Googlewack!

[Averett]

I was just watching the Today show, and they had a man named Dave Gorman on who has a one man play about Googlewacking. I had no idea what the hell they were talking about, but apparently it's when you put in 2 words into a google search and find just one result. Here's an article on Dave Gorman's Website about it:

The New York Times
Search-Engine Serendipity And Frequent-Flier Miles

Dave Gorman is an inspiration to lazy writers everywhere, and not just because he's a David Sedaris-like storyteller with uncanny timing. What might be most impressive about this often-exasperated Englishman is that he has turned the most mundane and common activity - wasting time on the Internet - into an art form.

"Dave Gorman's Googlewhack! Adventure," an affectionate ode to distraction written and performed by Mr. Gorman, who insists that every word is true, begins with an early midlife crisis. After turning 31, Mr. Gorman concluded that it was time for him to grow up and be taken seriously. So he set out to do what he considered to be two very mature things: grow a beard and write a novel. The beard turned out great.

Initially, Mr. Gorman's novel was sidetracked by minor distractions - e-mail messages, Internet surfing, getting drunk - but he soon stumbled upon a gloriously pointless diversion that would take over three months of his life: the googlewhack. If you've never heard this funny-sounding word and your job productivity is high, you might want to ignore the next paragraph.

A googlewhack is what you get when you type two words into the Internet search engine Google and it comes back with only one entry. Finding these random pairs is not easy, but while some people might squander a few minutes searching for googlewhacks, Mr. Gorman, a strange, deeply obsessive man, traveled more than 90,000 miles, around the world several times, in a googlewhack quest that is the subject of this hilarious show.

In his last performance piece, "Are You Dave Gorman?" Mr. Gorman, who describes his work as "documentary comedy," told the story of his attempt to find 54 people with his name. (He met more than 100.) His new lark is even more random: an attempt to meet the owners of 10 consecutive, connected googlewhacked sites.

Mr. Gorman contacted the owner of a googlewhacked site, tracked this person down in France and asked him to find another googlewhack. Once that man discovered a site and contacted its owner in Washington, Mr. Gorman was on a plane to find him - and, of course, the next googlewhack. And on and on he went.

Mr. Gorman relates this picaresque tale with the help of an excellently produced slideshow, which includes Mr. Gorman's smiling mug in, among other places, Washington, Paris, Australia and Columbus, Ohio.

He appears to have a real affection for the people he meets, which is not surprising since many of them are obsessives just like him: they include a man who collects photographs of women with dogs, a single-minded creationist and a closeted gay man who might be Kylie Minogue's biggest fan. Mr. Gorman describes each of them as "lovely, lovely people" - except the creationist, whose lack of interest in finding a googlewhack draws Mr. Gorman's ire.

Mr. Gorman delivers his half-embarrassed tales with the precision of Mussolini's trains, and his magnetic performance displays some of the oddball intensity of the early routines of Steve Martin (one of Mr. Gorman's heroes); his stories, filled with quirky observations and unpredictable turns, have many laughs but few jokes.

So what if his novel never comes out (although a book about his googlewhacking has)? Mr. Gorman, the Picasso of procrastination, proves that much can be accomplished by avoiding that next deadline. Here's hoping that he doesn't try to be taken seriously again.

Jason Zinoman, The New York Times.

So, can any of you find a Googlewack? I'm sure I'll spend way too much time this morning doing this!

[The_wall]

Wait all you do is put 2 words into google but only 1 search result comes up. I don't get why this is fun or addictive, who wants to spend all day typing stuff into google?

[superiorrain]

Dave Gorman is a funny guy, don't really get whats too fun about doing the googlewhacking but i'm sure if he makes a show about it, it more than funny. I saw the last show 'Are you Dave Gorman' very good indeed.

[Cynthetiq]

There was a big write up in Time Out NY on this show.

I haven't seen it and would be interested in seeing it if I could get in via my normal freebie contacts, but so far no luck.

[El Kaz]

Hmm.. do the words have to be "quoted" or not?
"Quoting" 'em would mean only pages with those 2 consecutive words in that order would show up in the results, making it (i guess) easier to find.. so I'm guessing not quoted?

[Strange Famous]

the words have to appear in www.dictionary.com is all I remember, I read the book a while ago, it was good fun.

[CSflim]

Originally Posted by El Kaz

Hmm.. do the words have to be "quoted" or not?
"Quoting" 'em would mean only pages with those 2 consecutive words in that order would show up in the results, making it (i guess) easier to find.. so I'm guessing not quoted?

No the words cannot be quoted.
What is interesting is that often googlewhacks become redundant after someone posts them on a website, as that website will then show up in the search.

I stongly reccomend the book Are You Dave Gorman? It's the funniest book I have read in a long long time.

[Mephisto2]

I can't think of anything more boring.

It's the internet equivalent of children reading the telephone book and laughing at funny names.

"Hehehehe... Look! He's called A Dick... hehehe"


SIGH


Mr Mephisto

[CSflim]

With regards to Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure, it's not so much the typing in of random words into Google, its the travelling around the world to meet strange and interesting people that is the real (*ahem*) point of the exercise.

[Stiltzkin]

Why isn't anyone else trying to whack Google? ^^;

By the way, I got one!
Do a search for:
heretically deconstructionalism

The only problem is that it appears deconstructionalism is not an actual word. But hey, I got close

EDIT: I got another, and both of these words can be found at dictionary.com
Search query:
disestablishmentarian schadenfreude

I just thought of something funny: if I made a page containing all of the search queries that produce Googlewhacks, and Google scans it into their database, I've just ruined a whole lot of Googlewhacks! ^^;

Yet another one:
disestablishmentarian caudillismo
Both those words are in dictionary.com's database. Furthermore, typing that in leads you to a page about googlewhacks!
From the page:

"Welcome to all you rookie whacker lubavitchers to the site that makes (Mr) Bill's lubavitcher whack abuse just a wee bit harder."

The dork created a googlewhack just by doing what he did >_<;; He probably even made more than one googlewhack by doing that. I hate internet acroynms, but the irony of the situation calls for a LOL!

[sashime76]

I can't remember what two word combos I used but did Whack Google a few times. Yeah, I was bored at work one day with most of the projects winding down.

[onodrim]

Sounds like it would be a really great show. And I'd never heard of 'googlewhacking' before. It's amazing how many ways you can waste your time online.

[flamingdog]

I just don't see the humour in this.

[blitz.fenix]

Where does he get all the money to simply drop everything and travel the world

[CSflim]

Originally Posted by blitz.fenix

Where does he get all the money to simply drop everything and travel the world

Well in "Are You Dave Gorman?" he applied the logic of "if I don't see them, they aren't really there", and kept stuffing his bills into a kitchen drawer!

He eventually made the money back from the stand-up show, the tv show and the book. (but the "point" of it all was not to make money or to come up with comedic material).

As for "Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure", he received an advance from his publisher on a novel he was supposed to be writting. It never got written.

[CSflim]

Stiltzkin: Glad to see someone is getting into the spirit of things!

[mac03]

why do so many people make such a big frickin deal about google??? you'd think it was the only search engine on earth

[mrklixx]

And here I thought Google Whacking meant searching for internet porn. Who knew?

[K-Wise]

Asta!!

[MSD]

Googlewhacking? Welcome to 2001

I wasted sooooo much time doing this.