnit.

posted by mygothlaundry 14 December | 13:36

I have two real-life doppelgangers -- or used to. Seems I've wiped them off the Google map. Heh.

This is actualy not good news. When unwanted people from my past contact me, I politely tell them that they have the wrong person, that there is another woman in the US with my name. (The other one's Dutch.)

Now it's going to be harder to pull that off.

posted by mudpuppie 14 December | 13:48

My doppelgänger is a gay detective, with a partner named Peter, which is my middle name. Very creepy.

posted by AlexReynolds 14 December | 13:55

Looking up my real name produced some of the creepiest results I've seen in a long, long time; I'll be scrubbing that info from my brain pronto. However, googling "frisbee girl" unearthed this gem.

posted by Frisbee Girl 14 December | 14:04

I have actually met this doppelganger--she belongs to the group practice where I take my kids.

I have not, however, met this one. He sounds really cool.

posted by whatnot 14 December | 14:06

My wife's name is the same as some ultra-conservative right-wing nutjob who's written a couple of wacky books. She gets some seriously vitriolic hate mail every couple of weeks. Fun!

posted by eamondaly 14 December | 14:14

A fireman in Ft. Meyers, Florida. He wasn't on Google a year ago. I check occasionally because of people swiping my articles.

posted by warbaby 14 December | 14:16

Mine is an NCAA Football player and a political cartoonist.

posted by urbanwhaleshark 14 December | 14:24

whatnot reminded me: I used to work for a company with (well, we were in different departments) a woman who shared my name. The only difference was she went by Debbie. We used to get each other's interoffice mail. Pain in the arse it was.

posted by deborah 14 December | 14:31

Here's a semi-interesting story about someone else's doppelgänger:

In high school I discovered a Quaker author named Jessamyn West. Ever since then it has been one of my favourite names. Circa 1999 when I first began to use the Net, I googled the author, and I distinctly remember finding a web site about her that had been created by another Jessamyn West, who was a librarian. Circa 2000, I began work on a novel about a teenaged girl whom I named Jessamyn. Circa 2001, I discovered Metafilter, and as it happens, MeFi's Jessamyn is the Jessamyn West, librarian, who created the web site about Jessamyn West, Quaker author.

posted by Orange Swan 14 December | 14:32

Hey, it just turns out the page still exists....

posted by Orange Swan 14 December | 14:37

flopsy: It's pretty easy to guess which is your name when it's included in your profile as your email address ;)

posted by grapefruitmoon 14 December | 15:11

I didn't find any Doohickie doppelgangers as such, but I did see two discussions regarding things I've posted online.

The first was on freerepublic.com where they had great fun regarding my belief in the aftermath of the election that Bush stole Ohio and Kerry would eventually be inaugurated. That's the problem with the net: Not only your buddies see what you write, but those who disagree with you too and you become subject to their ridicule.

The second was on a Christian website, discussing a comment I made in a thread about stem cell research where I countered the interpretation of the Bible passage where God states He knew someone before they were born means that all unborn fetuses have souls.

Both of those discussions I participated in, by the way, were on DemocraticUnderground.com. So I guess all the other websites I post to are "under the radar" of the conservative right.

posted by Doohickie 14 December | 15:13

I share my name with a rodeo champ. That's cool.

posted by jrossi4r 14 December | 15:22

I got a guy that is #32 For the Carrollton Knights, one that was not licensed in the State of Florida and entered into a contract which offered “architectural services” and signed and sealed drawings for commercial property, a guy that lives a few citys away from me but is full mexican, and here's a page about my dad and the guy that almost killed him. He got 6 other people though.

posted by puke & cry 14 December | 16:37

There's another "safetyfork" out there. I think he's a livejournaler and blogger type whereas I'm more of a floating signifier. Additionally, my other nick comes up with a lot of foreign language hits which is nice because it obscures my trail even more since that name tends to write a little more caustic stuff. To quell the panic (yeah, right -- you say), I will mention that it is not a sockpuppet account in any meta* related site since I'm not a sockpuppeteer / double account type of any sort. It's just a much older account on a site or two that I decided I wanted to step a bit away from. My given name has google doppels, too. Quite a few actually thanks to my very common last name (and yet somewhat surprising because of my distinctive first name).

*ducks back into the low-participation level / too-much-work shadows*

posted by safetyfork 14 December | 16:39

I have one who is also a NZer. But I'm the top google hit so there!

And now I notice I have a second doppelganger in Sydney. Damn.

posted by nomis 14 December | 17:38

My doppel is a diesel generator mechanic in Saskatchewan. And, he's...

1. Always there in a pinch; very helpful
2. Performance is strong; always very well-informed
3. Structures tasks that need to be done
4. Strong organization skills

...which makes him way cooler than me.

posted by go dog go 14 December | 20:12

Well, I still absolutely google-cream all the other Dan Hartungs out there, but there are a couple of notable ones -- Dan Hartung the corporate farmer, whose house we've actually driven past (and whose company used to have a sign outside of town here, although he doesn't live in this town); he testified before Congress and somebody actually MeFi'd it. Then there's this Pennsylvania soccer player, which is cool because soccer is the team game I like most (not saying a whole lot, actually), and there was this wrestler who's my age but now obscure.

But you know what? Suck it. I'm in the Library of Congress.
I'm gonna have to read that. I may not agree with myself anymore.

(I snagged the danhartung Yahoo Mail address aeons ago, but I inexplicably forgot to reserve Gmail. I wonder which one of us has it.)

posted by stilicho 14 December | 20:51

I have two. One is the apparently happy owner of a service station in LaSalle, Quebec. The other is an unfortunate young man who died in Minnesota, 10 years before my birth. The case on his death was recently reopened, and is now considered an unsolved homicide.

I'll take the gas station, thanks.

posted by pliskie 14 December | 21:36

My doppelganger is actually fairly famous in the performance art world. She actually performed in Bloomington once when I was at IU. Unfortunately, I had no car and the place she was performing was unaccessible by public transit. But her picture was on the cover of the local free monthly so I sent lots of copies to my friends: "How do you like my new look?" ; )

posted by sisterhavana 14 December | 23:01

THIS JUST IN: I am not this Trisha Lynn. Thank you.

posted by TrishaLynn 15 December | 17:02

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