Good news fusspots: The internet has brought everyone a new thing to get offended about! Editor and blogger Maud Newton (pictured) was today shaken up that someone arrived at her personal website by "searching for a colleague's name + 'pussy.'" In case you don't already know, when you search for something in Google or Yahoo or whatever and click on one of the hits, your browser forwards the search terms to the destination site (by sending the whole referring Web address). Usually this isn't a big deal, because you're searching for something innocent, or sitting at home behind a quasi-anonymous internet connection. But the professor who hit Newton's site was not so careful: his first initial and last name are part of his internet address (let's just assume he's a dude), along with the name of the university where he works. Whoops! Luckily for the prof, Newton has not outed him, at least not yet. But she is all in a snit:

If you are going to troll the Internet for images of or information about someone's genitals, you might want to do it from someplace other than the university where you work... especially when the proprietor of the site where you land is a big fan of your colleague's writing.



I'm not sure I've ever been more offended by a Google search.

It's understandable that Newton is, at first blush, upset, but are there really guys (or lesbians) out there who think they can just call up pictures of some woman's cooch on demand? That implies, first, an unusually specific type of physical lust. Not just for a naked body, or chest, or for a backside, but for the vag specifically.

But, fine, whatever, there are people out there with all sorts of kinks. But do any of them really have such a bold faith in the power of the internet — a network that any self-respecting perv knows like the palm of his hand — that they think they can just type in someone's name + "pussy" and actually get a picture of exactly that?

Alternate theory: Maybe the offense-giving prof was simply looking for a memorable post in which the lady writer's name was mentioned, for some reason, along with the word "pussy," which is, as keywords go, reasonably rare and especially memorable. The woman writer might have, for example, used a juicy (sorry) quote involving the term in a high-profile piece of writing.

Or maybe not! Perhaps the search was unambiguously offensive. Only Newton has all the clues, and she's being discreet. But everyone else should be installing Google Analytics on their Tumblrs or whatever, because they'll then probably have fuel for at least one outraged Google-search-terms post by Labor Day.

[Maud Newton]

(Photo via MaudNewton.com)