What I know. What I don’t know
It is interesting to me to see how the Internet has replaced the public library as a major research institution. Instead of getting up out of our homes and traveling across town to check out books and actually read them, many people instead log on, Google and expect to find answers to their many questions.
On one level I suppose it is about convenience and ease. You don’t have to get dressed to Google. But there is also the ability to ask questions and research topics about which there are no simple or easily found answers. Gossip and rumor don’t often make it into books—there are libel laws against such things—but anything and everything can find its way onto the Internet.
Every day I check my tracker to see how many folks have come to this blog, from which referring websites, through what searchengine queries, and where they are located geographically.
It amuses me how some of the same searchengine queries show up every day. Nearly every day, someone, somewhere, queries “Robin Roberts, is she gay” referring to the host of ABC’s Good Morning America. Almost as common is the same question posed in reference to Philadelphia Eagles linebacker Dhani Jones.
Now, queries will look for all of those words in every website and post the results. Because the word “gay” has appeared on this website on more than a few occasions, that will put this site on the results list. I made reference to Robin Roberts when I wrote about the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Roberts is from the Gulf Coast and shared her take, and I linked to her story. Thus, Robin Roberts will also show up on this site. Similarly, a link I have over on the right for Dhani Jones’s website, will put him on a results listing.
But let me state for the record for the next person who is curious about the sexual orientation of Robin Roberts and/or Dhani Jones and does a Google search:
“There is NO information on Bejata.com that will definitively state the sexual orientation of either Robin Roberts or Dhani Jones. Nothing posted on this website will identify either of them as gay.”
Hopefully future search queries will cause the above sentence to show up in the list of results and people will stop coming here looking for the answer.
Posted by bernie at October 13, 2006 11:14 AMAhh... the ol' "Is ______ gay" searches. I'm like, the official site for those. Visitors incorrectly hitting your site with combo word searches can be a huge problem if you allow search bots to crawl weekly, monthly or category archived pages (which I don't).
It's a shame, but I don't have the need to use the library for first level researh. There are great resources online, especially the reserve and university lists. Of course, it's always best to cross-check the information. But that's true in any serious research.
Posted by: j. brotherlove at October 13, 2006 12:39 PM