Weirdest Google searches (for writing)?

[serria]

I recently watched the documentary Terms and Conditions May Apply, which was about the lack of privacy online. One segment was about an apparent ability to track down what individuals have searched for on Google. The film crew tracked down one guy whose Google search results included things like "how to kill my wife", "cheating wife" and "decapitation"... seems fishy, right? Surprise, the guy was actually a writer for a crime drama, and did the searches for work.

So my question is, do you ever google really weird things for writing research? Anything that might seem suspicious to an outsider?

I can say I've googled a lot of injuries - knife and sword injuries, mainly, as well as effects of poisons. I think I even once googled home-made bombs, or historical explosives, or something like that, and even remember getting really paranoid that the FBI was going to get suspicious.

Comments

[inevitableentresol]

I tend to make my google search terms as oblique as possible, while still hopefully getting the results I want, for exactly this reason. Or I go to Wikipedia and search through there.

The thing I feel least comfortable about searching for is actually international ages of consent, even though I have no intention of writing anything skeevy in that area. It's a genuinely interesting subject and my own country changed its age of consent while I was a teenager, adding to my confusion, but I still feel a little creepy doing it.

I'm guessing hundreds of thousands of bored teenagers have searched for how to make a bomb. I know my brother and all his friends did. I doubt the FBI tracks them all. And I'm in a country where they regularly still find terrorist bombs, so if anyone is worried, I should be.

The latest bomb they found near me was so badly made that the police issued a statement that it couldn't harm a kitten. The maker probably should have done more googling himself.

[serria]

Wikipedia is a good way to go about it, too. I honestly don't know that much about (the alleged lack of) Internet privacy, though the documentary made a pretty compelling argument. The segment about the writer's search terms made me laugh, but also frantically think of every terrible thing I've googled. lol

I'm also sure that loads of people do google how to make bombs and other things that the FBI just doesn't have time for, but who knows. Now I am trying to imagine a bomb going off that's so weak a kitten couldn't be harmed... (and I'm resisting urge to go ahead and google 'weak bombs' ha)