Ultimately, you only have so much control over content and/or context, or, those are not my boobs.
So last night I was on the phone with a good friend from high school with whom I tend to touch base three or four times a year, which means that this was the first he’d heard about my career-ending mud wrestling injury. I mentioned that there were photos of the match online, and he immediately plugged my name into a Google image search, although if I’d realized he was at his machine I could have just sent him my Flickr link–but if I had, we might never have made this amazing discovery.
A few minutes after he found the relevant photos, there was a long silence on his end. I prodded him verbally.
“Uh, Cabell, are these your boobs?”
“Excuse me?”
“Over this PS3?”
“WHAT?”
“I did a google image search on your name, and there is a headless bust over a PS3.”
“Well, it’s definitely not me; I don’t even HAVE a PS3–where IS this?”
“Google image!”
So I google image searched myself, and sure enough:
I would like to reiterate here that this photo is NOT ME. I know how sometimes people miss these things, like when I went to that strip club on amateur night purely out of sociological curiosity and NOT AS A PARTICIPANT, DAD, but apparently wasn’t clear enough on that point in the initial blog entry.
So, yeah. That photo up there? Not me. It is, however, in the top row of results when you put “cabell gathman” (although not actually with the quotation marks in the search term) into Google image search. The rest of the row consists of the side-by-side of me and Andromeda Sparks (my main CoH avatar), my Flickr user icon, a graphic from January’s winning IAP Games Competition entry (the team for which I was on), and two different photos from Truman State University’s newsletter that do not include me but do seem to be part of coverage of events in which I was involved.
So what’s with the PS3 boobs, you ask? Well, the graphic was originally embedded in an entry of the Electric SistaHood blog’s review section, and ESH once linked to a column I wrote on female gamers for Strange Horizons. As far as I can tell, the particular page in which the actual photo was embedded contained no reference to my name, though, so it seems odd that it comes up so high on the results, except that maybe there are a lot of people google image searching me all the time and that’s their favorite photo?* IT’S NOT ME.
As a researcher of social networking sites, I naturally hear a lot about context and context collision and people who didn’t realize that their parents/professors/employers were going to see that picture of them doing body shots at a party, but I hadn’t really considered the growing possibility of cases like this, where your identifying information may end up linked to bizarre things that have nothing to do with you because you are both connected to some random OTHER thing. Confounding factors!
Which is funny in itself, since this very domain is still inaccessible from many locations that employ internet filtering software because there was a time period during which it was in the hands of pornographers, and so it’s still on a lot of outdated block lists. You’d think I’d have thought about the way that spurious connections might arise out of the vast sea of data that is the internets.** It seems like I am actually LESS likely than most to fall victim to this, because I have a weird freaking name, but on the other hand, when your name is a truly unique identifier, people are probably much more likely to assume that okay, yes, those must actually be your PS3 boobs. (THEY’RE NOT, DAD.)
Probably having publicly admitted to mud wrestling doesn’t help, either, but you know, I’m sorry, that is just how I roll. But I do not now nor have I ever owned a PS3.
(And yes, I know this post is just going to make this search result about a billion times more robust, but at least there’s a chance that people will then click on it and see this blog entry, right? …Yeah, like I believe anyone but me checks the source page.)
—
*If you or someone you know spends a lot of time google image searching me, a) don’t tell me, and b) Matt is going to be totally unsurprised, as he once claimed that I would have the most self-portraits available online of anyone in the world if it weren’t for cam girls.
**John: It’s not just a big truck you can just DUMP stuff in, you know. IT IS A SERIES OF TUBES.
August 17th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
You think that’s bad, my maiden name was shared with a prominent internet porn star. Anyone attempting to Google me would get porn. I just tried it again under my married name, and got nothing for images. A basic Google search did bring up what looks like an internet-compiled vita (which would look good to schools looking to hire me); however, it also brought up my 30 boxes account and my Flickr account (which might not look so good, considering some of the pictures I have up). Perhaps I should start using that “private” button…
August 17th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
I haven’t googled myself in a while, basically since I started teaching in ‘05 and wanted to make sure nothing particularly naughty was available for my students to dig up on me. Basically there are an awful lot of Kate Jenkins’s in the world, concentrated mostly in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. I even have a doppleganger who uses the same email addy as me on hotmail, except i’m .com and she’s .co.au, but gives out .com so I get her mail. Most of them are in science, engineering, and math. The only two hits on Google that are ME are my faculty listing at Queens College and an article about when I brought my girlfriend to my junior prom (back in 1997, this was still newsworthy).
Anyway, I reran the regression today, and found this gem:
http://welovekatherinejenkins.blogspot.com/
It’s not about me, but man, they use the same pink as you… I was impressed with the toilet bowl scrubber they decorated in that other K Jenkins’ image. If only my students would worship me in such a glorious stalker-esque manner…
August 17th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
I actually take some comfort from this phenomenon. When you search for my (very common) name you get so many things, so few of which are related to any one person, that no one (at least, no serious hiring committee) would conclude that they all relate to me. This is good because it also provides plausible deniability for the internet traces of the disreputable things I did do in my youth…
August 17th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
OK, I had to do this. I knew that if you plain old Google Search me, you get me.
If you Google image search my maiden name, you get a New Zealand truck driver. Who does at least have the same name as me.
But if you do my married name, you get a small picture of Luna Lovegood. Don’t tell me that’s not weird. I’ve been admitting to people that I AM her (or was, anyway) ever since OotP was published.
It turns out to be a spelling mistake on the page, but even so.
August 18th, 2007 at 7:38 am
When I went to flickr earlier (before reading this) and the picture showed up in my “last five friends photos” I did think it was you. And while it says a lot about me that my initial thought was “Damn Cabell went and won a PS3. I want a PS3!” I think it says something about you that I wasn’t at all surprised that you were uh… positioned as such. :p
August 18th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
Jeez, like I’d be all worried about those being your boobs. The pic is PG at worst, anyway. And besides, the mud wrestling pics are real.
August 23rd, 2007 at 4:49 pm
I have never Google image searched me, but I might have to do that now! However, I know that if you just google my name there is apparently someone in florida with the same last name* who designs lingerie.
*This is odd as my last name is very uncommon, in fact, it’s not even correct, the navy misspelled it on my grandfather’s birth certificate. It makes it really hard to trace family origins.