Be the MOST Famous YOU

In case you aren't a sports fan I should open by saying Manchester United won the English premier league on Monday. OK now you know that we can begin.

Clearly not a doppelganger

A nice little Indian man (I say nice I don't know him, but sure he is lovely) has received thousands of messages of congratulations on twitter. His user name is @RVP which many people who don't know how to use twitter properly, or couldn't be bother to check have discovered is not the account for Robin Van Persie, the talisman forward for Man Utd.

Whilst being highly amusing that so many have mistakenly identified someone as this world class footballer, it is just one of a recent number examples of problematic way in which the internet is used to identify people. There was plenty of falsely accused people after the Boston bombers as keyboard detectives surfed the net to find anyone looking shifty in any photograph taken near the scene of the crime. This caused extreme distress to innocent people, many who feared attack from some mob burning torches at their door.

An Iranian woman had to flee for her life, after her photo was used in connection with the shooting of a girl who decided to defy culture and attend school. This case was mainly down to lazy journalism, of course journalists now don't need to leave the comfort of their office to get a story, instead the trawl twitter and other social media asking for permission to use photographs in exchange for a byline. This means they are effectively trusting the publishing source, not a clever idea when the publisher source could be some idiot sitting in his pants stoned out their box making stuff up!

So all these examples of mistaken identity lead me to one conclusion, you must be the most famous person of your name if you want this mistake to never happen to you. Easy thing to do if you have a more unusual name, or a Hollywood movie contract. But spend ten minutes Googling your name and find out who is more famous than you?

Would the real Steven Hill please stand up?

I did, this was the results:

Steven Hill - Hollywood actor, although hasn't been in anything amazingly major my casting as James Bond could outdo him.
Steven Hill - Pottery, famous for making pottery doesn't sound too famous right?
Steven Hill - Porn star, was brutally murdered. Jesus i'm glad I wasn't mistaken for him right!
Steven Hill - Political Writer, funnily enough I have a politics Blog but doubt it is the same standard as this journo.

So there are five people I need to better to get to Page 1 of Google for my own name. At least I'm not called Jimmy Saville, that would be unfortunate.

Incase your still ready Van Persie has twitter account @Persie_Official.