Get Your Yahoos Out

There are a lot of things I can think of to do with a partner when the time has come that the sex is a little stale and the talk has dwindled past the point of stimulating.

Honey, let's get on the Internet!

I don't know how many of you have tried surfing the net with a partner, but the old "like a fish needs a bicycle" phrase springs to mind when I think of how much help a partner would be. Who reads at the same speed I do anyway? Who would have the same patience with graphics that I alternately have and don't have? Yes I do want to see the 86K picture of Lee Harvey Oswald, no I won't wait for the 6K graphic of the dancing frog to load. I'm a woman of random whims and my habits cruising around in cyberspace are no exception to that. I would hate to have to thwart my random nature to cater to the whims of another. I can be very giving, but the Internet is like dying, in that for the most part, we all surf alone.

So here's this couple, looking very 80s sorority sweetheart, and I know this is probably stock photography, and we see right off the bat that they "Yahooed their brains out last night." I assume this is what explains their beatific looks and the apparent physical intimacy that they are displaying for us. I will say, that there is a vague undertone of him holding her a little too tightly, from the way her tasteful crew neck seems to be buckling under his grip, perhaps she is even having a hard time standing, so well did he Yahoo her.

I'm pretty sure that I get the joke. Here's a very traditional looking couple. Nothing risky or interesting looking about them, and yet there they are in a post-coital like bliss out dreamily recalling the night Yahoo brought them to the state they are in when we meet them. It's sexual you see, it's a little dirty, we're supposed to - and can't help think of those wacky conservative looking people getting buck wild in their own personal search page. Brought closer and freed of their inhibitions by the powerful search tool with the cute little name.

The copy is simple and direct - "you tell it what you're into. It does the rest. It's new. It's free. You build it. It's My Yahoo! Your own personal Internet research slave. Go there. Now." Followed by the requisite URL. Short sentences. Small words. It's supposed to sound simple, since you have the key phrase "you build it." Since most people are scared to death of the web and their own computer, they need to feel reassured that this will be easy. The short sentences are supposed to provide that comfort. Who can refuse a slave of any kind, especially a personal one who will do your bidding for you even if it's only research? And the slave is an engine, a machine, so no need to worry about any pesky human rights people breathing down your neck!

So I went to my.yahoo.com to build my own little slave, and to find out what was so sexy about it. After I plugged in all the requisite data, I anxiously clicked "Go to my Yahoo, Now!" waiting to see the coolest and most interesting web page of all, one that contained information that would thrill and delight me, maybe some new Paul Virilio site or Peter Beard's personal web page, and I got - well, I got a page full of newspaper headlines and links to all text pages with news items about sports, and a few local weather sites and basically all the top articles of the Reuters news feed.

Yahoo?

Needless to say, I was less than excited. I had not specified any sports interests (although I do like to keep up with the Red Wings) yet I had a whole page of sports news headlines. There seemed to be nothing personal about it. And so I went and registered again, using totally different preferences and a different email address and I got - the same page all over. It seems that even after you take the time and effort to enter your personal preferences, until you edit the main interface, you just get what you get. Smoke and Mirrors.

I'm not here to talk about the service though I'm talking about the ad. It gives the message that you could tell it you were into suspension bondage and amateur home video and that's what you'd get. It has sex as it's foundation, and as anyone will tell you sex sells. Smart move, but I think the back end is a little disappointing there.

So, they Yahooed their brains out. Makes you wonder if they had any brains to start with. It looks like this is yet another ad for the lonely people out there who are trying to get some net-dot-cool on them. I also think it's trying to perpetuate the legend of net.cool, but the truth is, when we sit behind our keyboards looking at the web, alone or in pairs, we're just a little bit pointy headed. Makes me wonder though, if any of my relationships would have been made better by a little joint web searching. On second thought, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have, unless My Yahoo! included topics like "why you shouldn't make plans for both of you without consulting your girlfriend" or "why what's important to you is not stupid." Now those would have saved one or two of them.

leslie@smug.com

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