Name domain
Well geez, a year or so ago they were having a sale and I can never resist a good sale. My closet of crap I never wear would prove that in a flash! But I bought my name domain. I hate that; it’s so friggin vain. It turns out there’s an actress by my same name (who knew, and it’s not me!) who did movies in the 80s. That’s why it turns out you can google me and come up with my name along with nude pics.
Let me just say that I’m smart enough to never have done nude pics or vids and allowed them to remain in the hands of someone else. I know people do it and then regret it. I’m just cynical enough to know not to do it. I’ve screwed over enough men (sad but true and I’ve changed my stripes now) to know there might be a couple or three guys out there who would LOVE to put something humiliating like that on the net.
So I never allowed anyone to have any nudes of me. Ever.
Anyway, bought that domain and just redirected it to ect.org. Now I’ve decided I might as well do something with the domain, so I’m putting up a bio. I’m so torn on all of this and it’s a real tug of war within my head. I’ve always been such a private person.
I used to hang out mostly with journalists because I was one myself and we ended up going to the same events all the time and eventually getting to know each other. I did print journalism only: mags and newspapers. That was my thing and I never had any interest in radio or TV. But a few of my TV friends would say I should give broadcast a try, that I was right for it.
No, I wasn’t, because I’m actually shy and private deep down. Plus I had no education in broadcast and it’s a completely different worm.
Side note, which I might have mentioned before…if a certain television journalist whom I won’t name in full would ever happen to google me and find this, CONTACT ME, CM! I miss the hell out of you, I miss our fun back in southern Illinois when you worked at channel 6. (Remember covering Reagan??? That was one of the best days of my life! So GD hot and I had sweat in my eyes and my mascara ran and my makeup melted off, but it was so much fun on the journalist bus and the secret service guys in the corn.) I’ve actually googled you, but your name is problematic for obvious reasons and I wish I could find you.
So back to my privacy issues. When I was going to sue the book publishers and authors of a history book on shock for saying ect.org was run by Scientology, it turns out I’m considered a public figure. (There’s a different standard in defamation law for private citizens and public figures, and if you’re a public figure, it’s practically impossible to sue. Oh, you can sue, but try finding an attorney for less than fifty grand.)
p.s. I’m a lapsed Presbyterian.
Part of me really just wants to live in a bubble and be left alone. But there’s this ect stuff that I created unintentionally. I’ve always been a behind-the-scenes girl. That’s why I liked being a journalist, I could hide away in the newsroom or on the phone, or out in public but be just another reporter asking stupid questions.
But there was always that activist part of me, too. It’s just that my activism in the past didn’t bring such public attention. Nobody really gave a shit when I was at Marion Prison marching for Leonard Peltier. (Did I really waste my weekends doing that? Why, yes I did.)
In reality, the cat is out of the bag and I can’t stick it back in. I’m out there and I know when people find ect.org, they often want to know who I am. So right or wrong, I’m putting myself out there even more. It bothers me, but yet it also gives me a little control to do it my way.
I always hold back little tidbits of info about myself. I get a real thrill when I see people discussing me as if they know me and they get these things totally wrong. For example, and I’m making this scenario up, someone might have said I murdered my sister. There have been things equally ludicrous and bizarre said about me by people who don’t know me, and they say it as fact, as if they had some kind of inside info.
So I’ll read or hear “she murdered her sister.” And I’ll know in my heart that I don’t have a sister….and those people discussing don’t know that I don’t have a sister, so look how stupid they are. Because that’s a little factoid that I’ve kept to myself, that I have no sisters. But I never go and say “Hey dumbf*cks, I don’t even have a sister, how could I have murdered one?”
I just keep quiet and enjoy my little secret. That really makes no sense at all because it means that I never correct the misinformation, I never say I didn’t kill anyone nor do I have a sister. I just let it go and take on new life. But I think deep down one day, if need be, I can make a grand entrance like an opera star and blare “I have no sister dumbasses!”
And I really do have all these little secret factoids saved up in case I ever want to use them. For my own odd reasons, it’s my tasty little secret.
I guess this is all in my mind because a very close friend has had his/her googled name come back to haunt him/her. It has caused some social difficulties because it highlights a history with mental health shit.
If I had to apply for a new job and they googled me, arghhhh. It’s a new problem that people are having to face and it occasionally happens on the message board. Someone isn’t thinking ahead and uses their real (full) name, their posts get into Google and a search on their name brings up their posts.
Several times I’ve had frantic emails from people who are actually interviewing for jobs and they googled themselves and found their names on postings talking about sensitive issues. I have no problem removing such posts or at least changing their names, but Google works so slowly.
The moral of that story is this: don’t use your real name on message boards or on Usenet if you don’t want it to bite you in the butt down the road.
As for me, when I started all of this it was all new and nobody knew what the implications might be.
My good news is that I’ve decided to professionally stick with Lawrence and save my DH’s last name for private affairs. If one of his clients googles me, they won’t find squat. I confess I like that.
Oh, and for the rest of the name domain? I thought for two seconds of moving my blog over there, but decided here it’s a little harder to find.
The internal struggle continues.
