Websluts, Powered By Google

by Violet Blue on March 2, 2006

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While my cohorts over at Geek Entertainment TV are (allegedly) pushing t-shirts that say “I was internet famous once” (hey, where’s mine?), it simply doesn’t compare to the internet autofellatio possibilities found at the Slut-O-Meter. This wonderfully amusing timesuck harnesses the unstoppable pimp powers of Google to determine internet sluttiness: type in the webslut’s name and it searches for the name in Google, comparing the number of “safe-search” enabled vs. non-safe results. Basically, it determines sluttiness based on the number of times the ho has been searched for: it’s like Google’s bathroom wall technology.

My first slut was Antonio Banderas. Results: Promiscuity: 58.94%
Next, Eddie Codel: Promiscuity: 6.47%
Then, to my delight, David Pescovitz: 29.72%
Turns out it’s not true what they say about Phillip Torrone: 19.55%
All of our suspicions have been confirmed about Annalee Newitz: 43.24%

Come on — you know you’ll need this at SXSW. (thanks Rebecca, also seen @ Lifehacker)

Update: What’s even more geekily interesting is where Rebecca found the meter: at the Language Log, who investigated the sluttiness of “language log” vs. “language hat”. The hat was hella nastier, yo. But this all piggybacked off of Jean Veronis’ adventures in “pornometry“, how the results might be used for sexual cybersurveillance — finding a quick formula on how Google’s “safesearch” works. As most of us suspected, the results aren’t so cut-and-dried and different search engines treat language (and sex) differently, which just makes me think of BoingBoing’s excellent Defeat Censorware efforts. Though my gut feeling is that BB is less censored for their boobies and more so for their freedom of information as a news source. Because when they want your tax money, they want you to shut up, or to put you in jail, porn is inevitably the foil.

Update — reader clarification: “The Slut-o-Meter gives two measurements: Promiscuity and Popularity. The Popularity measure is just the number of times that someone has typed in that name *at the Slut-o-Meter site*. The Promiscuity measure is based on number of Google search results, which isn’t related to the number of times someone has been searched for on Google. (There’s no way to find out how many times someone has been searched for on Google.)”

Violet Blue

The London Times named Violet Blue "One of the 40 bloggers who really count" and Self Magazine named TinyNibbles one of the “Best Sex Resources for Women.” Blue is an autodidact and pundit on sex and technology, hacking and security, porn for women, privacy and bleeding-edge tech culture. She is a journalist for ZDNet, CBS News, CNET; she's an educator, speaker, crisis counselor, volunteer NGO trainer, and the author and editor of over 40 award-winning books.

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