(Photograph copyright 2009, all rights reserved)
All right. I give up! The Boy has been hassling me to pass this on to you as a kind of poll and to mess with everyone's mind. And why the heck not, right? After all, I LIVE to ask the strange, dumb, oddball questions, right?
First, and I can't stress this enough, don't do this at work. Seriously. I refuse to be responsible for anyone who gets in trouble because they didn't bother reading a simple warning, so I will repeat myself:
DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT DOING THIS AT WORK, ON A WORK COMPUTER, OR ANYWHERE BUT YOUR OWN HOME WHEN THERE ARE NO CHILDREN PRESENT. I DON'T WANT TO PISS ANYONE OFF. GOT IT?
Right. Here's what you need to do.
1. Do a Google search on any woman's first name. Any name at all, but no surname.
2. When the search is complete, go to the top left corner of your screen and click on "Images". You will then be presented with a bunch of thumbnail photographs. Are you there? Good.
3. Below your Google search box, there's a little gadget called "Safe Search". Click on that, then change the setting from whatever it is now (usually it's "Moderate") to "Off", then search the name again, clicking on "Images" when the search is done.
What you will find is that all of the pictures of "Jane" or "Mary" (or whatever you used) will now change to porn. Nothing else. No matter what female name you search this way, you will get pages and pages of porn.
Now to complete the test, do the same thing, but put in MEN'S names. All you will see is a bunch of (reasonably fully clothed) celebrities and sports types. NO PORN.
So tell me, kids... What the hell is that? Why do women's names ONLY seem to generate porn, ad NONE of the men's names do? Who made that decision? Is it deliberately sexist? If so, why? Why bother?
See? I told you it was a maddening question! Anyone have any insight for me? We're all dying to know.
Here's what I want someone to try...if they have a lot of time on their hands and nothing to do, that is... Google a bunch of women's names and let us know WHICH woman's name generates zero porn. When you get bored with that (I think it's impossible to find one), do it with MEN'S names and let us know which ones generate ANY porn.
Bwahahahahaha!!!!!!!!
No porn - Gertrude. I got a picture of a Frankenstein doll, a dog, and old ladies
ReplyDeleteAnother name that didn't generate any porn hits is Britney.
Tried a few other names and I got porn pictures or at least scantily clad pictures for all of them. For some reason Gertrude came to mind as one incredibly unsexy name so that was the second name I tried.
Gotcha! You're right. And when I googled "hermione" I got a bunch of pictures of Emma Watson. Some where she was drinking, too..... *gasp*
ReplyDeleteThe real challenge though is finding a female name NOT linked to someone famous, since my search returned a lot of photos of Gertrude Stein (at least I suspect). I suspect searching for other unique celebrity names will return results of that particular celebrity.
ReplyDeleteAlso... I did not forget your other question. My initial thought was "well most of web content is porn so naturally porn comes up". I looked up the stats and apparently only 1% of internet content is porn. So, what gives?
I STILL want to know why it is that no matter what man's name you search, you get NO porn. NONE. What is that? Why only women? Did someone make that decision? Hmmmm......
ReplyDeleteI'm presently only able to answer your question with another question: Of all the advice columns in all the lands of all the ages, has there ever been a single letter from a man complaining that his female significant other is obsessed with porn?
ReplyDeleteI have a feeling that it's not a rhetorical question!
Hmm. And do you KNOW such a fellow? Messy would LOVE to write a SHADDAP! to that guy.
ReplyDeleteA couple of years ago there were a whole lot of letters from men whining that their wives were spending too much time with the baby.....
female: mildred, maude, myrtle
ReplyDeletefemale-not that much: ethel, ruth
male-lots: dick
Guess the search is geared to who is looking the most!
Of course! Our good friend Richard.
ReplyDeleteI admit that I didn't try your experiment. A million years ago I worked for a search engine (nay, not Google), and I was on the team that tested the new filtering feature to screen out porn. It took a very long time, and so many word and phrase combinations, to come up with the List of Naughty Words (many, like our female/male names, deceptively un-naughty), and I just don't have it in me anymore. Messing with porn filters, I mean.
Can't forget the man, the myth, the legend, the Human Artillery Piece, Peter North. Search his first name and it's the fifth result (after three of Peter Griffin and one of Peter Pan.)
ReplyDelete