Vanity quest, also known as ego surfing, is the practice of using a search engine to find oneself. It can boost self-esteem, help identify copyright infringement, and correct false reports. It may also reveal people with the same name. It can be harmless and occasionally done for fun.
A vanity quest may be more commonly known as ego surfing. This is a term that may have been coined by internet mogul, Sean Carton. When you do a vanity search, you’re essentially using a search engine to find yourself. Other names for this practice include self-googling, googling yourself, ego search, or autogoogling. These names refer to the common practice of using Google to perform this search.
If you’re new to the Internet, it can be interesting to do a vanity search to see if anyone knows who you are. Of course, what you may see at first is many people who have the same name as you. Once you start blogging, posting, or posting information on places like Facebook, a vanity search might reveal more pages referencing you.
Sometimes the term is used derogatorily to describe those people who are obsessed with having their names appear on a search engine. If your name ends up with thousands of hits, it can be an ego boost, hence the term ego surfing. It can boost your self-esteem when other people write about you, mention your work, or provide links to your work.
However, there may be other reasons for vanity seeking. First, the internet is unfortunately a place where a lot of theft of original material occurs. Sometimes this theft is extremely careless. People might bring up something you wrote and still credit you for it, but they might be infringing on the copyright or terms of use of a blog you write. You can contact these people and ask them to stop using your work, or you can make deals with them that could be profitable for you. Theft isn’t always malicious, and some people just don’t realize they’re hurting profits or violating copyright laws when they use your work without your permission.
Another reason some people seek vanity is to find out if people are reporting untrue things about themselves or saying rude things. This may be more applicable to people who are well known, for some reason in the internet community or offline in some way than celebrities. When you write hurtful things about a person, or moreover things that are inaccurate, it may be possible to change that by commenting on someone’s website. You can fix false reports although you may not be able to do much against vicious attacks based on public opinion.
A large number of people may occasionally seek out vanity just for the hell of it. It is usually a harmless activity. Given the vast amount of information available online, searching your name and getting results that have nothing to do with you might be checking vanity rather than encouraging it.
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