Damn You Google Search

When in need of some quality procrastination, many of us have likely paid a visit to the Damn You Auto-correct page (if you really need some distraction or entertainment - say, you're a grad student passionately trying to avoid grading papers or writing your thesis... I would also highly recommend watching Canadian anti-drug PSAs from the 1980s on Youtube).  I'd like to suggest a new site dedicated to things accidentally searched (or found) via Google search.  Interestingly, since starting this blog, I've had a few mishaps on Google.  I have learned that it pays to carefully consider your search terms prior to hitting "enter"...

I present you with the following mini-list (I expect this may grow over the course of this blog).

Things Not to Search on Google:

1. "Dyke Daddy"

Granted, I probably could have exercised better foresight on this one, but let me explain.  In poking around the web for other blogs that challenge the gender binary, I've discovered a couple of queer parenting blogs  documenting what one blogger has dubbed "lesbian fatherhood."  I've come across a few related blogs about female/genderqueer same-sex couples choosing to go by "mama and baba" or "mom and dad" instead of "mom and mama" or something similar.  I thought hey, I like this idea! and quickly went about trying to find others in this camp of genderqueer female dads.  Since I don't embrace the term "lesbian" I hastily did a Google search for, well, "dyke daddies."  I sure did get a lot of results about "dyke daddies," but, as you can imagine, they weren't really the kind of "daddies" I was hoping for.

2. "Toys featuring female main character"

Now, these search terms seemed a little more innocuous to me.  I did this search when I was writing my Lego blog entry and thinking about gender segregation in children's toys.  I was actually having a really hard time thinking of very many toys that featured a female hero, so I thought a quick Google search might jog my memory.  Not only was the search not helpful (Among top returns were a couple of Wikipedia pages on Toy Story characters, some random piece about Smurfette, a list of kids' movies with central female characters, and a website about favorite female main characters in sci-fi novels), but it brought up three sponsored Google ads for women's sex toys.  Um...  WHAT?  Like I said, the search results themselves weren't particularly helpful but at least they were on the right track.  So why the sex toy ads?  It's unclear to all.

So, moral of the story: I can't be trusted on Google and apparently the only toys "featuring" female heroes have to do with sex.