GOOGLE Yourself
I Googled myself as part of a series of online assignments called 23Things. The purpose was to seek my digital footprint, which is how much of my personal information can be easily found online. I've googled myself before--admit it, you've googled yourself too--and my results are mixed. My birth name is Marcel Faulkner. The first search result of my autogoogle--yes, that's a word, or at least it is now--is from LinkedIn, and that's me. The next few results are also related to me, and further down the page, there are 2 images of me, as well as images of books written by a man named Marcel Faulkner. There is also a graphic black and white picture of a bombing victim, apparently a teenage FLQ member who accidentally blew himself up.
This is where it gets complicated and rather unpleasant. The failed bomber was not named Marcel Faulkner, but the man who wrote those books was, and and both he and the bomber were associated with the FLQ in the 1960s. That Marcel Faulkner was imprisoned for his involvement with another bombing. During the 1970 October Crisis, when FLQ terrorists kidnapped two Canadian politicians, their demands included the release of convicts they described as 'political prisoners.' They provided a list of names, and the other Marcel Faulkner was on the list.
I too am an author. I have written six novels, but I've used the pen name Marcellus Durrell for all of them, partly because there was already an author named Marcel Faulkner--this FLQ guy--but also because my birth name just isn't memorable. People rarely remember it, except for the occasional literature major who wants to know if I was named after Marcel Proust & William Faulkner. Sadly, my parents had heard of Faulkner but not Proust, and had never read either of them.
My biggest fear: I'm going to attempt to get into the United States and a border security guard will recognize my name and mistake me for the other guy. If the guard is bad at math, he or she will fail to understand that when the other guy went to prison, I was eight or nine years old. My digital footprint, in that case, will be a jackboot in the face.
I Googled myself as part of a series of online assignments called 23Things. The purpose was to seek my digital footprint, which is how much of my personal information can be easily found online. I've googled myself before--admit it, you've googled yourself too--and my results are mixed. My birth name is Marcel Faulkner. The first search result of my autogoogle--yes, that's a word, or at least it is now--is from LinkedIn, and that's me. The next few results are also related to me, and further down the page, there are 2 images of me, as well as images of books written by a man named Marcel Faulkner. There is also a graphic black and white picture of a bombing victim, apparently a teenage FLQ member who accidentally blew himself up.
This is where it gets complicated and rather unpleasant. The failed bomber was not named Marcel Faulkner, but the man who wrote those books was, and and both he and the bomber were associated with the FLQ in the 1960s. That Marcel Faulkner was imprisoned for his involvement with another bombing. During the 1970 October Crisis, when FLQ terrorists kidnapped two Canadian politicians, their demands included the release of convicts they described as 'political prisoners.' They provided a list of names, and the other Marcel Faulkner was on the list.
I too am an author. I have written six novels, but I've used the pen name Marcellus Durrell for all of them, partly because there was already an author named Marcel Faulkner--this FLQ guy--but also because my birth name just isn't memorable. People rarely remember it, except for the occasional literature major who wants to know if I was named after Marcel Proust & William Faulkner. Sadly, my parents had heard of Faulkner but not Proust, and had never read either of them.
My biggest fear: I'm going to attempt to get into the United States and a border security guard will recognize my name and mistake me for the other guy. If the guard is bad at math, he or she will fail to understand that when the other guy went to prison, I was eight or nine years old. My digital footprint, in that case, will be a jackboot in the face.
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