The Opposite of Disappearing in America - A Social Experiment

ATS is full of threads on how to make oneself disappear, some following the template presented by Barry Reid in his book How to Disappear in America.

Being able to leave your past behind and start over anew is an important achievement in the human psyche, but I posit that perhaps reinventing yourself may be more beneficial.

I've been on the Internet since 1984. I know that even without having participated in the most recent Social Networking tools such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc. that I have left a huge trail of my online activity as well as information about my personal life. I know that numerous online databases have references to me and have 26 years of data to draw from. So, I recently did an online search of myself, discovering far more information than I thought possible, and attempted to have myself removed from as many databases, search engines, websites, et cetera as I could.

It's a lot of work erasing your digital tracks. It could take another 26 years to undo what I had done in the first 26.

It just so happened that GoDaddy was having a $1 Domain Registration Deal when I was struck with an idea!

What if, instead of attempting to disappear from the Internet, one were to do the opposite and make oneself more openly visible, controlling the information rather than attempting to delete all references to it?

There are 54 people in the United States with my name. Oddly enough, we are all approximately the same age, and with the exception of 1, have all studied the same subject in college, although we all have different professions. As luck would have it, our mutual name was not yet registered as a domain name, so I grabbed it! (For a buck!)

So now, I am ready to create a site about me, myself and I in an attempt to reinvent my digital presence and control information about me rather than trying to suppress or hide it.

I've seen my redacted FBI File (back in 1992) after doing a FOIA request on my file. I'm sure the government has me on a couple of lists. However, this is one instance where I do not fear my government more than I fear the private sector that frequently abuses the assumed right to privacy in the United States. My experiment is more to undermine and sabotage the data-mining efforts of the private sector than the All-Seeing-Eye of the U.S. government.

So, now that I will attempt to seize control the primary flow of information on the Internet and which private corporations have about me, now that I have the ability to reinvent myself, does anyone have any specific advice on exactly how I should control this flow of information?

I've thought of the intelligent use of disinfo already, and have plans for doing such.

One of the things that I also considered, just to further add insult to injury, is after I have successfully removed myself from online Background Checks and Databases is to offer that very same information for a fee, just as these Data Clearinghouses do, but instead of these Data Clearinghouses making a profit on my information, I would be selling what information I want them to have, whether accurate or not, and making a profit off myself, in addition to knowing specifically who wants to know this information (as well as controlling that information further by putting markers in the data that is unique to the purchaser so I can discover who is selling my info to whom, allowing me to sue when such is explicitly prohibited under the Terms of Service they agree to when purchasing my personal data).

Anyone have any other advice or ideas for such a social experiment?

This either will end in tears or it will be shenanigans of the highest order...in the least I'm hoping to learn some useful lessons in data-seeding now that I have a good grasp of data-mining. Still, I think it would be more informative in the long run and go much further in today's Information Age in controlling what information the Internet has about me rather than attempting to try to disappear from the Internet and America.

I am eager to hear constructive criticisms, sage advice, or suggestions on such.