You can find anything on the Internet - from ordering ballpoint pens or Thai food, to browsing the world's great art museums, emulating games or teaching yourself a foreign language. Through the Internet you can confess your darkest secrets, meet new friends, or spend hours playing chess. If you're not sure how to find any of these things, you could Ask Jeeves...or you could just Google it! Fantastic! You can Google anything, without even having to input proper search terms - our precursor to SkyNet will correct your spelling, volunteer a definition, calculate a math problem or reference your favourite film, no problem! Like an intimate confidant, Google will even finish your sentences for you.
My own recent Google searches include "Change into a truck", "Bird bill bent to the right" and "Petunia's Pies and Pastries". There are so many things I can find online, but can I find myself? Should I even try? I don't make a habit of Googling myself, but maybe through these searches, I am anyway, sifting through my own questions, interests and tastes.
What would cause me to regularly Google myself in a world already saturated with rep points, likes, retweets, upvotes, comments and four-star-reviews? A Greek sage (we're probably related) once said one should aspire to "Know Thyself" - is it a quest for self-knowledge that leads our members to earnestly type their own names into the holy grail of search engines? Perhaps it offers an outside perspective as to how we impact others, or comforts us with reminders of former holidays, abandoned blogs, old usernames, records of other lives. We can relive all the heady promise ebbing from old class records, sports teams, that "photo a day" project that stagnated, incomplete.
It could be that these people are so in need of attention that they will recycle it - or it could be that they are the kind of person who can only be validated by themselves.
I Google you
late at night when I don't know what to do
I find photos
you've forgotten
you were in
put up by your friends
I Google you
when the day is done and everything is through
I read your journal
that you kept
that month in France
I've watched you dance
And I'm pleased your name is practically unique
it's only you and
a would-be PhD in Chesapeake
who writes papers on
the structure of the sun
I've read each one
I know that I
should let you fade
but there's that box
and there's your name
somehow it never makes the pain
grow less or fade or disappear
I think that I should save my soul and
I should crawl back in my hole
But it's too easy just to fold
and type your name again
I fear
I google you
Whenever I'm alone and feeling blue
And each scrap of information
That I gather
says you've found somebody new
And it really shouldn't matter
ought to blow up my computer
but instead….
I google you
