25 August 2009 Poke Zach Martin
A month ago I changed my name officially on Facebook from Zac Martin to Zach Martin. I tried to change it to Sir Zac Martin but they wouldn’t let me. Interestingly, just one day after I changed it I found this article about a girl who had changed it and Facebook wouldn’t let her revert it. So yeah… should have some fun changing it back.
Anyway, the response was mixed. People who I would consider better friends in real life were, for the most part, the ones who picked up on it most. Others, who I’d only met after joining Facebook and those who I didn’t know extremely well, didn’t recognise the change. On more than a few occasions, these people even commented using my name as Zach.
And perhaps the best story, someone attempted to email me at zach[email protected]. Classic.
Just another example of how heavily we rely on Facebook.
Daniel Oyston
Posted at August 25, 2009 2:13pm, 25 AugustMy wife is upset that now our baby (Zac) doesn't share the same name as you! She is now in counselling. The young fella couldn't care less.
And yes I did notice that it changed and wondered "what is the spook up to now?"
Matt Granfield
Posted at August 25, 2009 2:49pm, 25 AugustActually, I was going to write my own blog post about this Zac. I know how to spell your name so when I saw you'd changed it to Zach on Facebook I was a little surprised. I'd figured your real name was Zachariah and you were looking to transition back to that. My real name is Matthew and every now and then I get an urge to switch back to that from Matt. I've got a mate called Chris and a friend Called Susie who have both campaigned heavily to get their friends to call them by their full name over a period of years and they've both used Facebook in their battle, referring to themselves as Christopher and Susannah in order to get the message across to their friends. You of all people should be the last researcher on the planet to try and draw conclusions from random samples! If anything, I think this proves that people take Facebook as a person's definitive online personal profile, so whatever they refer to themselves as there, is gospel 🙂
Matt Granfield
Posted at August 25, 2009 2:57pm, 25 AugustMore proof: http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/1102/3dcauk.jpg
Shai Roitman
Posted at August 25, 2009 7:29pm, 25 Augustwell my name is Shai – if I changed it to Shy could you imagine how much more crap I'd be getting!?!?
Marek
Posted at August 26, 2009 6:45am, 26 AugustAs someone who has their name spelt incorrectly and said improperly every day, I think you are crazy for embarking on an experiment that has the unfortunate side-effect of name-error.
Zak, good luck with the new psuedonym.
Tannie
Posted at August 26, 2009 10:42am, 26 AugustWhilst I doubt the point of a test that proves that lying to people gives them the wrong impression, I support your attempt to be more like Zach Braff
Daniel Oyston
Posted at August 27, 2009 9:05am, 27 AugustYou should change your name to Daniel … it is consistently in the top 10 names each year.
You'll also get heaps more girls.
Bob Jeffs
Posted at September 11, 2009 12:48pm, 11 Septemberit's like 10 years ago when people used to know other peoples phone numbers, nowadays i don't even know my girlfriend's number!