So last week a guy e-mailed me because he wanted to get in touch with a woman he knew from the East Coast; they'd gone to high school together, he was helping plan a class reunion, and he wanted to invite her. He figured I knew her, because when he Googled her name, he came up with my blog. And I do know her, more or less-- except the thing is, I'm only acquainted with her as a wood elf artisan who fell in love with a man who owned a talking brain.
"A high school classmate Googled her real name and found a video she created in SL," my e-mailer explained. "In the Google results, it provides her avatar." And so it did, yielding Channel 4's profile of Fallingwater Cellardoor, lovingly told in a Second Life documentary from the venerable British network. (Read my 2004 post, "Falling for Eddie", for The Rest of The Story-- or least a fair amount more of it.) And so I looked up Fallingwater's profile/contact information, noted that she was still in the lucrative trade of creating virtual jewelry and flowers, then put her in touch with her high school chum.
And by now I hope the larger point is fairly clear: exist in Second Life long enough, and not only do Google searches of your real life name turn up more references to your avatar, so do video searches.
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