JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Where was it that I read that Facebook members spend an average of three hours a day on their Facebook accounts? I don’t know how they arrived at that number, but from personal observation it sounds correct. You go online to check some statistics, but before you do you decide to take a peek at your Facebook, it won’t take five minutes. You take note of the number of your friends, gloat at how many more friends you have than your friends (or wonder why you don’t have as many friends as they do), approve and disapprove requests for your friendship, send out toasts and pokes, check to see if your crush in high school is on Facebook, and before you know it, five hours have passed and you still don’t have those stats. 

I’m not on any social networking sites, but a few years ago my sister told me that there were three Jessica Zafras on Friendster. We knew they did not just happen to have the same name, because they used my column photo. I suspect they were little gay boys, who constitute a large part of my readership. My sister lodged a complaint, and I don’t know what happened after that.

Today a friend was telling me about looking up his high school crush on Facebook. He found someone with the same name, and checked out the photo. It was clearly not his old crush, but this other person was very attractive, so he decided to “friend” him anyway. Do you ever wonder how many people out there have the same name as you, and whether they’ve ever been mistaken for you?

It makes sense to be familiar with your namesakes, in case they become famous or, more importantly, infamous. Grover just mentioned that the immigration hold orders at airports don’t include dates of birth, so if you happen to be a namesake of someone who cannot leave the country, you’re not going anywhere, either. You’ll need a certificate to prove that you are not in fact that person. I know at least five Michael Tans, there must be a dozen William Chuas, and so on. 

Anyway, I thought of this experiment. Go to Facebook, MySpace, or any other social networking site, and find out how many people have the same name as you. Then send them all this message: “ARE YOU ME?” The next time they check their accounts, they will receive messages apparently from themselves, raising a question of identity. It’s ontological! It’s epistemological! It’s freaking weird!

If they reply to your message, be sure to let me know. Maybe you could be friends. Or you could be more than friends—you could date each other. You and yourself, it’s the beginning of a beautiful friendship!