MIRROR, MIRROR
There's not that much that surprises me about the many ways people use the Internet, but I must say, this one was a new one for me. This New York Times piece explains:
"Now that the telephone book has been all but replaced by the minutiae-rich Web, searching out, even stalking, the people who share one’s name has become a common pastime. Bloggers muse about their multiple digital selves, known as Google twins or Googlegängers (a term that was the American Dialect Society’s “most creative” word last year).
In “Finding Angela Shelton,” a book published this month, a writer named Angela Shelton describes her meetings with 40 other Angela Sheltons. Keri Smith, an illustrator, has posted drawings of six of her Googlegängers on her blog.
There are name-tally Web sites like SameNameAsMe, and Facebook coalitions including nearly 200 people named Ritz (their insignia is a cracker box logo) and a group aiming to break a world record by gathering together more than 1,224 Mohammed Hassans."
The article even offers a reason for this trend:
"Why do so many feel a connection — be it kinship or competition — with utter strangers just because they share a name?
Social science, it turns out, has an answer. It is because human beings are unconsciously drawn to people and things that remind us of ourselves.
A psychological theory called the name-letter effect maintains that people like the letters in their own names (particularly their initials) better than other letters of the alphabet."
I guess it's only a matter of time there'll be soon be a social network just for people with the same name. How's that for an exciting social graph?
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