Other Alan McCanns of the Internet

I’ve had my legal department in my office all day, we have been discussing the potential complications of posting things that aren’t technically anecdotes on this site, and the legal ramifications of any action visitors may take against me, and against McCann Inc. should they feel misled by the anecdote-focussed nature of our marketing.

My feeling is, websites evolve, just like monkeys, lizards, insects and Christians. Yahoo originally started out as a site purely for soundclips of people shouting “yahoo” at each other in the street. It moved on to do lots of things, and now it does… um, actually I’m not sure, is Yahoo still around? Anyway the consensus was if it wasn’t an anecdote, but still involved McCann, I would be safe from a class action lawsuit. The “nn” in the site name apparently means it’s more McCann than anecdote.

Anyway, where was I? Sorry I just Googled Yahoo. So this next post is dear to my heart, and a cause of much annoyance to me.

Not only are there other Alan McCanns in the world, but some of them are also on the internet in some way, just like me. Some of them have stolen parts of my identity by doing similar things to me in their lives, only better. Some have the lives I want (and actually deserve) and others are, to be frank, fucking freaks. It used to be a simple case of one nemesis, the AM who owned alanmccann.com who has been a thorn in my side since I first discovered the internet and wanted a website and had to settle for the .co.uk. But now there are many many more. How is this you ask? Simple, the development of the internet has caused more and more people to change their name to Alan McCann, either to emulate me, or to irritate me.

As well as outlining some of these pretenders and jokers, and what I can glean of their alternative lives, I will judge them on two criteria. The first is a score, out of ten, of how much I want to be them instead of me. And the second, is a judgement on what they would contribute to the notion of a “Mega McCann” – or a McGann – that is, a superbeing created by taking all the Alan McCanns in the world and melting them into one supreme overlordly creature.

Alan McCann #2 – the identity thieving little bastard (well they all are but this one especially)

As I was researching this post I noticed there were not many photos of the real me coming up in searches of my name. I seemed to be an also-ran in the freaks gallery of namesakes. But I did find one picture, quite high up the rankings.

Interesting, because although I recognise that photo and many years ago it was my Facebook profile picture, it was never neatly cropped like this. I know that for a fact, because leaning into the left side of my head is an extremely beautiful Polish girl called Kasia and under no circumstances would I delete a hot Polish out of a photo. The pic was from Facebook so I clicked through.

Cheeky cunt. Someone has misappropriated my visage AND name and set up a bogus Facebook page. What’s more bizarre; they have one friend. A Polish girl. Called Kasia. The girl in my photo was never tagged, she wasn’t my Facebook friend, I met her with a mutual friend and was totally going to hit on her but found out she was married so left it. Afterwards I found out she quite liked me and she was separated, but by that time she’d gone back to fucking Poland. I can’t see any more information on the Kasia on the thief’s Facebook page, but I don’t think it’s her.

The thief must have purloined the photo when it was my profile picture, but there was nothing to identify or name the Kasia in the photo with me. All very bizarre. I might add him (or her, could be a hot lesbian, you never know).

Such is the way of the internet even my old nemesis has been relegated down a spot in the list by this upstart.

Alan McCann #3 – the man who has beaten me to most of my life ambitions

This one is no petty internet copy-paster. For as long as I remember being Alan McCann (which is about 15 years, stupid alcohol), this man has been there foiling me at every turn.

This fucker has beaten me to every single imaginable internet property. The .com, the “alanmccann” Facebook and LinkedIn URLs, the @alanmccann Twitter. AND he’s a fucking Celtic supporter.

He’s got his name plastered all over his website as if it were his own. His site features a cartoon drawing of his face, clever – no-one’s going to steal that and use it to set up fake Facebook page – see, he’s always one step ahead of me.

