The other Jim Groom

I just got this message on Facebook:

Hi there, just wondering if you were the Director of Revenge Billy the Kid (1992)?

If so, I’m an author, and would love to chat to you about your work.

Kind regards.

Which reminded me that there is another famous Jim Groom, maybe not as rich and Google famous as me, mind you, but famous in his own right. The other Jim Groom is a British independent/cult filmmaker, most famous for Revenge of Billy the Kid (1992). After a quick vanity search it’s apparent that I’ve pretty much annhilated his presence from the first five page of Google, whereas just three short years ago he owned his online namesake. I love it when an upstart American brings the British cult film empire to its knees!

Jim Groom as told by Google

So I want to take this post to apologize to the other Jim Groom for the irreparable Google harm I’ve done him, and I’d also like to let him know that we can work out a mutually beneficial arrangement for jimgroom.net or jimgroom.org given the right price. Also, there’s an author looking to talk to you about your work 🙂

And let me ask all of you, do you know who owns your online identity? In three short years it could be a character as unsavory as me, protect yourself now, and start a blog god damn it!

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7 Responses to The other Jim Groom

  1. Ed Webb says:

    Have you any idea how many Ed Webbs there are in the world? Thought not. However, I’m the only one you need concern yourself with.

  2. Steve says:

    Somehow, I’m not worried! 😉

  3. Pingback: Teaching and Learning Technologies » Daily Digest for August 3rd

  4. Boone Gorges says:

    Huh, I’ve never had this problem.

  5. mike. says:

    Among my google namesakes are a quite talented (and popular) Canadian cartoonist/graphic artist in the “shag art” style; an apparently now-defunct documentary filmmaker; a Canadian (another Canadian!) “lifestyle” tv presenter; and, most chillingly, a guy who went to my same undergrad and graduate schools (and at one time lived just a few blocks away from me) who was killed in a highly-publicized SoCal police brutality case a couple years back.

    You can find “me” all over the place by searching on my various online nom de en ligne, but my name by itself remains, for the most part, safely and happily anonymous.

  6. The “other” Morten Blaabjerg (he works in bio-medicin and plays golf) appears on page 4 in the Google results which is fairly impressive, when one takes into account all the time and effort I’ve taken to effectively dominate the space.

    I’ve actually met him too, as we have studied at the same university and both live in the same city. This happened when he received a package of mine by mistake and called me up to deliver it back. Apparently the “friendly” mailman had simply crossed out my address on the package in favour of his, on the (mistaken) assumption that there could be only one, and that was the one he knew…

    I believe I even have some contacts on LinkedIn who (mistakenly) has taken me for him, as I have no idea where I know them from, yet they seem convinced they know me.

    It’s sometimes quite interesting what pops up in a vanity search. Things you write and distribute online ends up in curious places you would never know about. Take these points of advice for instance, from a book for online entrepreneurs I’ve never heard about before now :
    http://atltbook.com/case-study-morten-blaabjerg-kaplak

    It’s not that I don’t approve – I usually like it when my stuff is used for something I didn’t anticipate. But that it can be a journey of discovery in itself.

    I believe that PageRank and the domain name system is slightly broken, and that they will not last to be the defining order of the web forever. But until then, I agree : get a blog and claim your space, if you want others to be able to find and connect with you.

  7. Reverend says:

    @The Ed Webb:
    Your the only one I want to know 🙂

    @Steve:
    Famous last words.

    @Boone:
    God’s only man named specifically in preparation for a google vanity search.

    @Mike:
    I had no idea you were such a big soccer fan, that makes you even more anonymous in our culture 😉

    But the SoCal police brutality thing is scary, and had a Googled you, what might have I thought? You need to reclaim your fame!

    Also, i’;m with you, what’s up with the Canadians and the internet, it’s like the own it our something, I think Americans need to fight back, we need to reclaim our innovations from the threat to the North.

    @Morten:

    Now, I’m not sure how common a name Morten Blaajberg is, but the fact that you know your Doopleganger is very strange. Do you guys get coffee, or is he mad at you for owning him on Google. Be careful, he may come after you one day when he realizes you effectively stole his identity, I can see a screenplay in this 😉

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