555-NAME

Today I saw a poster advertising the concert of an individual named Sarah Connor. I do know of a Sarah Connor, but she's very unlikely to ever give a concert of any sort, being a fictional character and all that.

We all know what happens when the attention of masses is focused on an unprepared individual's means of contact, be it a flood of emails, or Skype calls to a landline every thirty seconds, or a train of Bibles, pizzas, empty boxes and hos delivered to the house. That's why it's rarely a good idea to use a random phone number in a book or movie, because people just might call and ask for battletoads or something. The correct response in such a situation would be to either change contect details (email and phone number) or wait for the storm to pass (because selling a house that's under attack is a really bad deal if it's revealed or a scam if it's not).

The most important ID a person has is still the powerword:IRL, also known as real name. While there's a range of phone numbers reserved specifically to be used in mass entertainment and nowhere else, use of a personal name in entertainment can fuck up a person's life.

Some people would be delighted to have a character named after them (with approval) - me included. The thing I'm talking about now, though, is competely unintentional occurrences, not homage. I write scenarios for tabletop RPGs, which are not really mass entertainment, and even then I'm wary of making an unintended reference. And as I want to eventually publish Revival online (when I write and run it, which is two eternities from now), I often stop and think, "Hey, if I name this psychotic mass-murderer [REDACTED], won't the real [REDACTED] of the real world get angry?" Because, seriously, the only thing that is communications-wise worse than accidentally having the same name as an extremely uncool character is having it non-accidentally.

Here's a suggestion: if you're creating mass entertainment and you absolutely have to have real human names in it, let fans submit their own names. The actual method of assignment (auctioning off, fan voting, selecting on a whim) is unimportant. There are always crazy people who want e-fame at any price and are willing to donate their full name and SSN to a third corpse on the left, and if an enraged John Smith shows up later, you'll be able to point out the crazy guy and say, "No, THAT guy was the official namesake, now pike off."