Looking for Me

So. I just looked up my name on Bing. I did not expect the results.

My name is everywhere on the internet. I thought that my last name was uncommon, since I had never met another person with it. My first name is more common. Evidently, both my first name and last name in combination too are kind of common.

On the first page of results, only one is actually mine. It's my Facebook page. I wonder if it's because I've had longer than any other account. I found a twitter, whose name was the same as mine, but it was not my twitter handle. There were also several LinkedIn accounts, a couple even from the UK. Amongst the LinkedIn accounts were jewelry makers and sellers, an author (maybe it's a sign!), and even imdb accounts.

It was a little weird to see my name all over the place, but I suppose I was not as creeped out since only on was actually my account. What was freaky was to see a few obituaries. I mean, I'm not even twenty-one yet, so I'm not worried about dying, but it's strange to think that some people know a deceased loved one by my name. To them, so-and-so is gone. When I saw the first obituary, I kind of cringed and thought, "Well, that will be me one day. I'm not immortal, unfortunately." And yet, the internet kind of makes you immortal.

We spoke in class about old Myspace accounts. One of my classmates did some googling and found her old account, even though she had not been on it for years. Will my Facebook account pop up after I die? How long will it take to be lost in the infinite sea of personal accounts, if ever? If a hundred years pass, and my grandnieces and nephew want to see what Great Aunt Lizzy did on the ancient internet of the old days, would they be able to find my twitter and facebook accounts? It would certainly teach them quite a bit about me: what I liked, what I ignored, who I was friends with, who I communicated with, and so on. We know most about ancient civilizations if they leave writing behind. In a hundred years, or even less, we will be looking back on the internet and popular social media in order to discern what life was like "back then".