Googlegangers Gone Wild

Posted by Mike Walsh

4/13/08 11:46 AM

cloneWell, the latest web meme has arrived. Googleganging. Or in other words - the strange affinity that people feel to total strangers with whom they share the same name. The buzz started with the new book 'Finding Angela Shelton', about a writer who describes her meetings with 40 other Angela Sheltons. According to the New York Times, there is some social science behind what I suspect is really just an exercise in vanity. But I thought I'd give it a try. So anyway, I was highly amused to find of us Walsh clones had decided, like in the movie 'Highlander' that there could only be one. From his website, the other Mike Walsh explains:

"Be forewarned! There are a lot of Mike Walshes out there. There is a guy in Hong Kong (used to be in Australia) who is some kind of luminary on interactive media. There is a Mike Walsh out of Helsinki (go figure) who is big in online games. There is a Mike Walsh (now dead) who used to be president of Textron. He was an early adopter of the cellular phone and died of a brain tumor at the early age of 42. Urban legend says that the publicity surrounding his death was the origin of “can cell phones cause cancer.” There is a Mike Walsh who perpetrated an accounting fraud against Boston Company, a big subsidiary of American Express, back in the 90’s. Based on the emails I receive, there was a Mike Walsh who apparently screwed every woman in Texas during the 80’s. Alas, I’m not a luminary; not a gamer; not dead yet; never perpetrated a decent sized fraud and never knowingly screwed a woman in or from Texas ( although there was the redhead from Plano… oh forget about it). So to end the confusion once and for all, I decided to become themikewalsh. Pretty clever, huh! Now when people come up to me and say… are you the Mike Walsh who … yada, yada. I can just cut them short and tell the… “I’m themikewalsh.”

Pure genius. You win. I'm changing my name. 

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