As I frequently do, I googled my Guardian online username, "paulbecke", since,

[Joe Chi Minh]

for some reason (or perhaps, no reason) I can't access my posts on their site via their Search, and I noticed my name attached to a URL for a "goodreads.com", the subject of which was a quote of J K Galbraith purporting to be a favourite of mine - indeed, seemingly so special that I quoted it, alone, and no other.

Now, I consider J K Galbraith to be a truly towering genius, on a par with John Maynard Keynes and similar giants in other fields, but of all the quotes of his, online, that had so impressed me, the rather tediously wordy and prolix one quoted there would quite literally be the last one I would have chosen. Had I done so. I didn't. Of all his quoted insights and the points he makes, that little item must be the most commonplace and banal.

But the question arises: why is it there? I haven't seen it there before, which makes it all the more mysterious. Has anyone else been the subject of a false attribution on a search engine?

[aquart]

1. Wikipedia insists I'm a movie critic. Of one movie.

A movie I never saw. I tried to change it but it doesn't want to go away.

My name is possibly unique. Never met anyone else who had it. I have a cousin with the same last name and same first initial and it could be her BUT NOBODY WHO KNOWS HER ALSO KNOWS ME so substituting my first name for hers.......wouldn't occur to anyone.

I find it odd.

[struggle4progress]

2. I once found my username trying to sell a car online. Fortunately, it wasn't my car,

so I decided to overlook the matter. If it had been my car, I might had lost my temper and taken my username for a one-way drive out by the lake

[Joe Chi Minh]

5. I came across a misattributed post of mine on a site with Bilderburg

in its title. I noticed it a while ago. My post was attributed to a woman, and presumably the post attributed to me was, in fact, hers. Call me paranoid, but I have dark suspicions!

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Well, it does seem there's more than one Paul Becke in the world

This one, for instance, isn't you, I'm guessing:

http://www.facebook.com/people/Paul-Becke/762150031

On the other hand, that doesn't look like someone who'd give a long quote from J.K. Galbraith, either ...

[Joe Chi Minh]

4. Yes, I've noticed. He seems to be some kind of managerial, techno character.

And while my own disquisitions may be punctuated by the very occasional longueur..., even, on occasions, be extremely turgid and impenetrable, I try to quote pithy remarks of particular moment of others, particularly when the author, like Galbraith, is a cornucopia of such insights.

And you're right, muriel. I'm not in Facebook, so I expect I couldn't look it up. Probably tried at some time.

[EFerrari]

6. There's a PETA activist in TX who shares my given name

and I'm sure by now, the FBI has just merged the file. :)