I Google myself far too often. That’s something I’m not too ashamed to admit, which is probably a problem. It has been described as narcissism but it goes beyond that. It’s almost obsessive. That’s why I was so disgusted when I discovered that someone almost had the same name as me, and was sneaking into my Googlability.
I’m very fortunate in that I am the only person in the world with my name. This is down to one thing, my surname is made up. I guess arguably all of our names are made up but mine is very recently so, on the grand scale of things. Go back a hundred years and you’ll struggle to find a Schiernecker. It’s sort of disheartening to know that your family tree is untraceable further back than three generations, it makes you wonder what went before and what the hell we were hiding from to have to change it, and drop our history. On the upside it does mean that when I use a search engine I will only find me. That was until recently. One day when I was procrastinating from writing I decided to see how I was faring on the scale of Search Engine Optimisation. Imagine my dismay when this message shot up before me:
No, Google, that is definitely not what I meant. I decided to do a little bit of investigating. I’ve spent a lot of time on the Internet in the last ten years and I’ve left a pretty deep set of footprints, Paul Schoenecker must have done some series work to outdo me. It turned out he had. He’s got a degree in Chemical Engineering and he works at a Wildlife Park studying natural resources and he’s studying accounting in Minnesota and he works at Choice Auto Rental, and he is trained in Muay Thai boxing, and he’s involved with the Academy of the Holy Angels. I figured that he must be some kind of demi-God but refused to settle back and let him ruin my Google life with his incredible skills so I set to work putting my full name everywhere I possibly could. I set up a YouTube channel, I put my name on my blog, and my Tumblr, and my Twitter accounts. I created a Just Giving page and spammed my full name on there. I just tried to spread my love like a fever, and eventually it worked. When I searched for me, it was me I got and I was happy, for a while.
I realised that hero of men Paul Schoenecker might not have even been aware of the struggle I was facing. It was either that or he would be sat on the other side of the Atlantic drastically trying to outdo me. I hoped it was the latter. I needed a nemesis. I decided to make contact. This is how I chose to do that:
………To date I have had no response.
In my attempt to find this message which I sent a month ago I typed my nemesis’s name into Facebook and seven accounts came up. Seven! Why had I not realised it before. He wasn’t some kind of freaky new Jesus, he was seven men, and I had managed to outdo them all. It made me feel Hulk strong and I headed off to fight other battles that nobody else would notice.
Paul Schiernecker 