Normally, the only Jason Dunn I’m mistaken for in the online world is this singer guy. Well, last night I had an all-new case of mistaken identity: I was watching The Ultimate Fighter Ultimate Finale with a friend, which we were watching on the Xbox 360 via the Windows Media Center UI (man I love that!) and I received an invitation to a “photo party” from a contact that I had approved earlier that day via the Zune software. Confused yet? Yeah, it’s kind of messy. The Xbox 360 and Zune avatar/handle system does such a good job of protecting user identify, I usually have no clue who I’m adding to my buddy list – I always assume it’s someone that I know, and eventually I’ll discover who.
I ignored the “party” request from this person, and after we finished watching the show I noticed I had a new message. I listened to it, and laughed: it was a message from someone I didn’t know, who was complimenting me on my great tattoo work. Now while I do like my one and only tattoo, it’s not particularly impressive from a design standpoint (and in fact needs filling in because it has some gaps), so I was kind of confused. I listened to the message again, and realized that he was talking about tattoos, as in plural.
Then the pieces fell together: he thought I was this Jason Dunn, a very talented tattoo artist. Jason Clay Dunn also happens to have a particular talented for Japanese-themed tattoos, which I find interesting considering my own passion for certain aspects of Japanese culture. I’m still pondering my next tattoos – the Kanji on my back was just a test – but wouldn’t it be cool to be tattooed by my namesake? There’s a certain synergy there that I find appealing.
At any rate, I wish people would grasp the concept that in our vastly interconnected world, there’s nothing particularly unique about a name. Everyone’s identity is multi-faceted, and just because you find the person with the name you’re looking for doesn’t mean you’ve found the right person. What’s really amusing about this whole thing is that Jason Clay Dunn is more connected with social media than I am: he’s on Twitter, Flickr, MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, and two ink Web sites.
And so the world of Jason Dunn’s continue to broaden – I used to think all I had to do was out-last the career of a NFL player and a rock singer, but I doubt this pottery guy and this artist guy are going anywhere soon. 😉