The Internet is for Porn

 by Ashley Lister
 If I was going to make one modest proposal to large internet presences, such as Google and YouTube, it would be: accept that people have sex.
I spent this morning looking for a specific track from a musical. It’s a track from the musical Avenue Q. For anyone not familiar with Avenue Q it’s a Jim Henson-style creation of adult humor and puppets with a catchy songbook and sharp, pragmatic comedy. The writers describe it as a coming of age parable and, as they’ve taken it to the West End, Broadway and beyond, I guess they’d know.
This is one of the opening tracks:

I think these four lines are my favourites from any musical ever:What do you do with a BA in English? What is my life going to be?I can’t pay the bills yet Because I have no skills yet.
There are other excellent tracks, such as My Girlfriend who lives in Canada, If you Were Gay, and Schadenfraude.


But the track I was looking for is called, “The Internet is for Porn.”
YouTube stopped suggesting search titles by the time I’d hit the third letter R in that song title. Admittedly, by that point I’ve usually gone past the deliberate misnomer suggestions such as ‘The Internet is for PROM’ and ‘The Internet is for PRON’ and the grossly disquieting suggestion ‘The Internet is for P.’
But I find this abrupt cessation of help to be annoying and condescending. It’s the start of unwanted censorship. YouTube is washing its hands of me at this point. YouTube is virtually saying, “If you’re looking for that sort of filth, you can look for it on your own without my help, you pervert.”
I’m aware that this is being done as a safeguard to protect the innocent. But it has to be one of the stupidest safeguards on the face of the planet. Who in the name of God actually goes searching for legitimate porn by typing in the word ‘PORN’?
Google does this same stupid trick of snatching away helpful suggestions as soon as someone inputs an inappropriate term. Google will suggest ‘helpful’ items until one of the search terms being input becomes something deemed as unsuitable.
However, you can Google terms like lemon party, blue waffle and dirty smurfing and the results will make you wish to God that you’d never been born with eyes.
I’m not going to rail here about how internet policing should be done WITHOUT the heavy-handedness of arbitrary censorship levelled against randomly selected trigger words. I’m just going to make the modest proposal (to large internet presences) that some people have sex and businesses like YouTube and Google should grow up and accept as much.
And, for anyone interested in hearing the track I’d been looking for: