Self-Googling: a lesson in narcissism

A recent TIME article detailed one of the latest Web trends: self-Googling. (Or “Egosurfing,” to be more derisive.) I had totally never even thought of Googling myself before reading this article and so, naturally, thought it’d be fun to Google myself, which I definitely had not done before. Since I’m nothing more than a humble little columnist who aspires to have a modestly successful column in a respectable newspaper one day, I thought that maybe it’d be a good idea to see where I stand and just how much work I have to do. I entered “jose martinez” into the Google box and let it rip.

My God – I’m a nobody.

I tried an image search first. As it turns out, when you image search my name, pictures of a good-looking tennis player by the name of María José Martínez Sánchez will be prevalent among the search results. (She’s got four names and four accents – she is awesome.) Also, almost every picture you see will be of a Latino. I was discouraged, until I got to the twelfth page of results: One of my old Facebook profile photos was grinning back at me. Then, on the 46th page, I saw my Loyolan photo, under which read “José Martinez – Opinion Editor.” One million, thirty thousand results and two pictures – one of which is outdated and the other which doesn’t even have the accent over the “e.” Things were looking bleak.

Actually, things didn’t stop looking bleak when I Googled myself on the site’s regular search engine. Nothing came up in 66 pages of results. And, Google would not let me move beyond that 66th page. It’s like it was telling me, gently, but with a pitiful tone – “Give up.” Google’s a good friend.

I should have expected this. I’ve known for a long time that if there’s anything unique about me, it’s certainly not my name. An obnoxiously optimistic person would say that just means that I have to strive to become known for what I do, rather than just be another name. And I suppose that hypothetical optimist is right, in some respects – after all, how legit is the fame of people like Paris Hilton, Perez Hilton and Kevin Federline? They don’t really do much.

It’s also good, for everyone’s sake, that I didn’t have spectacular Google results. If I’d come up on the first page, oh boy – my head wouldn’t fit through a wide doorway. I’d probably be like those people who only talk about themselves, assuming other people care about what they do on their own time.

And God knows no one wants that.

-Jose Martinez