The grammar Nazi in me is displeased with my slip up.

His first book/ stage show was called “Are You Dave Gorman“, and was set up around a bet with his friend Danny Wallace (played the straight man in this, then set up some ‘whacky’ adventures of his own to extend the fame) that he could find 54 other people called Dave Gorman, and shake their hand. He did it for himself, not the stage show that followed – although Gorman was already a stand-up comedian and some retelling was inevitable – but a real degree of success was attained.

“Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure” followed. The first half of the stage show/ book was him trying to say to people that he had no interest in going off around the world – and they didn’t believe him because he was the kind of crazy person who DID that stuff. And then the obsession took hold, because that’s the sort of person he is: he couldn’t stop until he’d found a chain of 6 (one person finding the next googlewhack) and met them all.

There were other various thiings which happened in the meantime, but these are the two key events which people usually associate with Dave Gorman. However, people in general will still send him emails detailing the googlewhacks that they’ve found, or links to another Dave Gorman. But Dave’s not interested. His interest was in achieving his goals, and really the public interest lies in the telling of the story. Not the actual events themselves. Written down, they sound quite weird and either overly-simplistic or impossible, and the question of “why” is one which frequently comes up when mentioning any of them.

But it does seem that people can confuse the fact that there’s a good story which relates to something much more fundamental (thereby enabling them to enjoy it)…. with the actual facts and processes. That’s why I can’t see this going viral. There seems to be a deep misunderstanding somewhere along the line of why things are ‘fun’. And a worry that companies actually are then going to try to tap into the deeper impulses just to get us to buy a microwave, thereby depriving us of the mindless joys that life can bring via the internet as we become desensitised.

Although I’m not lying awake at night thinking about it just yet.

It seems random for the sake of being random, rather than being based on an idea that really speaks to those who hear of it. That it’s corporate in origin reinforces that in my mind.