For a long time, I was an Olympic fencer. Then, I became a Michelin-star chef. No one asked me how I managed to julienne my vegetables while wearing an epée glove or if, given my busy schedule, I ever picked up the wrong weapon and impaled my opponent with a carrot. I was a swordsman by day and a chef by night, but the small hours were still free, so it seemed reasonable that when I wasn't fencing or frying, I was managing a jazz club.
All of these activities were imputed to me by the Wikipedia page that I did not set up. My imputees operated under pseudonyms, so I have no idea who they were. Their informational method was, in the spirit of the age, completist and moronic. They trawled the digital universe with the assumption that I was the only person in the world to be called Dominic Green, apart from the science fiction writer of that name, which is actually my name. I'd take it back if he wasn't also a part-time kung fu instructor.
This impostor already had a Wiki page. He had a website, too, with a biography. I had neither, so any piece of floating information bearing our names, by which I mean my name, was nailed to me. It included the sorry facts of my squalid past as a musician and squalid present as a writer, but as these are not serious jobs, I needed fuller employment.
I had no idea any of this happened until, in the final lecture of a college class, I asked the students if they had any questions, and one of them said, "Yes, what's for dinner?"
That night, after I oiled my saber, fired the sous chef, and paid off the quartet, I discovered that my homonyms are legion. So are yours. My Washington Examiner editor, Grant Addison, also works in Paisley, Scotland, as a turnaround execution specialist. Is he moonlighting as a hitman or a getaway driver? Grant is also a distillery operator on the remote Isle of Islay, a project manager in Lubbock, Texas, and a student at the University of Southern Mississippi.
There is a lot of this about. In 2005, 165 Martha Stewarts gathered to compare recipes and tax returns. Their record was broken on Saturday, Oct. 29, 2022, when 178 Hirokazu Tanakas met in a theater in Tokyo. How did the box office cope?
I already knew that something was up. In 2008, people started laughing at me. This had always happened sooner or later, but now it was happening as soon as I introduced myself. I realized why when my agent emailed to ask if my manuscript was late because of the rigors of filming. The villain of the new Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, was called Dominic Greene. My agent was called George Lucas. I told him it was time to grow up and let go of the Star Wars franchise.
Most people soon work out that I am neither a billionaire nor scheming to overthrow the government of Bolivia, but many people are misled by overlaps between me and my digital doppelgangers. Prospective publishers have been disappointed to learn that I was not nominated for a Hugo Award in 2005 for my science-fiction story, The Clockwork Atom Bomb. More than one editor has been relieved to learn that, though I have played with rappers and dabbled in sports betting, I did not post "Mortal kombz ass beat" and "Lol they on xavier smith ass but if he muffs that bitch it's a whole different narrative." Nor did I muse chivalrously "If a dike beating your girl ass you jumping in?," let alone the sportive reflection "Ni**a how? yall beat Seattle."
That was Dominic Green, the producer who posts as @DomTheGoat. His credits include Yung Bleu and Lil Poppa, whoever they are. Still, I'd rather be mistaken for the Goat than our brother from another mother: the Dominic Green who works at the BBC. "Mortal kombat ass beats" are an honest living.
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To become more like myself, I rewrote my Wikipedia page. When I deleted the fencing, cooking, and jazz club and added the truth, my anonymous imputees did not believe me. They demanded proof that my mother is who I think she is. They deleted facts about my life that, ridiculous as they are, are entirely true. When a notoriously unpleasant British journalist falsely said I denied the Armenian genocide, they didn't look up my writing on the websites of the Washington Examiner and the Armenian National Institute. They just repeated his lies -- and restored them when I deleted them.
My comedy is everyone's tragedy. Wikipedia has become the world's encyclopedia. The more you read it, the more obvious it is that Wikipedia has been hijacked by politically motivated editors and donors. It is now a crowdsourced, Soros-approved form of left-wing propaganda. I have no idea how we can fix it. Perhaps the rising tide of mass illiteracy will wash it away. Until then, I shall keep on fencing and chasing that second Michelin star.