You Knew This Was Coming…

You know… “some” people might consider that an omen.

Hemant, both you and Dawkins would be fully redeemed from your Beastiness if someone could just find your images on a tree stump, a tortilla, a grilled cheese sandwich, a brick, a watermelon, a freeway underpass, a moldy ceiling, a pretzel, a rusty screen door, an eggplant, a dental x-ray, a fish bone, a bathroom door, some spilled hot chocolate, a chihuahua’s ear or a chimichanga and sold it on eBay. You could write another book: “I Regained My Soul by Selling My Face on the Miracle Pizza on eBay.”

Sainthood for notorious atheists is just a bagel away.

Yet again, some impostor is pretending to be me. I do not Twitter, I had never even heard of Twittering until a thread on RichardDawkins.net alerted me to it, and I most certainly have not signed up for it. I am told there are numerous Facebook pages purporting to be mine. None of them is. I do not have a Facebook page, or anything comparable.

I don’t understand the motivation of these impostors. They do not seem to intend malice. If that were the motive, I could kind of understand it. If it were amusing satire I could understand the motive. But the fictitious persona that they invent for me is not particularly discreditable, nor is it funny. The statements attributed to me are not wildly implausible. But they are not mine. They are pure fiction. If anybody can suggest a possible motive I would be curious to know. What kind of person makes up fiction about a real person, which is neither malicious nor humorous but just sort of DULL?

And does anybody know how to let it be known to the Twitter admin people that this is an imposture?

Richard Dawkins

Hi Richard,

it is becoming relatively common to impersonate celebrities online. You have identified two possible reasons (malice, or humour), but there is also a simple third one which is admiration. For those who live rich digital lives not finding their heroes participate online with the same intensity is a letdown, and some of these people can be brought to fill this void. The dullness you perceive comes from their eventual lack of inventiveness, or creativity. It is unavoidable of course, since your value is in your uniqueness, and if it were easy to be you, than its value would be lowered.

The evolution of online behaviour is of fundamental importance for our memetic–or temetic/artemic as Susan Blackmore would more recently say–future, and being able and correctly interpret it is of substantial value.

Hope this helps, but let me know if it worth to expand further
(For example an other service becoming popular called FriendFeed encourages the creation of fake friends, which are the aggregation of online traces of people you want to follow, as if it were them collecting these…)

David
davidorban.com
linkedin, skype, sl, etc.: davidorban

PS: Of course the comment posted might or might not come from the ‘real’ Richard Dawkins, too!