Search Engine on Vincent "The Mollica" Mollica.

I have not read it in many years, so much of it has faded away, but there's a key moment in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy I'll never forget (or I'll never forget some version of it. I anticipate correction on this quickly and firmly). A story is told about a character who looks into a machine (into a room?) and sees the entirety of the universe, and just how miniscule his place in it is, and promptly goes mad. This is what the internet feels like in many ways, I gigantic black hole in which everything you've accomplished (or thought you accomplished) seems to have disappeared into. What's left is a ton of Italian people on twitter, credits for a movie called "Deep River", and of course a grave with "Mollica" written on it.

Me, Vincent Carton Mollica, is on there but I have to dig a little bit. My facebook page, which, when clicked on, shows all of my "likes" from when I more or less first got my account four years ago ("Who here is cool enough to have gotten Donnie Darko?"), is there. My two twitter accounts, with three tweets each, still exist untouched (although it continues to delight me that my three followers are a) A close friend b) A person hero of mine and c) "Ivy Kelly" who, in her description, bemoans having to spend another Christmas alone, before asking if anyone is single. Beat that variety!). If you look a little deeper on twitter you'll find a little more, most noticeably a couple of short essays I wrote for Doc Films (U of C's movie theater) about a couple of movies which they nicely shared (they were written for their Tumblr, so I'll find similar things there). Which leads me to my next reminder.

When I look for myself, I mostly get film related stuff. The things I've put into the internet from the deeply stupid (my facebook "likes", my twitter name) to the depressingly earnest (my Letterboxd reviews/Doc Essays), which in many ways show off the worst aspects of my personality (my habits of writing without reading back over, my many attempts to assert my intelligence over others), are film related. I've worked 10 years to cultivate an image of someone who looks like they know a lot about movies, so in a way that's kind of a pay off. However, the part of me that talks incessantly about movies is also the part of myself I may be least proud of, often serving as an attempt to pass myself off as a pseudo-intellectual (like this post *also being put out into the internet*). Weirdly enough, most of my searches came back to my essays for Doc, which, although well meaning, are ridden with spelling/grammatical/structural errors. Which serves as an apt metaphor for the digital impression I've left: Heavily related to movies, pretty vague, almost completely inessential. I like to think I've done more, but what Google/Facebook(etc.) respectfully disagrees.

There's good out there, if you look for it. On this search, I found that my grade school (hilariously) posted that alum "Vinnie Mollica" would be in Jones College Prep's production of The Elephant Man, which delighted me to no end, and a Chicago Tribune story about me and my family's trips to every library in Chicago (is it getting dusty in here?).

Long story short: What's on the surface, what my digital dossier is made of, is in one, sad, respect very true and honest. In another, I *like* to think of it as a smaller facet of my personality, something at least balanced out by a personality. Maybe.

(This supports my deep dislike of/deep fondness for online interaction. On one level I'm constantly aware that the data I am producing about myself, especially on my Facebook or Letterboxd page, is in one way deeply artificial. I'm able to show people exactly what I want them to see of my personality. Which, as anyone this obsessed with themselves would tell you, is awesome! Hooray, I can more or less like to people and give them this considerably more refined version of myself! At the same time, that deep dishonesty starts to impact your outside life in so many awful, unpredictable ways.)