A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY – A TRIP INTO CELEBS-VILLE also known as WILL THE REAL JOHN MAYER PLEASE STAND UP

Ok, where do I begin? So as you all know, I have only recently joined the blogging world. It’s a great creative outlet and fabulous forum to speak ones mind on everything and nothing. It has also opened me up to the extravagance of freely being able to express myself personally, albeit through a guise of being simply known as “editor”. However, I had no idea the extent to which being anonymous could affect someone else – by no fault of my own.

For those of you that know me well, I dig on music, art, creativity, intelligence and culture. One of the musical talents I admire most is none other than that of the currently all-perezz’ed up John Mayer. I have had a keen interest in his music and shared a good portion of my earnings to purchasing quality seats at some of his shows. I have also been an avid reader (although non-commenter) of his blogs – which are effortlessly combined into a brilliant one stop shop on tryjm.com.

Being the newie I am at blogging, I thought it relevant to road-test commenting on tryjm. Aside from the fact that John had blogged no less that two days after my Coltrane post about none other than the great jazz man himself – I thought it might be a great space to do a little bit of shameless self promotion and post a link to my blog URL. I saw a potential for those with similar interests to link through to my own blog and take a look around. Little did I know what was waiting on the other side of the increased counter hit rate.

Logging into my blog this week I saw I had been inundated with comments. Lovely, kind, and thought-provoking comments. I took a moments joy in celebrating that by placing a url link on tryjm, people might actually be feeling a resonance with my blog and thus all the increased interest in commenting. So wrong.

In the strangest twist of fate, I was scrolling through said comments, and started realizing that some of them were sounding well, strangely familiar, but unrelated to my postings. Why? I wracked my brain to work out why this person thought that they could see themselves walking in the rain with me, and kissing underneath an umbrella???? It was all getting a bit strange for me, and the hit rate was incredible – this person was looking at my blog on refresh-by-the-second basis! I decided to post a blog about moderation – being a double entendre message to this reader… meaning – Do things in moderation, and your comments – all excessive amounts of them, are currently being moderated, by me, “editor”

To no affect. Again at next login, I was overwhelmed at all the new, and increasingly irrelevant comments to be moderated. But now, they were discussing the perils of celebrity and how difficult it must be to be a publicly- represented human being. Strange, I had no public persona – I wasn’t a celebrity (that I was aware of). Nonetheless I kept these comments in my moderation file, because they were starting to get out of hand, and I didn’t want the user to delete them until I could get to the bottom of what was going on.

Then the penny dropped. A quick side-swiping look at tryjm.com made me realize that the person was trying to comment on John Mayers photography – pictures of people kissing underneath an umbrella, taken on a recent trip to Japan (check it out here). The comment about being a celebrity… it all fit. This person thought that I was in fact, JOHN MAYER!

Far from me to be rude about this, I actually posted a very immediate call to action on my blog, inviting this person to email me urgently, so that I could explain the case of mistaken identity before it went too far. An email exchange occurred and now as a result I have lost my most frequent reader!!!!

There are several things I learned from this experience:

Some people can convince themselves of anything

Being anonymous has its downfalls

Some people should pay further attention to what it is they are reading and or commenting on – there is a picture of me on this blog if you care to find it.

Being a celebrity isn’t all its cracked up to be.

John Mayer has some pretty interesting fans.

So thanks tryjm.com, and frequently-visiting aforementioned reader. I am sure my stats will go down now, but I wish you all the very best of luck in your pursuit of becoming John Mayer’s wife. I really do.

PS: Shannon - this far beats your little while lies blog on nada - and its devastatingly true! Check out Shannons blog here