Everybody Does It, Don't They?

I have this good idea. How do I know it's a good idea? Cause Baby thinks it's stupid.

I'm going to explain the idea, and I'm going to ask your advice. I would really appreciate feedback. You can simply answer if you do it or not, or you can comment on the merits of the idea and its chances for success. If you're ashamed to admit you do it, you can post anonymously. But I'd like to know what you think before I try it. I'll tell you what it is in a minute, but to fully explain it you'll need some background.

I love a trainwreck. I honestly do. I enjoy awkward situations, even if I'm miserable while they're happening. Even if they make my skin crawl after the fact.

Specifically, I love my past. It is full to bursting with an incomprehensible amount of embarrassing episodes and miserable failures. The kind of shit that decades of therapy cannot overcome. It's a miracle I haven't killed myself, it's that bad. But that doesn't stop me from coveting situations where I can revisit those misfortunes. Weddings, reunions, trips to the mall in my hometown, you name it. I go to those things looking for the last person on earth I'd want to see. Cause who the hell knows what will happen? It will be weird, it will be uncomfortable, and for some reason I don't begin to understand I will find it endlessly amusing.

Baby thinks that part is stupid, too, incidentally. But that's not the reason I think it's a good idea.

I can see what people searched for to find my blog. Blogspot must have some sweetheart deal with Google, because for some reason if you google "Gay Porn" you get my blog post about getting my neighbor's porn. Or at least, so I've heard. Phew, close one. So anyway yeah, for some reason this blog gets placed very well in search engines. I can sit and read the report each week and laugh and laugh at what people searched for to find me. At least once or twice a week I get some variation of "How much Ativan does it take to kill yourself?" I'm sorry, I don't have the answer for that one. But I can tell you that the answer is "a shit ton" because a handful won't do it. Trust me.

While we're at it, Baby thinks what people google'd to find my blog isn't funny, either. That email report comes each Friday morning at about 6:30am, and she's just not in the mood to laugh at that time of day. She has no sense of humor. But again, that's not the reason I think it's a good idea.

So I've been sitting around trying to think of ways to use this Google angle to drive traffic to the blog. I could make fake posts claiming to have pictures of naked celebrities, but that's sort of cheating. People looking for that stuff will just immediately click away from the site. Something tells me that if you're into that stuff, you won't find me all that funny. I want people to happen across this and actually find something interesting to read. And this line of thinking is what led me to come up with my Good Idea.

You know how you're bored at work and you google yourself to see what comes up? You do, don't you? Cause Baby swears normal people don't do that. She will admit that maybe she has done it once or twice, but she insists that she doesn't do it regularly, and she's certainly never sat around googling kids she knew twenty five years ago to see whatever happened to them. But I do it all the time, and I'm sure other people do it, too. So here is the idea:

I'm thinking of making a blog post that is just a long list of the first and last name of everyone I can think of from my past. Friends, enemies, people I barely knew, kids I got high with, teachers, bosses, girls I had regrettable sex with, everybody. I would try, where possible, to group them with similar people. That way, they would see their name and other people they might remember, and they'd be hooked. They'd figure out who I was (how many people know more than one person named Bryce?), and maybe they'd laugh. Or maybe they'd try to kill me. It's certainly possible. But I'm protected by the internets, so they can't really do anything. And as Lady Tiara pointed out to me, it's not like I'd be saying anything about them, I would just include their name.

So I'm wondering, do you ever google yourself? And do you think this idea is stupid? Cause I think it's awesome. And by awesome I mean potentially very fucking dangerous. But maybe also probably funny. Yet mostly scary.

December 15, 2006 update:

I'm still on the fence about this. Lady Tiara raises a good point about people being Googled for job interviews. That's not something I had thought about. And a friend recently pointed out that you pretty much always Google anyone you're considering dating these days. I'll need to do some more thinking on it.