People are never honest online. When you see 16 year old girls filling out Livejournal and Facebooks quizzes full of of personal info, there’s always a nagging sense that they’re lying, or that they’re at least being selective with the truth because they desperately want to fit in. It’s like everyone puts a “coolness filter” over their keyboard, so that only cool stuff enters the internet while the uncool stuff stays behind.

However, there are certain places where the coolness filter is defeated. Certain places where you can lift a rock and see a creepy-crawly world of personal problems and angst and sexual issues bared before your eyes.

There is a persistent online rumor that pop singer Lady Gaga has male genitals. Many people are obsessed with the idea. I know this, not from reading Livejournal quizzes, but from Google. Google attempts to predict your searches based on what other people are searching for, and here’s what I get when I type “Lady Gaga”

Out of the top ten searches for Lady Gaga, two of them were related to her having a penis (and one of them is the top search). What, do people spend all day searching for this kind of stuff?

Here’s “Lady Gaga h”

Six results now. Sweet merciful balls, what have I done? It feels like I’ve stepped into an alternative universe.

And here’s the kicker: Google censors words. What you’re looking at is the search results with words like “dick” and “penis” filtered out. If euphemisms like “Lady Gaga’s dongtacular crotchsicle” are appearing, just imagine how many people were simply searching for “Lady Gaga penis”. It boggles the mind.

Hey God, can you send a flood or a plague or something? This modern civilisation thing isn’t working out for us.