too many Daves

Shortly after I wrote a post called “Malcolm Gladwell and the case for endless self-Googling,” I decided to add a new search to my Google Alerts profile: my own name.

It’s been fun to track the way my ideas spread — or, more typically, don’t spread — around the Web. But today is the first day anything truly useful came of my automated self-Googling.

Today’s daily e-mail from Google Alerts included three new hits for my name. The last one was:

Announcing a Child’s Death on Twitter - Readers’ Comments …
David Quigg. Seattle, WA. December 17th, 2009. 5:27 pm. I’m with Madison McGraw on this one. For some reason, the tweet 16 minutes before the 911 call about …

This concerned me. I am David Quigg. I do live in Seattle. But I didn’t comment on anything called “Announcing a Child’s Death on Twitter.” I know who did comment on it. I know because she was borrowing my laptop while we were having a serious but constructive disagreement about the awful event covered in “Announcing a Child’s Death on Twitter.” You may sense in my phrase “serious but constructive disagreement” that the comment that ended up being posted accidentally in my name is not a comment I would have posted myself. My journalism career left me scrupulously, ostentatiously, sanctimoniously reluctant to judge strangers who I’ve met only via a handful of news reports. So, no, I wouldn’t have posted the comment.

But “David Quigg. Seattle, WA” did post it. So “I” did post it. That’s what Google thinks. If Google thinks it, it’s “true.” “True” now. “True” forever. It would be nice if I could blame someone else for this. But I can’t. Mistakes happen. They just do. So you’ve got to plan for that.

Bottom line: Log out of everything before sharing your computer.