Clit, penis, suck, porn,

penetration, zoophile, piercing,

prurient, orgy, boobs: what do

all of these words have in

common? It was Althusser who

wrote that certain words become

overloaded with meaning, and

that these words are key

operatives for the ruling

ideology. Welcome to the

ideology of the Internet: smut.

It must be hard to practice

proper journalism on the Web or

to put up a site you truly care

about with so many die-hard

sickos ruling the mix (not that

we would know about either).

Whether it be a case of

conditioned expectations or true

degeneracy, we've been forced to

reluctantly admit that the core

audience of this (and, we

expect, any other Web page)

consists of, more or less, a

bunch of sex-starved pervs. And

before you decide to discount

our cynicism as a desperate stab

at either excusing our own

"midnight special surf safaris"

or validating an impulsive

subscription to Time magazine,

we'll have you know that we get

our facts directly from the

source - the Suck referrer logs.

Donna Rice Hughes may be doing a

great job of atoning for her

public sins with her new-found

efforts to promote Enough is

Enough, but we doubt that hers

or any other lobbying efforts

will have much effect on the

source of the net's problems -

the users. Even though hits to

Suck originating from search

engines such as Infoseek and

WebCrawler only make up a small

fraction of each day's total,

the keywords attached to each

query (which are recorded in our

logs) seldom fail to make us

blush. We're almost embarrassed

to include many of the more

ubiquitous profanities here, but

we feel it serves a greater

social good - and in addition to

purposes of edification, we're

always into any cheap scheme

that'll spike our hit counts.

Admittedly, there could be a word

we've never used in a Suck

article that's more popular than

any of these terms. Take

"haptic", which we only used for

the first time yesterday:

perhaps it's a word so

resplendent with deep meaning

and hidden desire that a

thousand monkeys with keyboards

are pounding it out right now,

matching Suck for the first

time. We do consider ourselves

sufficiently potty-mouthed,

however, to have covered most of

the bases. If the FCC's

jurisdiction fails to extend to

the everyday banalities and

sundry profanities that dominate

our day-to-day conversations,

why should we let its spectre

govern our language on our

favorite medium? After all,

we're not on AOL.

Our methodology is also flawed in

that some popular search terms -

off the top of our heads, say,

"sex" - produce better matches

than Suck for the precocious Web

surfer. If they don't follow a

link to our site, we can't log

the search terms. The top 10

search terms might be a service

WebCrawler or Infoseek could offer,

but we're afraid it would be

about as educational as the Delft

University Picture Archive's

top 50 horny geeks page.

Thanks for ruining it for the

rest of us, guys.

To be fair, not every search

query we log is sex-related.

Unfortunately, the preponderance

of non-salacious requests seem

to deal with explosives (a

single mention of The Poor Man's

James Bond has earned us more

mileage than we ever cared to

predict; "Unabomber" is another

perennial favorite). Maybe there

is something to mainstream

media's reporting building

newbie expectations, after all.

We find it hard to believe that

the net abounds with countless

closet zoophiles, yet beastly

queries figure prominently in

our logs - edging out requests

for "online Christian singles"

by a wide margin. Perhaps

delivering the compelling

content online trenchcoaters

long for isn't that bad a

proposition - we'd like to think

at least a few surfers have

shared their post-workout

afterglow with Suck, forming a

bond that could last a lifetime.

At the same time, we like to

theorize that many of the less

savory searches we've logged are

the results of "miracle demos":

those 5-second do-or-die

demonstrations of the net's

power performed by converts for

the sake of online skeptics.

Explaining to the nonbelievers

exactly why you've been holed up

in your broom closet with a

Pentium for the past week can

get pretty tricky - a quick

display of WebCrawler's adept

handling of profane natural

language queries can go a long

way towards illuminating the

concept (though it may shed some

unflattering light on your

private ritual habits). Sure, a

jaunt over to Suck may be good

for a laugh if you're lucky

enough to catch us on one of our

rare "good" days, but it's that

same jean-splittingly tangible

reaction to porn that fueled the

early adopters' passion for the

VCR that'll get the curious to

flood AOL's 800 lines.

But for those obsessed with

net.purity, maybe the surest way

to subvert the carnal interests

of lustful mouse fondlers is to

saturate the Web with news

"reporting" and discussion of

prurient content. Even by now, a

simple search for "sex" or

"porn" will result in hundreds

of smut-free documents,

guaranteed to stifle even the

most sweaty-browed surfer.

Anatomical terms of increasing

obscurity are currently in

vogue, but even these will

ultimately lose their power as

keywords when pages like this

one overemploy them for their

hit-fetching merits. Clearly,

one of the lucrative sub-markets

waiting to be mined for deviant

value will result from putting

the site lists from products

such as SurfWatch to good use -

what's garbage to the concerned

parent may be a goldmine to

purple-faced chokers 'round the

world.

Are a few well-placed dirty words

the secrets of net superstardom?

If we only had a dime every time

someone in marketing made a joke

about throwing "hot xxx sex" in

the header of every document to

bring in the hits.

Unfortunately, we're not so sure

they're joking. As a gentle

reminder, though, no one ever

thanks you for coitus

interruptus. If you're truly

intent on making a buck off porn

on the net without actually

doin' it, may we suggest vinyl

keyboard covers, instead?