The
computer I am writing this on is a
Mac G4. Its operating system is
MacOS 9. This means it has
Microsoft Internet Explorer built-in, but because the tech guys here are
Microsoft haters it is basically hidden, and the web browser exported by the user interface to the minds of passing students is
Netscape Navigator. (Keep the faith guys! Your efforts will help make the world safe for
America On-Line!)
Anyway, Netscape, imitating one of the better features of Internet Explorer, included an automatic URL completion feature, where if you start to enter the URL for a web site in the Address box, the program will automatically finish what you're typing with the most likely address, based on which web sites have been viewed most frequently on that computer.
I don't know the exact algorithm used, but it has always seemed to me that IE did this alphabetically, that is, if the user entered http://www.a, the browser would check its internal usage tables for the web site, among all those beginning with www.a, that came first alphabetically, and stuff that into the address bar. Navigator, however, seems to instead give, among all the visited pages that begin with www.a, the one that has been visited most.
This gives yours truly, sneaky, voyeuristic, privacy-thwarting madman that I am, a means of discovering the web sites mostly commonly viewed by students of this here esteemed state college, or at least a representative sample of such. Let roll the list of pages, one per letter!
A: http://www.apollonetwork.com/
"Welcome to Apollo Network. This is an ALL MALE SITE for Mature Men and those who like Mature Men. There is no fee, but there are requirements. "
An all male site?! Does this not violate gender equality laws? Why are women not allowed to enter? This is an outrage! This is… wait, a friend is coming over to explain things to me… yes…
Oh.
B: http://www.biggerflicks.com/
"warning: strong adult content. Please leave if you are under age."
"BiggerFlicks.com The NETS ONLY all gay chubby and chaser video clip website!"
Not just a porn site, not just a gay porn site, but a fat, gay porn site. Making fun of this is a triple-density minefield of peril, so I will restrict myself to saying that the very idea is anathema to me, completely, utterly alien.
No, I don't think I am protesting too much! What are you insinuating?!
C: http://www.cdgirls.com/
"CD Girls - New Media Adult Entertainment - The Exclusive Broadband Video Site - Free CDs, Video CD, DVDs and VHS tapes"
The name of the company behind this site, New Media Adult Entertainment, is in a small way the ultimate porn purveyor company name. "New" means nothing in this context, and neither does "Media." (Some things are media. Everything is media. Nothing is media.) "Adult Entertainment" is the only part that means anything, and I wager this is the case with 95% of all porn manufacturers in the burgeoning porn marketplace.
D: http://www.dreamytimes.com/
"Free Sex Movies, hardcore xxx mpegs, avi, mpeg, sex movies"
I wouldn't mind owning a domain name like dreamytimes, for I must admit to harboring a touch of Thoreau in my innermost soul. But if I did have this name, no one would ever visit it except people looking for naked people. I'm kind of depressed about this. Don't talk to me for a while.
E: http://www.exxxpress.com/
"Welcome to eXXXpress.com! Free eXXXpress Porn Daily!"
The first thing that comes into my mind when I read this site's title, I am ashamed to admit, is "eXXXpress. I guess that's the version of Soul Train they show on the Playboy Channel."
F: http://freesexnet.com/
"Free Sex Net - free sex movies and hardcore videos"
Are you beginning to catch on to a trend here?
G: http://www.gainrweb.com/
"The Site for Guys and their Guts!"
Another fat guy site. I'm not really complaining. (After all, I did kind of ask for this in performing this little experiment in the first place.) Fat guys are people too, after all. I guess it is a blessing for the survival of the race that some women (and, from above, obviously some men) find them attractive. I will admit, however, that when I copied out the example text from the site, I had positioned the word processor window so it left revealed the words I was copying, and yet hid each and every other pixel of the window. As I continued through the alphabet, this urge only intensified, until I reached the point where I could hardly stand to look at the monitor at all.
H: http://www.hogtied.com/
"HOGTIED! Extreme bondage fetish spanking femdom whipping sm bdsm torture anal fisting lisage anal fisting lisage chains"
I am simultaneously pleased and disturbed by the "Powered by Redhat Linux" logo in the corner of this site. I wonder what Tux's sexual orientation might be? God, did I just say that? The sooner I am done with this the better.
I: http://www.internetsexprovider.com/
Redirected straight to a credit card site. I'm surprised this didn't happen more often.
J: http://www.JanesGallery.com/
"Janes'Gallery-Welcome to my gallery with pics of young, nude, and smooth boys, teens…"
I got out of this place as fast as I could, before even copying over the entire title. Go look yourself if you want, I have better uses for my sanity points.
K: http://www.keller.edu/
"Keller Graduate School of Management"
"A National Leader in Continuing and Professional Education."
"(C) 2000, Keller Graduate School of Management, a division of DeVry University"
Thank you, anonymous student, for saving me from listing twenty-six straight (or not) pr0n sites! It's a shame our unknown savior is considering a career in management, though, and through DeVry University.
L: http://www.lingeree.com/
"Lingeree - Sex Lingeree and Much More"
I'm pretty sure that is not how you spell lingerie.
M: http://www.mpegsnow.com/
"XXX MOVIES - MPEG'S NOW! EXTREME XXX MOVIE CLIPS, WATCH PORNO MOVIES ON YOUR COMPUTER"
Obviously a site aimed at, and probably produced by, the newbie porn viewer.
N: http://www.need4xxx.net/
"NEED4XXX"
"free host with unlimited webspace"
Again, despite the URL, this turns out not to be a porn site. Of course, it could be that Netscape only automatically completes URLs up to the end of the domain. By this realization, I think someone ought to inform the webmaster at Keller Graduate School of Management that there is the outside chance someone is hosting nekkid piccies on their site.
