Who is Chris Neumer?

While writing a late night blog article that required a picture of a Nicholas Sparks movie poster, I searched through Google Images. In addition to finding a picture I could steal for my post, I happened to see a link to an article that observes some similarities between ALL the Sparks book covers and movie posters. I'd noticed the same thing and was interested to see another person's take on it.

Curiosity got the better of me (as it often does) and despite the late hour, I checked it out. It was funny. And smart. I was intrigued.

One thing led to another and soon I was reading an article about why Jurassic Park is the sloppiest made mainstream movie you’ll ever see. Growing up liking that movie, I was reticent. He was compelling. I read on. He was logical, had empirical evidence and on point observations. He won me over.

At this point I started to wonder (as I often do) about the author of the deliciously pithy articles I’d been reading. Why not, right? It’s only 3:30 in the morning. I only have to be up in 3 hours and 15 minutes.

Whatever.

I decided to do a little reconnaissance mission. So I clicked on Chris Neumer’s Bio. 

I waited for the page to load, expecting to see a face appear or at least a paragraph or two about the person (man or woman? After all, Chris is an androgynous name) to be revealed. 

Not a single bloomin word.

I figured my faulty laptop was just being a jerk and reached for my I-pad. Same thing. 

Muttering under my breath I found my way into my home office and plunked down in front of my barely six month old desktop computer and stared hard at my massive 24” screen. If there was anything at all written about Chris on that Bio, I was going to see every last pixel of it.

The page loaded annnnnnnd. Nothing.

Re-fresh, re-fresh. Nothing. 

How is it that a person who’s job (or at least dedicated hobby) of writing information probing, motivation questioning expose's, has nary a word about himself on the blog site? Is Chris so insignificant there that no one cares to talk about him? Is he a new writer and aside from a few articles he hasn’t been there long enough to create Bio content?

I went back to the main page and it would seem nearly every article I pulled up has the Chris Neumer byline. So why the heck doesn’t this guy have a Bio page??

Undeterred, I Googled him.  

Facebook, Twitter and Linked In all came up in a search for Chris Neumer.

But unless you have accounts with these sites, only Twitter will let you look at his page.  What I did find out though is that Chris is apparently not some lowly writer for the StumpedMagazine site that I’d been losing sleep over.  

He’s the publisher for the film magazine and the head photographer for something called Twenty Seven and a Half Photography.  (And THAT is a nifty site with very modern gadgets and crisp photos of beautiful and widely recognizable people. )

But I was interested in knowing more about Chris Neumen the man. 

The “About” and “Contact” links on the photography page gave me no additional information about this Chris character. So I went back to Twitter to see what I could glean there. More of his excellent humor and observations but no new back story.

?!?!!?!?!

The 4:43 time on my screen mocks me.

Why am I so determined to get the bottom of this? I can only blame it on online dating sites.

I’ve gotten so used to finding out where a person was born, where they went to school, how many kids they have or want and if they like sushi or Radiohead or are following Game of Thrones, that when I’m curious about someone and I cannot find out the intimate details of their lives, I’m aggravated. 

Social media sites are now the vehicle with which we navigate around the people who interest us. IMDB is for movie stars, Wikipedia is for every other kind of historical person and all celebrities new and old and other social media like Facebook, Linked In etc. are for everyone else. Online dating sites are a very real part of social media and an excellent way of discovering juicy tidbits without the entire world being able to Google you by name. BUT in the absence of a person being listed on any of those sites, they fall under “no results” or basically anonymous.

How could someone who has a relatively high involvement with social media have so little to be discovered about?

Between my years as an online dating expert, my background in genealogical research and doing random searches about people for other reasons, (all legal I assure you) I consider myself a pretty good online private investigator. But now that my interest has been quipped by someone, in just over an hour of prying everything but “pay for private information sites” I can hardly tell anything about him other than:

he lives in “the greater Chicago area”

He says of himself: “I am a hybrid writer/fashion photographer with an unhealthy appreciation of Swedish dance music, team demolition derby and box office statistics.”

and that: 

In 2007, Stumped’s Chris Neumer was one of two film writers who were quoted on the DVD box of the special edition release of the movie Cinderella.

Well that’s just bloody brilliant.

Google Images pulled up a plethora of photography and film related photos but a mere four original pictures of the guy who’s pictured on Twitter. It would seem Chris is camera shy in addition to avoiding discussing himself. 

Seeing as he’s a professional writer and photographer, I find that rich with irony.

So much for from-a-distance stalking.

He has a modest following of 51 followers on Twitter, just over 1,000 friends on Facebook and 43 connections on Linked In. Given the quality (and quantity) of his writing and the high profile photography he does, he’s either severely unappreciated or extremely discriminating. 

The best find possibly was this Youtube video of him in action with a camera. 

It would seem that the best way to find out anything about this literary genius Chris guy is by either befriending him on Facebook (that might not get me anything but quirky photos and tongue-in-cheek film observations in my news feed) or by reading every article he’s ever written in the hopes that he spills more personal info. 

But then… that might be the whole point...

Well played Chris. Well played.