Society Revealed in Search Terms

I was perusing a blog called "Eclectic Thinkers" wherein the author was decrying the state of society as evidenced by the most popular recent internet search terms. An extremely large number of searches were s*xu@l in nature. It seemed to me that more than half were ostensibly for p0rn0gr@phy. ( I exchange the letters to keep this post from being botted inappropriately).

While I am not encouraged by these data, my first off-the-cuff hypothesis for this "disturbing trend" is that there are a very large number of 14 yr old boys surfing the web, and they are, of course, quite horny.

The web has been around, generally speaking, since about 1993, or so. I remember that back then I told people I thought the web was a passing fad that would not last or make a lasting impression, but of course I was really wrong about that. That's OK, I can't be right about everything. It's just too much pressure.

Anyway, my point is that the web seems, even right now, to still be "new". It's still just being discovered for the first time (see my previous post, re: blogs). Why wouldn't a person new to the web want to satisfy their curiosity about online p0rnogr@phy (especially since the web is so anonymous)? We all like s*x. We all want more--or rather, we all want more of what we like the most.

Here's a good/bad news kind of report: Google scans your GMail and targets advertising based on keywords found in your message. I asked a neighbor (via email) for information on a plumber, and I got ads for plumbers appearing next to her replies. I suppose (since my GMail account gets notified of these blog posts) that if I use the "correct" magic words, I will get targeted ads for things I'd rather not have Google targeting me for.

The nice thing about paranoia is that it's real.