Oh, would some gift the giver give us
to see ourselves as others see us – Robert Burns
One thing I found quite amusing today was watching Republicans trying to claim that Google was fixing their Google searches against them, because every time they googled themselves, they got bad results.
I mean, nobody even had to say a thing, they said it themselves. “Why is it every time I search on Google, the first 3 or 4 pages are just articles saying what a giant shithead I am?” It’s one of the downsides of the information age, I guess. If you happen to be a giant shithead.
It’s sort of like a mirror. The image that you see is, to some extent, the image that was entered. At any rate, after you’ve calibrated for the fact that everybody has different opinions, and some of them are wrong, and there’s quite a bit of gray area in deciding what’s a negative article and what’s a positive article and what’s from the Waterford Whisperer. Maybe not as much gray area as there used to be. Most people are pretty blunt nowadays.
When I google my name, I find that I am not the most famous Willie Watson in the world. I’m not even in the top three. I used to think it was a unique sort of name. I mean, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see lots of Bill Watsons, or Wills or Williams, but that’s not even it. Among people named Willie Watson, I don’t pop up until page 3 or 4. So, I’m pretty insignificant, which is probably what most people find when they google themselves.
But, if you are a celebrity of any sort, you’re going to see what the public thinks of you. The good, the bad, and the very, very ugly. Maybe mirror was not the best analogy. Maybe it’s more like that Robert Burns poem I put there at the top. Maybe social media is that gift, and we’ve now been given it.
We will all just have to deal with that in our own way.
