I am in a battle. A perpetual battle that I unknowingly entered when I published my first online article at the age of 17: "Let's Go to Mars". The misguided and poorly written essay was praised by space nerds the world over for bringing to light several vaguely spiritual reasons for manned exploration of Mars that should seem quite ridiculous. The article was first published in West to Mars, an online magazine promoting manned missions to Mars through 'art'. It was then picked up by Space Times magazine and in no time "Let's Go to Mars" was at the top of my Google listing.

Before that day, if you typed "Hank Green" into the Google search bar, you were confronted with a very limited number of websites, none of which concerned me. Hank Green, who rode a very fast motorcycle professionally in the late 80s, held the top spot and still claims first page status.

"Let's Go to Mars" held me at the top of the Hank Green Google listing solidly for over 5 years. But then, one day, mysteriously, Hank Thompson appeared on the horizon. At 9th and then 8th I wasn't worried about him. His name wasn't even Hank Green, he just happened to have written a country song called "Green Light" that was temporarily confusing Google a little bit.

When he reached the top 5 in a matter of days I became anxious and confused. He had already overtaken my undergraduate chemistry seminar homepage as well as my resume, and he was nuzzling up behind hankgreen.com (my blog at the time). That week I began a campaign to fight his influence. I solicited friends to click my site on Google, to link to me quickly, and to advise others of the wit and poignancy of my blog, but to no avail. By the middle of 2002 that cowboy mother fucker Hank Thompson and his horrid song "Green Light" had taken the top spot on Google after 5 straight years of "Let's Go to Mars" hegemony.

I was distraught. Finally, succumbing to morbid temptation, I gave Hank Thompson a single click for Google to count and read the lyrics of his song.

"I turned your hole card upside down
I caught you cheatin' and running around
There's a smile on your face
While another takes my place
And now at last dear the truth I've found"

Knowing now that Hank Thompson had composed a piece of shit strengthened my morale and galvanized my spirits enough for me to launch the largest campaign of Hank and I's history. Ten days later ihatei4.com was released.

Interstate 4 is a river of concrete that stretches through my home town of Orlando distributing commuters and collecting the sort of animosity that can only be produced by daily traffic jams, constant death, and confused English tourists.

On my way to work one morning I placed signs along I-4 that said "ihatei4.com." That evening the local news was knocking on my door. With a healthy dose of my name scattered throughout the site it took of with a jolt. And then, when the Orlando Sentinel published a story on me and the site's hits reached 10,000 a day, I was officially famous. Ihatei4.com shot to #1 and I left that wannabe Hank Thompson behind like the woman he wrote that song about.

Six months later, ihatei4.com wasn't even in the top twenty. Fame is a fickle friend indeed. Hank Thompson had his spot back, but I was working him hard with my new blog "ifyouseekay.com" and every now and again I would take him for a week or two. For a brief moment in late 2003 I held claim to the top 5 spots on Google and officially pronounced myself an internet superpower on my blog. Mr. Thompson, however, was just going through a dry spell, and was back at #1 days later.

This tooth-and-nail battle with the probably oblivious Hank Thompson was still going on up to last week when I wrote an open letter to Joss Whedon for KnotMag in order to express my feelings for Angel the television series and to explore the source of the commitment of its fans. Its fans, it turns out, hated the article, sliced it from KnotMag and started a flame forum where, for the past week, they have been calling me a "tosser", a loony, an addict, a loser, a psycho and, if you can believe it, a Republican.

As painful as it was to receive 5 days worth of frustrated fan flaming during my weekly self Googling, all is now healed. That angry forum of people has shot me higher than an astronaut on cocaine. Take that Hank Thompson.

It is as if an army of people who hate me have banded together for a sneak attack on my greatest enemy without me even knowing!

There is something beautiful about all of the hatred and ignorance in this story. I hate Hank Thompson, he doesn't know I exist. The angry Angel fans hate me, they don't know Hank Thompson exists. I hate the flamers, but I didn't know they existed until they had sent me to the top of Google with the power and ferocity of their misguided animosity and amazingly inadvertently fulfilled my dreams! I guess it's beautiful because I won.

My Name is Hank Green! Google Me! Because I am ON TOP!