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5-Minute Roast, Vol. 2, No. 10

A Poke in the Eye of the Online/Multimedia Industrial Complex

[scientifically tested to take no longer than 5 minutes to read, unless you read between the lines]

We Know What Boys Like

When corporate America wants to learn how to make money on the Web, to taste the sweet elixir of e-commerce, to exult in online transactions ch-ching!ing the cyber-registers, it turns to pornography. Porno has been the trailblazer, charging paid subscriptions long before Michael Kinsley had heard of a browser, and enticing surfers to give up credit card info long before there was encryption. When faced with large bare breasts, most surfer dudes wouldn't hesitate to whip out the plastic, gurgling: "encrypto-wha!?!?"

So it's no surprise that porno sites have also been the first to actually read men's minds. During G-rated research of X-rated sites, we found that a few wise site developers had devised an intriguing way to lure surfers. The method isn't new: front-loading the site's code with lots of keywords. In these "meta tags," webmasters have always played loose and groovy with the words that bring up their site in search engines.

In some recent searching, our researchers stumbled across a site that had one of the weirdest set of keywords. The site, exoticwomen.com, is just an average porno site, but the source code revealed an amazing assortment of phrases, jargon and buzzwords that are nothing short of the Rosetta stone of the male Web-riding brain. Here are some highlights:

bill webcrawler usatoday screensavers smashing pumpkins magazine babes virus netscape football real estate yellow pages seattle wwf teri hatcher nude pictures bondage golf usatoday seventeen nirvana nude women recipes cum china sailor moon anime japan stock quotes erotica altavista hp software worldcup penis hong kong india diana dorm nfl starwars newsgroups naked hustler france universities demi travel chat http humor ufo polymyalgia rheumatica hockey travel dead voyeur naked china france screensavers world series nike

And in the font code, even more startling:

wrestling quake of hewlett packard weather
startrek erotic mexico map adult

Simple pandering for hits, you might think. Nay, it is much more, unlocking the stream of consciousness of the Typical Male while browser-jockeying. Scoff now, but when these same words pop up on sites like ESPN.com or Wired News, you can say you read them here first.

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We Get (DeathRace) Mail

Longtime 5MR & Skewer correspondent Tom King gives his take on DeathRace 2000. Here's an abridged version of his diatribe:

I think the webzines totally miss the point. We don't want someone to can the web for us. We want to talk to other kayakers, fund-raisers, perverts or East Texas fundamentalists and we want to look at stuff we're interested in. Give me a good browser and maybe a news service so I can hook up if something big is going on and I want to feel like I've got the latest "inside" information. Anyone who makes folks feel like that - like they're special and an insider - will make it on the web. Anyone who makes us feel stupid and unsophisticated loses "hits" in a hurry.

It's true that web users probably have a higher average IQ, but IQ or not, we all have the same need to belong - geeks most of all because they've got a long history of being shut out of high school cliques, not dating college cheerleaders (or anyone else for that matter) and being treated as odd. For a long time, I've watched the trend toward bitterness and intellectual arrogance among netizens grow and deepen. We resist people and companies who try to force some standardization on web users. We're afraid they're going to bring in new kinds of jocks & cheerleaders to snub us maybe. Can you imagine if plumbers and short order cooks became comfortable using computers (all those cigarette-smoking black jacketed "cool dudes" that used to smack us around back at good old Central High). How better to keep them out of "our" medium than to fill THE NET up with witty techno talk that tends to exclude folks who actually had a social life during their teens.

I think you're going to lose all three 'zines before long unless they figure out something spectacular soon. I don't have time to wade through all of that. I'm settling in to reading the news and my e-mail and little else that's not research for work. I don't have time for a 'zine and the people who do aren't working. Maybe they should take a cue from daytime TV and run commercials for Lincoln Tech, Barber College and Ames' School of Business during regular working hours. They might get some hits on the ads. The guys are probably a month or two back on their internet bill and need a "promising career in electronics."

Vaya con dio my friend,

Tom King

[follow the race online: http://www.mediawhore.com/deathrace]

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"5-Minute Roast" [on more economical days known as "3-Minute Roast"] is a weekly, advertisement-free, opinionated rip on anything that strikes our fancy in the online world.

Max Schlickting - Editor-in-Chief
Barbara Yalpsid - Online Editor
Lefty Periwinkle - First Amendment Expert

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This e-newsletter is copyright 1998 Mark Glaser

 

If you have comments or suggestions, email glaze@sprintmail.com
 



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