Difference between revisions of "Krithik Vallem"

Revision as of 16:59, 19 February 2021

Google Results and What They Might Mean

The very first result for my name is a link to my portfolio on WayUp, a job searching website. Something that I found a little scary is that my personal email and personal phone number are extremely publicly viewable, since they show up on the resume I uploaded to WayUp. I originally uploaded that resume so that internship recruiters could easily access my resume, particularly for career fairs hosted by the University of Michigan. However, I never intended for my resume to be viewable by the internet at large, especially since my personal contact information is displayed so prominently within literally the first search result for my name. In the future, I will likely take better precautions to protect my phone number from prying eyes.

The next batch of search results is about hobbies and extracurriculars that I have participated in throughout my college years. The first result is for my profile on NAQT, a website to track Quiz Bowl players and competitions. Using my NAQT profile, it is evident that I participated in many Quiz Bowl competitions throughout high school and in my freshman year of college, but abruptly stopped afterwards. Immediately following this in the search results is my profile on WCA, a website similar to NAQT, but instead tracking competitors and competitions for Rubik's Cube solving. The only data on my WCA profile is for a competition I attended in October 2019, held here at the University of Michigan by the University of Michigan Cubing Club.

Based on these results, someone investigating me could likely conclude that I like to participate in “nerdy” hobbies, which is fairly true. However, another conclusion that could be made is that I only participate in hobbies like these, which couldn’t be further from the truth. My 4 years playing tennis for my high school’s tennis team, as well as my more recent hobbies of running and hiking, never show up in my search results. Around the same time I attended the Rubik's Cube Competition, I actually ran in an official 5k race around North Campus. In a rare move for me, I even made a public post on my Instagram about it, yet still, for whatever reason, nothing regarding my running hobby appears anywhere in my search results. My digital identity seems to only pursue academic or traditionally “nerdy” hobbies, which is not very accurate in regards to my more balanced true self.

Another conclusion that might be drawn from my NAQT and WCA search results is that I do not participate very much in extracurricular clubs these days. Both of these websites show me joining a club and participating in it in the beginning of my college years, only to abruptly stop near the middle of my sophomore year. No other extracurricular club activities appear on my search results after late 2019. This could lead to someone snooping around thinking that I left all my extracurriculars in 2020, maybe due to the stress of the pandemic or some other reason, and have not participated in any extracurricular activities since. However this is completely false. In fact, I have actively participated in more clubs than ever in the past year and a half, but they simply do not show up in my search results. I think the reason why my more recent clubs do not appear on Google is because the majority of my activity for them occurs through platforms that Google simply cannot index, such as Slack and Discord. Due to this, the vast numbers of conversations and messages I have sent in the Slack channels of clubs like Michigan EcoData or Michigan Hackers are essentially invisible to Google’s web crawlers and will not appear in my search results.

My Empty Twitter Account

The next batch of my search results are for my social media sites, at least some of them. The first few social media accounts of mine that show up are my SoundCloud, Twitter, and my YouTube. Notably, I have not posted or uploaded anything to these sites in a long time. My SoundCloud and YouTube have no activity shown in the past 3 years. Similarly, my Twitter has 0 tweets and 0 activity since it was created 4 years ago, and 0 followers to boot. In fact, many of my friends do not even know that I have a Twitter account, and I have never really bothered to promote my handle since I never used Twitter anyways. Based on these results, it is possible to conclude that I am not a very social person, and that I do not spend much time on any social media, hence the dearth of activity on all of my social media. While it is true that I am not a super social person, the part about me not spending much time on social media is fairly inaccurate, depending on your point of view. While it is true that I do not post anything to my Twitter, SoundCloud, or YouTube, I still spend a decent amount of time browsing those sites, lurking in the shadows. In addition, the social media sites I spend the majority of my time on are Reddit and Discord, both of which are places where users are heavily encouraged to hide their identities and participate under pseudonyms. Thus, my activity on those sites is very difficult, if not downright impossible, to link back to my real name, explaining its absence from my search results.

Malaysian Facebook Connections

Something that I found particularly interesting is that my Facebook account does show up in my search results, but it is the Malaysian-language version, not the English-language one. In addition, there are several Malaysian people who share either the name “Krithik” or the name “Vallem” appearing as potential connections to me. Based on this strange occurrence, someone looking through my online search results might conclude that I have some sort of link to Malaysia. This is not that unreasonable, as there is a large Indian diaspora living in Malaysia. However, in my case, my family has no link to Malaysia that I or my parents know of. Thus, my digital self being a possible Malay is completely incoherent with my real self, who is very much not Malay.

Overall Conclusions

Based on all the results so far, someone researching me might ultimately conclude that I am someone who tries to keep to themselves and values their privacy. This is evidenced by my lack of social media activity, the abrupt end in my extracurricular activities a year and a half ago, and even just the general lack of information about me in my own search results. After the first page, the only information about me dates back to middle and elementary school, with very little about the high school and college me. Furthermore, there are no pictures of me individually on Google Images, as I only appear in group photos. It would be very clear that I am keeping my life as private as possible, whether consciously or unconsciously, from the world at large. This is all very true, as I am someone who absolutely indulges in hiding my whereabouts and activities from even the people closest to me, and I would have no problem with disappearing off the face of the Earth for a while.

A Possible Explanation

A common point that I have seen many of my SI 410 classmates bring up is the difficulty of finding themselves on Google. Many of them have relatively common names, and their search results are scattered with unrelated people sharing their name. They struggle to be found amidst a sea of doppelgangers. Anyone searching for them on Google will first need to overcome the daunting hurdle of repeatedly modifying and filtering the search results until they stumble across the actual person they are looking for.

In contrast, I have a unique name. I am fairly certain that I am the only person in America, maybe even the only person in the entire world, named “Krithik Vallem”. As a result of this, I lack the “digital herd immunity” that my peers and classmates with more common names possess. If someone intended to dig into my digital identity, they would have no problems doing so. There is no need to append my name with “University of Michigan” or “Northville”. With a simple search for "Krithik Vallem”, Google will gladly point you in my direction without hassle.

I feel like I have subconsciously understood this vulnerability of mine throughout my life, and have taken subtle steps, even without knowing, to purposefully limit the amount of information about me online. Maybe the reason why I have avoided using my social media accounts all these years is because I wanted to keep my life as hidden and secretive as possible from prying eyes. Maybe the reason why I stay out of the spotlight is because I am, in a way, always in the spotlight due to my unique name, and I fight back by purposefully secluding myself, safe within a shell of pseudo-privacy that I’ve slowly constructed over the years.