O: http://www.olin.com/
"One of the largest producers of chlorine and caustic soda in North America."
This one caught me by surprise. Straight from a porn site to a chemical manufacturer. The only thing that prevented me from shouting aloud the word "DISJUNCTION!," startling the whole library in the process, is the fact that, when you think about it, there is a certain mechanization that all industries share, whether they produce chlorine or nekkid JPEGs. And I will say this: I am eternally grateful to the laws of physics and whoever invented our space-time continuum for making it completely impossible to transport caustic soda via TCP/IP, because you just know someone would do it and burn out the eyes of all who visited their site.
P: http://www.pbs.org/
"PBS Online"
Finally, a website I and my stilted value system can approve of! Bless you, dear student, for your interest in This Old House and The Newshour with Jim Lehrer! (I probably spoke too soon, and left the site before seeing the Roger Cook/Jim Lehrer trist pic.)
I was starting to get a bit apprehensive about this project until this one. While I expected one or two of these sites to be a bit, um, pink, maybe even a majority, I didn't expect them to practically *all* be pr0n or some variation.
Alas, now I am duty-bound to complete the list. Next up:
Q: http://www.QueerWorld.com/
"QueerWorld.com: Web Directory, Gay Adult Directory, Talk Boards, Personal Ads, Chat and more!"
Hey, despite what one might think from the URL this one isn't porn at all! (At least, not on the home page.) I still didn't stick around, though. Only nine sites to go…
R: http://www.ruvirgins.com/
"---AMAZING GRACE--- ---THE BEST BOYART PICTURE COLLECTIONS ALL OVER THE NET---"
Pardon me while I clean the vomit off this keyboard.
The problem with compiling this list is the ever-present possibility that someone will walk up behind me, glance at the monitor, and conclude that I am some pervo. (The jury may still be out on that, I admit, for the entire concept of browsing voyeurism.)
S: http://www.satansbitch.com/
"Satan's Bitch!, teen movies, porn star movie, free sex movie, free movie, free porn movie, adult movie, sex movie, free xxx movie, porn movie"
Don't you just love these search engine friendly title tags? I wonder how many people in this world have that entire title as a filename in their IE bookmark lists.
T: http://www.tommyboy.net/
A Chris Farley site! NOOOO!
Wait! It's okay, it's only porn! Actually, it's a plain page apologizing for a hard drive crash. Apparently, this site was affiliated with such wonderful places as "shemales2000.com". I don't know about you, but I think it's wonderful and reassuring that technology has advanced to the point where we can expect a special model of shemale expressly for the new millennium.
U: http://www.utoledo.net/
Another university site. Like oxygen, these are. By the way, has anyone here ever encountered a university site whose general art style was not white background and drop shadowed, Photoshopped photographs of the campus and smiling students?
V: http://www.vidsvidsvids.com/
"Check Out Kara's Adult Playground, voted the number 1 adult site on the internet by its members."
Surprise! vidsvidsvids turns out to be nothing but porn porn porn! I urge you all to lobby Congress in support of truth in domain names!
W: http://www.wtoctv.com/
"WTOC11 The Southeast News Leader"
This is actually the website of a nearby television station, WTOC of Savannah, Georgia, whose call letters are unfortunately a mere transposition of the acronym for Wizards of the Coast.
Even more unfortunately, the next letter of the alphabet is…
X: http://www.xxxmovielovers.com/
"Hardcore Mpegs ("
I thought so. I'm just going to hurry past this one, not even pausing to make fun of the open parenthesis in its title, which basically makes my entire writeup, this entire site, and every web page you will ever read for the rest of your life, merely the contents of a gigantic parenthetical remark. Such is the awesome power of the Internet! (Okay, so I did make fun of it.)
Y: http://www.yourfantasies.com/
"YOURFANTASIES.COM JOIN ONE SITE (blink) THE REST ARE FREE (blink) ONLY $1.99"
Am I the only person left in the world who has fantasies that don't relate, for the most part, to some person's genitals? Am I some naïve polyanna ill-equipped to exist in a world in which everyone, just outside my experiential radar, is endlessly screwing everyone else? Is the sexual Kevin Bacon Number of the entire world, sans me, one?
If you are smutty enough to be playing along at home and perusing these sites yourself, be warned that this one contains an extremely annoying Javascript bomb that tries to take over your browser. Apparently, once you browse a pr0n site, the only thing you are allowed to browse until you reboot your computer is pr0n sites.
Z: http://www.zwire.com/
"Zwire! is the largest online network of newspaper-based community portals in America, providing fresh, relevant, local news, entertainment, classifieds and community information to millions of readers every day."
This actually seems to be the site of a company named PowerAdz.com. While their site is not pornography (repeat: not pornography!), it is the type of dry, corporate reading which the recent dotcom crash saved the Internet from becoming, and which I hate almost as much. Available is a link to a six minute video ("Attention Publishers") offering a means by which you can "Learn about the Zwire Network Vision." I did not watch that video (the sound is off on all these university lab Macs anyway) but I'm sure, if they were honest, that said vision would be along the lines of the Microsoft Vision, being, "Get a foothold in our respective industry, utilize shady business practices in order to become a leader in that industry, conglomeratize across industries and destroy competition by any means possible, buy controlling interest in the Earth, all the while never forgetting to laugh maniacally at every moment of every day."
Now that I am done, I'm afraid I must away to the restroom, in order to wash my brain out with soap.
"Won't... come... clean!!"