You Are What You Surf

[July 9th, 2008]

Defense lawyers for a Florida Internet pornographer are arguing in court that his websites (including justblowme.com and cumonherface.com) aren’t obscene because they don’t violate Pensacola’s “community standards.”

As reported last week by The New York Times and other national press, the lawyers for Clinton Raymond McCowen are employing a novel legal argument that uses info from Google searches to deflate charges that their client distributed obscene material over the Internet (racketeering and prostitution charges aside).

For example, here’s a Google Trends graph that McCowen’s lawyers are using to argue that his group-sex sites are not aberrant for Pensacola, but a common preoccupation in that fair city. (The charts here, built with Google’s stats, reflect the relative popularity of one search to another, not the total number of times each term has been searched.)

Since Google’s massive databases—perhaps including its secretive server farm in The Dalles—can offer a portal into the collective id (see “Welcome to Googleville,” WW, June 4, 2008), we got to wondering: What are Portland’s “community standards,” as expressed through the frequency of our Google searches?

Sometimes we fit the stereotype. Portland appears to be the only city in the world (seriously) where “McDonald’s” is Googled less than “vegan,” and where “Jane Austen” is as sought-after as the celeb gossip on TMZ.com.

What’s surprising is how un-prurient we are, given Portland’s libertine rep. In contrast to Pensacola, orgy barely noses out kayaking and apple pie:

A strong showing for clean living! According to Google, folks in Medford and Corvallis are more into orgies than Portlanders. (Or maybe they just have a harder time finding a party.) Is this a fluke? Here’s how Portlanders scored on another comparative measure of Americana:

No fluke. We’re just not that weird. Comparing these terms, “Mom” comes out ahead almost everywhere (except Germany and Poland, where bondage and sadomasochism beat her out). But check Troutdale.

What about our world-famous strip-club scene?

So where do we look for inspiration?

Nothing too surprising about that popularity contest. But look—this is unexpected:

Oden beats the Son of God in Beaverton, but not in Portland. Is Google broken?

Look where Portlanders are searching for secular sources of wisdom:

And how do we want to get high?

Again, this isn’t that unusual. Portlanders, like most Americans, prefer legal intoxicants. (Pot wins in a couple of towns in Alaska and Hawaii.) But what kind of beer do we crave?

Good for Widmer…but who Googles “Coors,” anyway? People who can’t find the Plaid Pantry?

There’s some evidence that local brews aren’t always our first choice:

And for what ails us?

If the drugs don’t work, then whose professional services do we seek most?

Don’t lower that freak flag yet, Portland.