Search Voyeur -- where the hunt for information (and smut) becomes a spectator sport
The Web provides an infinity of distractions, but few match the sheer nosy allure of Search Voyeur. With this feature of the Magellan search site, you can peer over the shoulders of other users as they prowl the Web for truth and jollies, "used farm tractor prices" and "hot girls."
You don't know who they are, but you know what they want -- and, by following their footsteps to the results of their searches, you can find out whether they got it.
Consider the poor chump who sat down at his browser and asked Magellan to find him information about "how to steal credit card numbers." Our would-be datathief is no richer for his research; instead, the literal-minded Magellan engine spat back at him a page full of pointers to Christian sites expounding upon "The eighth commandment: thou shalt not steal."
Such dramas of misdirection abound here; they are, in fact, less the exception than the rule in the cruel informational demolition derby that Search Voyeur chronicles. Lonesome fella searches for "topless senoritas" -- but gets a page full of catalog entries for "topless sandals." (Perhaps he can cultivate a foot fetish.) Orally fixated Web surfer looks up "blow job," receives references to two Web-culture 'zines, Blow and the Netly News, and an old news story headlined "Buchanan delivers stunning blow to Gramm."
The Web is all about collective behavior as constituted by millions of individual choices; Search Voyeur opens a window onto those choices, in batches of 20 search queries chosen at random from Magellan's incoming queue. If you leave the Voyeur page on your browser, it refreshes itself several times a minute, offering instant updates of the group mind.
The group mind is, predictably, horny. Most batches of 20 queries include at least one plain-vanilla search on "sex" and several narrower fleshly inquiries. (McKinley "editorial guidelines" ban obscenities but not their politer synonyms.) Porn star names abound, as do skin mag titles, seductive phrases native to phone-sex ads ("sluts performing oral sex") and exact descriptions of unusual practices ("pictures of women sucking horse or dog penis").
This is hardly news; what's fascinating is the persistence of these quests in the face of Search Voyeur's demonstration of their near-universal futility. There's plenty of sex on the Web for those who really want it-- but searching on "when man love women" is not the way to find it. (Magellan responds with "no entries found," but the ad on the results page, pegged to the query, dutifully pointed this gentleman to Women's Wire, a fine site that is unlikely to slake his desires.)
It doesn't help, of course, that so many searchers have so little alphabetical expertise. Magellan, like most search engines, is merciless to those who cannot spell, and Search Voyeur gives you an unvarnished picture of just how Webster's-deprived the Web population is.
A mere half-hour's perusal of the Voyeur turned up one sad goof after another:
super modles
sex weied
streaptease
sesamie street
necked asain women
wallsreet journals
and my favorite --
christian boardcasting network
Proper names are a minefield:
dwight yokum
madame baovary
david beirne
Misspellings can confuse even a human observer with more contextual insight than a mere search algorithm. When someone is hunting for "naked amature women," for example, one has to wonder whether the desired flesh is green -- or old.
There is some actual research taking place amid all this -- searches on, for instance, "Algernon Charles Swinburne" and "Thomas Hobbes and Leviathan." But it's a pitifully small percentage of Magellan's query-flow.
Beyond whatever Search Voyeur may reveal about what's on Web users' minds, its own appeal tells us a lot about the nature of the Web itself. Consider how much more fun can be had staring at Search Voyeur than following nearly all of the links Magellan points its searchers towards. There are many reasons for this, including the endemic mediocrity of most Web sites and the petty transgressive thrill provided by Voyeur, as its title underscores.
Ultimately, though, what glues us to Search Voyeur is not so much voyeurism, with its complex of stimulation and guilt, but simple human curiosity. We get off on finding out what other people are getting off on -- not via the statistical anonymities of Neilsen ratings and percentage polling, but via one-at-a-time glimpses of other minds.
The Web has been described as a "many-to-many medium" often enough that the phrase has become meaninglessly opaque. Web Voyeur restores the term's clarity: it highlights the fascination of a medium that can connect us to vast numbers of other people behaving not as mass aggregates but as eccentric, desperate, frustrated individuals.
(In the wake of Magellan's recent merger with Excite, the Voyeur's future is a question mark, so visit soon if you're curious.)