Image: Most talented man, looking like a hipster dog.
Image: The most talented man in Ireland, hydrating.
A Man of Many (Incredibly Well Hidden) Talents
Ben Dillon was born in South Boston. His family never placed any particular emphasis on learning or education. Nonetheless, in his spare time Ben read books, studied papers and challenged himself intellectually. Though he was a genius, he was never given the platform to express himself and show his worth. His remarkable talent was entirely hidden to the world.
During his early twenties, Ben got a job as janitor at MIT. He mopped floors, took out trash and lived life amongst the intellectual elite, whilst also being worlds away. During this time, one of the professors, Gerald Lambeau, posted a combinatorial mathematics problem on the blackboard of his classroom. He left it there for weeks, inviting his graduate students to attempt to solve the near-impossible equation in their own time. Many tried, many failed. One day, while mopping the floors, Ben approached the blackboard and solved the problem anonymously. This act stunned both the students and Lambeau himself…
Wait, wait. That’s not right. That’s something else entirely.
The real, non-Good Will Hunting version of Ben Dillon has many talents. Most of these are so well concealed that no one knows of them. Even the subject himself is sceptical. But below is a quick run-down of just some of the skills that make Ben Dillon Ireland’s most talented man:
Image: Ireland’s most talented man, winning awards.
– During RAG Week 2010, Ben Dillon came down with an illness that forced him to miss the most eagerly anticipated week of the student calendar. In an attempt to salvage something from an otherwise disastrous seven days, he learned how to solve a Rubik’s Cube. To this day it is the only thing that Dillon can do that most people can’t.
– During his time in Whistler, British Columbia, Dillon was regarded as a hotel receptionist phenom/wunderkind. Some say that he could literally be in three places at once. See image further below.
– He has owned a guitar for several years. He likes to think of this as a talent. However, he is still at a stage where he might be able to answer the question “do you play the guitar?” in the affirmative, but being asked “do you play the guitar well?” would be a different thing entirely.
– He dedicated the first twenty years of his life to sport. The dedication was such that when it came time to find a real-world job, Dillon was strongly tempted to list “kicking ability” as his greatest strength.
– He loves to read and write. While this is not a talent per se, it is something that Dillon likes to crowbar into conversations as it makes him sound intellectual and worldly. If you are to take anything from this post, make it be that Ben Dillon is an avid reader. That is all.
– He has something of a handle on how the Google search engine works and uses this for his own selfish reasons.
Finding the Most Talented Man in Ireland – What’s Really Important?
We’ve looked at the definition, and we’ve learned a little more about Ben Dillon. Suffice to say we’ve all come to the conclusion that he is not talented in any particular way. So, why did we decide that he is the most talented man in Ireland? Well, if this experiment has been successful, the answer is simple…Google.
There was no complicated rating system or detailed comparison chart. You wanted to know something, so you Googled it. It’s what you do when you are shopping or when you are deciding between products. It’s what you do when looking for the answer to the question. Often, your opinion on a given topic is based entirely on what Google had to say.
So, when you asked “Who is the most talented man in Ireland?”, you decided that it might just be Ben Dillon because Google said it was so.
This has been nothing but a silly experiment. We wanted to see if we could rank for a specific, rather insignificant, phrase. And now things are going to get a little meta. In the final part of this post, we are going to look at how this blog post (yes, the one you are reading right now), performed on Google. It’s be a bit like a book that is a review of the book itself or a president giving a speech about how well the speech is going.
As we said, meta.
Image: Talented Irish man, with fork.
Here’s What Happened to Ireland’s Most Talented Man
It mightn’t feel like it, but over a week has past since you read that last line. In the meantime, we published this post online, performed some moderate SEO sorcery, twiddled our thumbs, waited nervously, and let the search engine do its thing.
Then one day we woke up and found that Google had announced its selection for Ireland’s most talented man.
Ben Dillon mightn’t be the most gifted person in the world or have any special ability. But he is Ireland’s most talented male.
Don’t believe us…Google it.
