Certainly there are times when you have quirky google searches. Author Tessa Wegert tweeted a few of hers:
My searches today:
• World’s biggest trophy
• Ferris Bueller vest
• What are superhero suits made of
• Estonian Krooni
• Hyde and Eek
I’d love to see a list of people’s Google searches for unique topics. So full of potential.
The internet is amazing: so many resources
The resources we have online are amazing. When we talk about the internet, it’s often about all the THINGS available online. The articles, the images, the videos. More and more pages being added all the time. 6,274,656 articles on Wikipedia. 50 billion images on instagram. 2.8 million public domain images from the Smithsonian.
The internet is amazing: enabling curiosity
These physical resources are all soo great. But the internet has also enabled our curiosity to grow. With all this information available so easily, we can search for a whole slew of things.
Imagine having a database of Google search terms. Not just the raw data. We have lots of that raw data. But the quirky search terms. What sort of nuggets would you be able to pull from that?
I’m talking about unique questions like tessawegert’s queries “what do headstones smell like”. Hrmmm. That’s kinda interesting. I mean, they smell like stone right? But wouldn’t they have more of a smell than that? They would have the smell of the surrounding grass. Maybe the flowers. Or of the rain. Or maybe lawnmower gasoline. Or going the poetic route, maybe some sort of smell of memories.
All these unique queries unto themselves ask us questions we never thought of considering. Like, what IS the world’s largest trophy? Trophies have symbolism of victory. What would the largest symbol be an award for? Something grandeur? Or something mundane?
You can pick up each of these queries and make it your own. Develop your own answers. Or it would be fun to find out the answers from the original person making the query. What did the person do with their search results? Was something made?
How I’ll use this
On a monthly basis, I’ll go back to my search queries, and make a list of the fun and quirky queries. For the queries that actually developed into a larger idea and became a blog post of mine, I’ll link to the blog post. For those that didn’t go anywhere, I might write about my intent behind the search.
It’ll be one way of capturing a narrative of my life and all the rabbit holes I explore. These fun queries might make someone else to take them and explore down other branches of the rabbit hole.