MemeMachineGo!

=v= If you're like me -- on the Internet for years, own a few websites, well-known in certain circles (never mind their diameters) and indexed a lot -- a vanity search is lots of fun. Do it on Google and you might even get some interesting ads served up. Apparently I can be purchased on eBay. Heck, just searching for one's unusual first name turns up some interesting stuff. (Give it a try, Zed).

A vanity search on Usenet is quite another matter. Usenet is a Dantean inferno, dominated by those who do the most flaming. When your name gets used, it's not necessarily a good thing.

For years, the top Google Groups search for my name turned up a ranting kook demanding that I denounce something called "Green Communism." Said kook used my name a lot, as if he (or I?) was Bob Dole. More recently, though, an unhinged loon seems to have misidentified me as an online alias, though offhand I can't tell whether I'm an alias for someone who actually exists. At any rate, the loon has a long list of accusations about my religion, crimes, sexual performance, diseases, drug use, and residence (New Jersey), and used my name 32 times.

Ironically, a Google Groups search would have shown that I've been at the same email address all millenium, and at a variant of it for the 1990s. Also, since I live in New York City I suppose I should raise the inevitable objection that I don't live in Jersey, but on the other hand I might just affect the requisite jaded nonreaction to it. You choose. Whatever. Do I look like I care?