I Love Alaska.
Originally published at Jessica DeCola. You can comment here or there.
For anyone that doesn’t know, AOL committed a minor business faux pas in 2006 by making a file containing three months worth of user search history publicly accessible. One of AOL’s employees posted the text file containing the search keywords for about 650,000 users, so that it would be available for academic research on user activity. He doesn’t work there anymore.
Search histories were attached to a numeric user key rather than a name or social security number to protect privacy. However, the searches themselves were uncensored. So, if you searched for your own name and then went on to look for your child porn and pipe bomb recipes, there are some rather official looking gentlemen that would like to have a word with you. You can still probably sue AOL though.
As you know, if something posted somewhere on the internet, it’s basically out there forever. AOL didn’t take the file down in time to prevent it from being mirrored elsewhere. A couple of guys obtained the file and put together a mini-documentary using about a month’s worth of search terms for one user - I Love Alaska.
The episodes are all available on youtube as well - here’s the first to get you started:
Click to viewI’m not entirely certain this woman has a solid understanding of how the internet in general or searches in particular work. Her searches are conversational, as though Internet is her close friend that she shares all her deepest secrets with.
There are thirteen episodes in all, each about 5 minutes long. I assumed that knowledge of this would be far more pervasive than it is, but every time I ask someone if they have seen it, the answer is no, and that is unacceptable.
** EDIT **
When I went to fetch the first episode from youtube, this was at the top of the featured videos list:
It’s not so much that this was on youtube that bothers me. It’s that it was in the featured videos list. Really? There’s really nothing more deserving of that spot than a dude putting toothpicks in his beard? It is also worth noting that he is attempting to put 3000 toothpicks in his beard in order to trump the guy who put 2000 toothpicks in his beard, who overcame the previous record of 1600. I’m assuming the guy who managed 1600 was the pioneer of the beard full of toothpicks field, but in fairness my research on the topic has been rather superficial.