Ancient History

[DanaC]

It was more exciting in some ways though. It was so seemingly random what you'd get from different engines for the same search. That was the period that hooked me into the net completely. Sitting on my own in the computer room in the early hours, hopscotching through different searches, trying to find weird and wonderful stuff, en countering all these odd little sub-cultures, and occasionally unearthing little treasures. All to the flickering blue glow of a crt monitor. I felt like a ghost in the machine. It was great.

Almost made up for my adolescent disappointment at realising the Vic20 was not a route into Wargames -like shennanigans.

[Gravdigr]

Did you Googlewhack?

No, not that, this:

A Googlewhack is a type of contest for finding a Google search query consisting of exactly two words without quotation marks, that returns exactly one hit. A Googlewhack must consist of two actual words found in a dictionary. A Googlewhack is considered legitimate if both of the searched-for words appear in the result page

I actually accomplished this feat once. Once.

I used the phrase marmalade fetish. This would have been 1996-ish?

[DanaC]

Have youever watched Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure?

It's brilliant. Very, very funny.

From your wiki link:

Googlewhacks were the basis of British comedian Dave Gorman's comedy tour Dave Gorman's GoogleWhack Adventure and book of the same name.[3] In these Gorman tells the true story of how, while attempting to write a novel for his publisher, he became obsessed with Googlewhacks and travelled across the world finding people who had authored them. Although he never wrote his novel, Dave Gorman's GoogleWhack Adventure went on to be a Sunday Times #1 best seller in the UK.