The Other Internet

I’m a big fan of Sandra Bullock. Just not of her movies. For some reason she manages to pick ones that probably read well during the delicate negotiations process conducted by studios but fail to incite anything beyond ennui at the box office – Hope Floats, Practical Magic, Speed 2: Cruise Control and The Net. And I liked the premise behind The Net, too. It hit a nerve that few were thinking about at the time – that should you lose your identity in the online machinations of cyberspace you’re basically fucked. It tapped into a universal fear that has only magnified over the last decade or so since the movie’s release.

And that’s what I was thinking about the other day when I typed in “men of color” in my Google search bar and discovered that I had been completely removed from the results page. Up until then I was pleased, proud even that MOC Blog was the number one result out of about 90 million results. And then it got me thinking: What if an Internet giant like Google decided to take action against the Adult Entertainment industry as a whole. They’ve already banned AdSense from adult sites. And I’m sure there was a price to pay for bucking President Bush’s request to turn over certain records as they relate to adult site searches. But let’s say they decided to omit the search results of any and all adult sites. Then what? What sort of collective bargaining power would we have? What if our identities were erased so to speak? Perhaps it’s my newfound paranoia at having been jettisoned from Google (until I find out what the problem is) but I can’t help but think that all this interconnectedness has a very dark side. And we’re not talking Butt Fuckers 3.



--MOC BLOGGER