Google’s “auto complete” recommendations are getting increasingly absurd, even if they do conform perfectly to real people’s searches.
Today, when I wanted to find a good place to sell my 12-channel audio mixer, I started my search with the word “sell” and Google jumped in with a few ideas for what I might need.
Things People Sell Online
Naturally, “sell textbooks online” and “selling on eBay” are popular search choices. “Sell gold” has also gained popularity recently, to the point that airports and train stations in Germany have vending machines selling gold wafers.
“Sell WoW account” is a bit surprising (perhaps World of Warcraft is losing popularity as people can no longer afford the monthly fee), but it’s “selling virginity” that’s most striking.
Some careful, “strictly business” research suggests much of this searching is related to Natalie Dylan (a pseudonym), a Sacramento State graduate student who last year auctioned her virginity, having allegedly gotten bids up to $3.8 million. Fox News is, of course, outraged.
Local CBS affiliate KOVR-TV quoted Dennis Hof, owner of the Bunny Ranch where the auction will be held, as saying:
Natalie is a very smart girl. All she wants to do is get her master’s degree in family and marriage counseling and be a psychologist. She’s selling her virginity to accomplish that.
Adding a punchline at this point would only spoil the pure beauty of that statement.
It’s not that I don’t find the statement funny on the surface, but I don’t see her actions as especially contradictory.
A marriage counselor who engages in sex work is only an oxymoron if you buy into a pretty limited interpretation of what makes a functional family (and it bears noting that this one-time transaction is a far cry from true “working girl” status).
Do this girl’s choices make her any less qualified to dispense relationship advice than people who had their grad school paid for by mommy and daddy and never experienced a day of adversity? Or than a therapist who happened to have slept around?
Perhaps I did need a punchline.
I make no claim at all that she’s now unfit to earn such a degree or to pursue such a career.
I find Fox’s outrage to be funny specifically because it’s so curiously misplaced. Here’s an adult — by any definition ever employed anywhere in the country or indeed anywhere in the world — legally advertising a service she can legally offer where she intends to perform it, and impinging on the morals of others only to the extent they bid in virginity auctions (or read Fox News).
Most importantly, I assert that a woman who can honestly say to a teenager in a family counseling session, “Ya know, I waited until I was 22 to have sex, and then I sold my virginity for millions of dollars,” could become the only human being in the whole of recorded history to successfully stop a determined teenager from becoming sexually active.
None of these facts, however, make so unusual a remark as Mr. Hof’s any less hilarious. Likewise, Google is entirely justified to have recommended such a popular search string to me in the first place, but its presence in the auto-complete list is no less absurd.
Incidentally, I just noticed this line in the Fox article, which is just completely fantastic:
First, there’s lots of legal things that are questionable morally. Spanking children, wearing fur, invading Iraq to name a few.
Second, I have got see a sellersville theater show. In fact, I may be too late.
Third, ironically this may make teenage girls less sexually active. If they perceive a value to their virginity, they may be less likely to waste it on a teenage boy. I mean really! Have you seen the current crop of teenage boys?
Assuming all the stated facts are accurate, why is virginity seen to have such value? In terms of technique, experience ought to be worth a lot. But it’s not. I suspect some instinctive behavior is in play here. A virgin is more assured to give birth to the male’s child, carrying forward his DNA.
Certainly some will argue that prostitution is immoral, but even then this instance of prostitution is no less moral than any other.
The high bids seem easy to explain. I doubt there’s any deeply rooted evolutionary artifact in play. Rather, virginity has value for the same reason many other saleable resources do: its rarity. There’s no practical limit on the total number of sexual experiences available in the world, but there’s only one virgin for each person born — and of those, the vast majority are unwilling to sell their virginity at all.