I think what actually surprised me the most was that the people not familiar with it were both well aware of who Dido was and yet surprised that this song existed. While Dido's song did come out 2 years before "Stan", it was only after "Stan" that Dido was all the sudden doing the tune on SNL and the late night talk show circuit and getting heavy airplay.
Just did not cross to the same degree that certain other songs that will not go named for the purposes of this draft did. In fact it really wasn't until his next album that the singles consistently registered across as far as I could tell. What does surprise me is not knowing that this played some sort of role in Dido's rise to fame. The song was NOT on anything I was listening to at the time, but when Dido came splashing through its one of those factoids you might have picked up (in fact I rather suspect I must have heard about it at some point and just did not care enough foir it to register).