In the occasional and undesirable scenario in that I would lose my memory and have only with me an identity card, googling myself would turn out to be more difficult than I had previously anticipated.
Before we begin exploring this unlikely and miserable amnesia situation I hypothetically gotten myself into, I would like to make a clarification about my name, which I know puzzles a lot of one-last-name-only people. As many Brazilians, my name is composed by my given name, my mother’s family name and my father’s family name. I have two last names which make up my full name. I usually use Ana Toledo online and even offline. The issue is that this name is extremely common. Googling “Ana Toledo” gives me about 51 million entries. I would have to know more data about myself in order to search for myself. Poor Amnesia me has very few information available to her.
My full name gives me 3 million results, but most of those are not the complete name. Amnesia me would then google it between apostrophes. These are the first 5 entries she would find in order:
1 – A magazine article with Ana being interviewed about her short exchange in Latvia in 2002. Amnesia me would realize that there is no picture anymore of this person there, but she probably would have liked to have gone to Latvia as well. Maybe Amnesia me would get as annoyed as I am with how the reporter edited the interview and put words in my mouth. Nah, Amnesia me would not know about that.
2 – A 2012 someone uploaded a file in docstoc.com entitled in Portuguese “Applications”. My name is among numerous other names in a 297 page document with no more information. Amnesia me wonders what the heck. Non-amnesia me wonders what the heck as well.
3 – A very sketchy looking site which loves suspicious pop ups called yasni Brasil has my full name and my email address. Amnesia me wonders if this site connects to my true self. Non-amnesia me is very suspicious of this website.
4 – A paper about a presentation about Native Brazilian representation in cartoons as a part of a History project in a university in Rio. “Maybe I am a historian?” wonders Amnesia me.
5 – A list of students enrolled in the History course in a Brazilian university. My name among many names, Amnesia me likes the idea of being a historian. “Have I graduated at all?” she wonders. The page does not tell.
I have noticed that most of my blogs, fotolog, personal articles or every single thing I have done since I started using the internet in 1997 does not have my full name linked to them, at least not at first glance. Amnesia me might not find them, she would be overwhelmed looking at all those entries trying to find these things. She does not know that I – and I had not noticed that either until right now – love to use pseudonyms and avatars for whatever reason. Amnesia me would have to make a very good and tiresome work to find more information. She would have a hard time finding a picture with the same person as in her id card connected to the name. She might just accept being a historian, have gone to Latvia at age 20, made some research on iconography and presented it in a symposium. If she goes to the second page of Google with her full name, she would find her being accepted at the University of Helsinki to study Media. She might just like and really appreciate that. Or she might have thought “damn… why haven’t I studied something like business or engineering? Oh, well….”.
In case someone gave her a hint about her filmmaking past, she could try to find the Ana Toledo linked to that. Non-amnesia me confesses that she is quite disappointed to find out that this would be a very hard task. Maybe she should do something about it… or maybe not. Does it matter or are we just dancing for no one?
Why I Heart My Media 