Solving a Problem
So every once in a while, someone (or a couple of someones) will get it into their heads that it’d be cool to come visit us in real life by tracking down our addresses and knocking on our doors, or leaving presents on our doorstep or in our mail box.
As harmless as that no doubt is, it is for some reason unsettling. A home is a private place and it’s weird to feel like the internet could at any time come rushing into it…it sort of alters how I feel about home in a way that I don’t particularly like.
The problem is, while we can post on Tumblr and Twitter and even on videos that this isn’t a good idea, there will always be some people who don’t see those messages.
There is a tremendous amount of Vlogbrothers content out there and no one’s expected to experience it all. So people will keep getting excited about the idea, not think it all the way through, and execute without considering what they’re really doing.
However, I do assume that roughly 100% of people will begin their quest by typing “Hank Green’s Address” into google…because that’s where you start, right?
So, the plan is simple, I’ve crated two pages at hankgreen.com with the same text explaining that visiting our houses is weird. I’m going to, right now, link to them with the text Hank Green’s Address and John Green’s Address. If people re-blog this and Google does it’s indexing job, then those should be the first results when people type those strings into Google.
It’ll take a while, but soon, the first thing someone will see when beginning their search is a nice note explaining the situation. Self-policing, YAY!
co-signed.
co-co-signed. Triple signed. Double ditto signed.
Sometimes I wonder… do people expect me to be impressed that they’ve found out where I live? Is that why they do it? Like, the fact that you worked out where I live will make me think wow, you really must be clever, or you really want to know me so I will make extra effort and pay attention to you? Because it doesn’t, fyi, work like that. What happens is that a. I get scared and b. in the nicest possible way, I hand over information to the police. Perhaps an overreaction, but it’s the reaction that’s worked for me so far. I know not everyone who has done this is INHERENTLY EVIL or whatever, but yeah. It’s not fun. Please don’t.
