Wednesday, January 07, 2004

Scary Google Ad Words mk.III

The Mildly Diverting curse of the adwords strikes again. How's this for cheery advertising at the top of your page?

"Related Searches:
? teenage depression ? teenage suicide ? teenage drinking ? peer pressure ? cliques ? self esteem ? parenting ? bullies "

Two thoughts arise from this:

Could adwords on your blog be used as a measure of your mental state? A cross between a psychometric test, and Tarot. It works by referencing the words on your blog (which, lets face it, are self indulgent piffle, mostly) against everything that's being searched for on Google. So it's a kind of index of your linguistic style versus the general web zeitgeist.

That gives you a highly concentrated form of the issues that are concerning you, in a surprisingly disarming way (like Tarot, you tune in to the gist, and translate it so it is meaningful to you. Not, I hasten to add because it actually works due to some mysterious force. Good lord, no - what do you take me for... wooly headed?). Which is enough to make your words alien enough to you to make you think.

Or Something.

Secondly - I'm getting a much better idea of how to spot the words and phrases on the blog that generate these cheery bons mots. In this case, I think it's the link to the ethnographic study of mobile usage amongst teenagers, coupled with the sarky description of my personal tube map - words like mother, relationship and, like, sex. Snigger. I'm sure I can start applying this knowledge to my metadata...

Second and a half thought - Google is SPIDERING MY MEMORIES! Noooooooo!

And thirdly - a more general aside. New years resolutiony thing - is to actually write some oppinions up here. And think about stuff a bit more. Not just linkdump. I've realised that I didn't fire up the blog once whilst I was away from my desk - which is a shame, as writing is beginning to help me sort things out in my over-stuffed head.

Of course, I'll just continue to use this to distract myself from fear and terror in the office. Because at heart, I am a lazy, lazy bugger.

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