Inadvertent self-deprecation and how I plan to do absolutely nothing about it.

Well it's been some time since I've thrown some incredibly witty and by no means entirely pointless words on this blog. There was a time when I thought I'd update this place with a certain frequency that could satisfy a readership but that frequency never surfaced and unsurprisingly that readership never... Let's move on. Hopeless.

The internet has changed. The internet has changed if your name is identical to my birth name. Having a relatively unique surname and the forename Simon meant that in my schooling there was never a moment of confusion; asides from how utterly bloody handsome our rugby playing welsh physical education teacher was. I never shared the same frustration when the commonly named arose at the same time to collect commendations, in fact rather smugly - all through these ceremonies I never had to stand once. I never had the problem of people inadvertently shouting my name in public; apart from a dear friend with problems that it would be too cruel to go into here. I've never even really had a name that could be misconstrued as something else. Although when the word 'Someone' is spoken aloud in the context of something that I have done, shouldn't have done, and am not proud of doing; I've been known to think they knew it was me all along and just plainly admitted my guilt. I tell you, you've never seen disappointment until you've seen a no win no fee solicitor lose £23,500 because the defendant misunderstood the word 'Someone'.

Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s I was arguably at the top of my game. That's if you call searching on your own name using Google as a game. Performing a search of would plop my colourful site right at the top. Interestingly that website attracted multiple hits from people expecting something entirely different which is a good reason to not call your site 'Simon's Brand Spanking New Mountain Biking Website'. Fast forward over ten years and I've dropped off the radar not because my web presence has diminished more that I've been replaced. The same search now rather alarmingly shows that my name is not as unique as I once thought, in fact the same search now shows one guy I share my name with is a social networking maniac. There isn't a single company that he hasn't given his details to. From Facebook, Bebo and Twitter to LinkedIn, Myspace and Flickr - he's everywhere. Whether or not he's a lunatic for divulging such an amount of personal details about himself or just a bit silly I bet he'd find it hard to make those social networking site names rhyme like that. 20 seconds that took.

This is where I had a little think about it all. There was a time when matters like this would genuinely bother me and I would attempt to gain back some page rank positions. I could release a new website, gather some buzz from forums and get a few hits and links to rise up the ranks but then one thing dawned on me. Being lost in a flood of similarly named folk intent on bleeding all their personal details means that my own identity is reduced significantly, thus a reduction in risk of ex-friends, ex-girlfriends and ex work colleges contacting me. Fabulous.

It's not all plain sailing, mind. Just a few weeks ago I hear from an old friend. We've drifted apart over the years; her job, her social group, those letters I sent, those things I said, those legal proceedings. What I was unaware of is that she had been casually checking what I'd been up to and how I was by dipping into my social networking sites. Charming I thought, it's nice to be thought of in such a way. Sadly she'd been following a Facebook profile with a misleadingly vague profile picture for eighteen months, resulting in quite a few assumptions that I was very interested in paintball and hip-hop. At a stretch I could claim I wouldn't mind trying paintball.

This lead me to believe that the volume approach to hiding yourself amongst the similarly named isn't necessarily the best way to achieve net-neutrality, cemented by spending time convincing another distant friend that I hadn't moved to Portsmouth just a few days later. It's a tricky balance as to how much I mind. If I've all but lost contact with these friends then it could be fun for them to believe I've changed so much. There's nothing worse than seeing someone in the street and they ask you 'So, what are you up to now?' and you have nothing to report back. Although that said, I did bump into an old school friend who I hadn't seen in 10 years, asked the obvious question of 'What are you up to now?' only to receive the answer "I'm just getting lunch.".