Look at the quote on the site – that’s the kind of thing I should be saying. Stop living my life before me! And look at the background picture. Mountains and beaches, pschf, what have I got, a bedroom window view of the back-end of Tooting. AND. AND. Look at the way the mountain in the background is aligned perfectly to suggestively link to his shoulders in the cartoon photo. This is him subliminally saying he is a mountain of a man. A McCann-mountain. An AMcCann-mountain. And his e-mail address isn’t alanmccann.com, nah why waste that with simple e-mails it’s not as if there’s anyone else out there in the world who would want that as their e-mail address. No, instead he has “imccann.com”. But I can’t tell if it’s like “I, McCann…” or “iMcCann” like he’s developing some kind of portable McCann-based device with Apple. And he’s hiring. Maybe I should go for the job…

Dear Alan, I share not just your name but your values and ambitions, hopes and dreams, and cartoon-like good looks. I am a poor only child and Bosnian orphan, would you be so kind as to offer me a job with your “Ruby On Rails” project, as long as it’s not porn. I can also help you with resizing the logo on your website so it is even larger and more overpowering. And I am also very adept at symbolically connecting approximations of your physical appearance with photographs of large natural formations. Yours Alanfully, Alan. PS – do you get picked on too because your first name is an anagram of anal?

When he’s not being a more financially successful version of me he is also an almighty God-botherer and internet entrepreneur, having set up and sold several annoyingly OK-sounding businesses. And he is a published author (but hey, so am I). He wrote a book about internet investments called “Yahooting!” Oh mother fucker, that can be no coincidence that I used Yahoo as an example earlier on. See, he’s even in my head!

Here’s the blurb from the book’s website – http://yahooting.com/alanmccann.html – with some [COMMENTS] from me:

With over 20 years experience in technology industry experience in everything from large public companies to small startups, Alan has always been interested in exploring how new technologies can improve our lives [THAT’S MY INTEREST! AND SAYING EXPERIENCE TWICE DOESN’T MAKE YOU MORE EXPERIENCED]. While in management roles at two public companies during the internet stock boom, he saw how investors participated in Yahoo stock chat boards while watching their favorite [THAT’S NOT EVEN HOW TO SPELL FAVOURITE] stocks prices soar (or not). Knowing that coverage of the boom and subsequent bust seemed overdone, there was still a story yet to be told in how the boom was viewed through the eyes of stock chat board participants. The result is this book, Alan’s first [THIS WAS 2004, I GOT PUBLISHED IN 2002].

Alan’s career in the technology industry spans 20 years with early technology [MY THING!] marketing [MY THING AGAIN!], sales, and engineering experience [OK KEEP THE LAST TWO] at IBM and Xerox. More recently, Mr. McCann has held influential senior and executive management roles at global industry leaders and innovators such as ATI Technologies Inc. (ATYT), Ravisent Technologies Inc. (RVST), and Phoenix Technologies Inc. (PTEC) [NEVER FUCKING HEARD OF THEM]. In each of these roles, Alan  spearheaded industry changing efforts on behalf of his company including multimedia PC technology, 3D Gaming [I’M IN GAMES!!], DVD playback on PC’s, low cost consumer electronic DVD players, and self-healing PC diagnostic software [GAY]. Most recently, Alan was CEO of DigitalStream USA Inc, a digital video technology company [I CO-WROTE A FUCKING BOOK ON DIGITAL VIDEO TECHNOLOGY], which was sold to one of its key investors in Japan [I KNOW JAPANESE PEOPLE]. Though born in Switzerland [YEAH LIKE I WAS BORN IN BOSNIA], Alan grew up in Canada and was educated at two of the top Canadian Universities [I WAS EDUCATED AT GLASGOW’S THIRD-BEST UNIVERSITY SO THERE]. He received his MBA from the Schulich School of Business in Toronto and his Bachelor of AppliedSciend [CAN’T EVEN SPELL SCIENCE] (Electrical Engineering, Computer Science) from the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada [I LOVE ABBA].

Alan currently resides with his family in Southern California and is involved with several technology startups in active or advisory roles [“RESIDES” HMMM, DOESN’T SOUND HAPPY].

 OK, 2 down, got Alan McCann the dog rapist and Alan McCann the roadie to come in the next post.