1.8 Editor's Pick
July 15, 2020

You Are what you Google Search.

*Warning: Naughty linguistics ahead.

~

Let me Google it.

I think my internet searches would frighten people.

I mean, sometimes I catch myself typing in certain words and secretly wonder if anyone else has ever had the same, truly bizarre, twisted thoughts.

Sure enough, we can always rely on someone else also wanting to know if they could die from a hangover.

I definitely probably search for the same shit a lot of the time, but as the years roll on, I slightly alter it to suit my age (whatever that even means).

Being bored isn’t bad, but being boring is; so I relish in that fact and search the fuck out of anything that I want.

You can tell a lot about a person by what a person chooses to search for. It’s like looking into their virtual journal.

What do they worry about? What do they want to achieve? What and who do they want to be? Do they have that life-threatening illness that Google indicates that they definitely have? Also, how much porn is too much porn?

That kind of thing.

I love that I can search for images, as well. I’ll leave that to your imagination.

Sometimes, my mood (always) plays into it. I have absolutely zero care for what I search and am not ashamed of it, but sometimes I’ll let my mum look something up on my phone and I’ll quickly think, “Fuck, did I delete that search of ‘cunt soaps?'” But also, who cares?

I’ve also probably listened to Dua Lipa songs (anything of hers) a disgusting amount of times more than I choose to admit.

I feel like some internet searches can be a little in your face. Like, that one time (I’m using “one” pretty loosely, here) at New York Pride Festival that I accidentally sent my family a WhatsApp message of me sucking face with a pretty suggestive “all up in someone’s business” photo. All my messages were promptly muted after that but not before I received a “Hope you are having fun” text.

I did; thank you, very much.

It can be awkward for people to see other people’s searches if they are not sure of the exact context.

I often feel like I am a walking and talking Google search engine. A lot of the time I will be at a bar and scab a cigarette from someone in the beer garden only for the conversation to somehow lead me to ask “So, when you die what do you want to be remembered for?”

Those kinds of conversations, I live for.

Here are just a small (minuscule, really) amount of the things I have searched:

>> How many times do people masturbate in a day?
>> Can you die from a hangover?
>> How long until the shrooms start working?
>> Sushi trains in Japan.
>> Cheapest car insurance in Australia.
>> Why does being sad make me want to have sex?
>> The average amount of time that people spend getting lost in IKEA.
>> Cheap ciggies.
>> Why does finding a song that will go on your life soundtrack feel like three orgasms?
>> Onion rings.

Then there are those internet searches that you just already know the answers to, deep down.

Those questions like, “Am I gay?”

Hot tip: If you’re searching for it, 10 out of 10 times, you are. I think I was, like, 13 when I Googled that and then stopped halfway reading an article because I intrinsically knew that I was.

Earlier that day, I had walked 30 minutes in the complete opposite direction of where I needed to be just so that I could wave to the cute girl that lived on a certain street. I think of it as, if you wrote a novel for someone and said that the love interest in the plot was “made up” and anonymous, I guarantee you that your crush, ex, or your partner would innately know or think it was about them. I don’t care if you call them anything other than their name, that person will know.

I think a few people right now will be reading this and thinking that this might be about them, and you know what? It probably is.

On reflection of my Google searches, I learned that many of us may use the internet to search for things that we may not want to necessarily discuss with others because it’s too confronting or personal or it may make us somehow feel inadequate.

The internet is a black hole that we can ask anything to and it won’t judge us for it.

We are all looking to better ourselves or better our conditions. I recall having a few wines with some friends (pre-COVID, aka “B.C.”) with one admitting (slurring) to me that their guilty pleasure was listening to Britney Spears (pre-shaved head times), to which I found myself replying, “Since when is Britney a guilty pleasure?”

What one person finds a bit embarrassing to search for the other is quite comfortable with in its entirety.

Your searches do not define you. However, they may just give you an insight into some of your true feelings or character—a taste of a side to you that your friends may not expect.

“Oh, wow, I didn’t know that you were into that.”

Then again, this is coming from a person who also recently looked up “Barbeque Shapes are the best Shapes, prove me wrong.”

Overall, I like sex and cheap shit and sushi trains. Write that in my obituary. Or not. Or perhaps, just look it up.

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Caitlin Turner  |  Contribution: 1,190

author: Caitlin Turner

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