One great thing about the Internet age is you can find the right person to credit with absolutely everything. Nobody toils making anonymous breakthroughs behind the scenes anymore. You can find the name of anyone who ever did anything, immediately.

In the 1930s, movies used to credit about a dozen performers and as many behind-the-camera names. Today, if you stay in the theater until the end of the movie, you’ll see as many as a hundred cast members credited, thousands of possibly Asian-skewing CGI artist names, every composer of every song in the movie, even if it’s two bars of “Happy Birthday to You” or “Theme from The Andy Griffith Show.” Then go home and see the IMDb contributions to the movie that the credits missed: actors and agents and proud parents sending in every uncredited bit their little star has ever done. You were “Man in bar (uncredited)” in White Chicks? That’s awesome!

Francisco Tarrega composed the waltz that became the annoying Nokia phone ring. Ben Hirsch invented Turtle Wax and the chocolate-covered banana (possibly with the same ingredients, as you know if you’ve ever tried the frozen bananas at Disneyland). Evans F. Carlson, USMC introduced “gung ho” into English.

So why is it, in the Age of Free Credit, that I can’t find out who The Onion’s American Voices head shots really are?

American Voices (formerly What Do You Think?) is The Onion’s comedic man-on-the-street feature. Three times a week, three head shots are selected from a rotating gallery of just six photos, given a different name and occupation, and placed above funny/clueless commentary on one of the day’s news events.

I’ve been looking at these people for years. I can picture them more easily than I can some members of my extended family. There’s Walrus Mustache Banker, Harried Housewife, Joe Sixpack, Balding Middle Eastern Guy, Career Woman, and Skeptical Black Man. But who are these people really? Do they know they’re famous? Did they sign over their likeness rights willingly to The Onion? Were they tricked with a vague/misleading release? Or are they professional clip art models?

I want one of these people outed on someone’s blog as their high school chemistry teacher. Or I want a light weekend newspaper piece on how Area Man’s friends keep telling him he’s famous in something called “The Onion,” whatever that is, but he’s looked into it and doesn’t really get it. They’re not really “Tyler Milham, Systems Analyst” or “Anita Waldron, Bricklayer.” They’re out there, somewhere, and they have names, and their pictures are seen by more people every day than mine, by a long margin.

They need to step up and take a well-deserved bow.

Update! A helpful message board poster suggests that the Google search “six people” onion “man on the street” would have led me to this page.