Some weird shit - User 927 (AOL released search strings on users)

[Phillycat]

I may be the last person to hear about this on the internets (wouldn't be the first time), but apparently in 2006, AOL publicly released search results of over half a million users, replacing their screen names with user numbers. One of the users, # 927, had the most disturbing sequence of searches imaginable:

http://consumerist.com/assets/resources/2006/08/user927.txt

which was written about in an article in The Consumerist:

http://consumerist.com/consumer/notag/aol-user-927-illuminated-192502.php

which got so popular that a playwright actually wrote a play about user 927:

http://www.bratproductions.org/

which is currently running here in Philly.

Here's my question: what's your theory as to how many users were using that AOL account, and who they were? It can't all be the same person, can it? Surely the many flower searches weren't done by the same person as the "forced rape porn" person?

(The best part is that, because they were using AOL, they never got to anything really dirty, anyway.)

(And yes, I'm going to pre-empt all the "The scariest thing on that list is the Nickelback lyrics!" comments right now. Yes, you're hilarious. Now let's move on.)

[SallyMander]

1. That is definitely among the weirdest shit i've ever seen!

:wow:

[Phillycat]

4. Right?

I was fascinated for about an hour this morning. :D

[DS1]

2. "limp wrist syndrome"

stop whacking off to child porn

[Phillycat]

3. "oh i like that baby. i put on my robe and wizards hat"

I... :cry: :rofl:

[myrna minx]

5. Wow. That was pretty disturbing.

[Phillycat]

6. It almost doesn't seem real.

It's as if someone was TRYING to get in trouble. J Edgar Hoover's sex life? Who searches for that?

[myrna minx]

8. And then a search for low carb food in between all of the porn searches.

:crazy: I almost want to make: "oh i like that baby. i put on my robe and wizards hat" my sig line. :rofl:

[khashka]

7. No idea

They kicked me off of AOL. Twice. They are seriously weird. They shut down the breast cancer forum because the word breast is naughty! It wasn't even about sex, just women talking about their experience and how they coped and being supportive of each other. I mean, really!

I'll stay here where even if I don't agree with all the rules, at least they make sense.

Khash.

[Oeditpus Rex]

10. An AOL chat mod once warned me for saying 'breast'

in a completely non-sexual context.

Another once warned me for saying "dammit." I then left the chat room, and almost everyone else, like 14 others, followed in protest and created a new room called "Dammit." The mod was left sitting there with one other person, one supposes fingering her bible. Seems I recall she quit shortly thereafter.

AOL also logged me off permanently after they made the service free for those not using AOL as their ISP. Seems their database "forgot" the password I'd used for years.

I dunno if they're evil or just incompetent, but I've had nothing to do with them since — not even their fucked-up instant messenger, which installs malware on your system.

[kentauros]

9. Actually, it doesn't seem all that unsual to me.

If you notice one of the earliest searches was on "heal time for broken legs" I got the impression this person was laid-up with a broken leg and bored. If you also look at their search like you would objectively observe the evolution of a conversation, you can start to see where some of these searches originate. The weirder sex searches likely came from the very pages he was looking at (I'm going to assume it was a guy from the sheer number of porn searches.)

I can remember the early days of the internet and clicking through page after page just to see where I eventually ended up. I don't do that anymore but I do still have thousands of pages bookmarked for future use. And when a link is dead, well, there's always Archive.org :D