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It's a Small Net After All: Difference between revisions
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== Anime and Manga ==
* ''[[
** Note that the Iriomote cat is a very endangered (due to the erosion of his habitat) species found only in Japan (and very beloved by the japanese as one of their last wild animals) with a population of under 100. A news item about such a rare animal {{spoiler|being killed by a car}} would likely rank highly in most search engines as a very popular news story.
* Played straight in episode 4 of ''[[
** Saten doesn't just google the term, but writes in on the search bar of some web forum focusing around urban legends and conspiracy theories. Those would be less likely to show outright porn on the subject matter.
* ''[[Midori Days]]'' has, in one chapter, Seiji trying to learn how to use the internet with Midori's help. So they try a search engine. [[All Men Are Perverts|Seiji tries looking for porn right away]]. Later, Midori decides to look up her own name, and is surprised when she finds a search result. Try Googling your first name. You'll find a result, almost guaranteed.
** Though it does become justified in their surprise when that website is [[Stalker
*** In fact there were a huge amount of hits, which makes sense since "midori" is Japanese for "green" and she says as much, they only clicked that one because it said net idol Midori.
* Subverted in ''[[Puni Puni Poemi]]''. Aliens trying use the internet to learn about humanity find nothing but porn. And they're completely fascinated by it too. But given aliens [[Anal Probing|normal activities]] that's not too surprising.
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*** First hit on Google for 'Flight 180' is a link to the Final Destination Wiki, so even in the real world it works.
** In the third movie, one of the characters says he did some searching on the Internet. The search isn't actually shown, probably due to the fact that the character wasn't actually looking up Flight 180, but rather "premonitions." It actually wouldn't be very surprising, given that the events of the first movie are so well known in the world of Final Destination, if there was a Wikipedia article on it, which Google would place up top of a "Flight 180" search.
* In the movie ''[[Mission Impossible (
* The remake of ''[[Carrie]]'' subverts this. When Carrie does a search for "miracles" so that she could learn about her psychic powers, she has to dig through a bunch of results that have nothing to do with what she's looking for (including a site advertising "miracle underwear"). Still, she's able to find the information she needs without having to go to the second page.
* Early in the film ''[[Wanted]]'' (and [http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2008/jun/20/wantedforcrimesagainstcine also in one of its trailers]), James McAvoy's character Googles himself (without quotation marks!), and, in an illustration of how insignificant his life is, no results are returned. So apparently no pages on the in-film Internet contain either the words [[Self-Demonstrating Article|"Wesley" or "Gibson"]]...
** Note, however, that before the character in question [[Took a Level In Badass|takes a level in badass]], his own ''daydreams'' insult him; for example, when he checks his bank balance at an ATM, the machine itself calls him a loser via its text display. The terribly demoralizing Google search could just be another instance of this.
* Averted in ''[[Catwoman (
* Averted in ''[[Scary Movie]] 3''. When Cindy is searching the internet for information on a plot-relevant location, the audience sees her face express fear and horror as a creepy melody plays in the background. Naturally everyone assumes she has found the information... until the camera shows the screen, revealing that her "horror" comes from the fact that popups are spawning faster than she can click them away.
* In the movie [[
== Literature ==
* In one of the books based on the ''Purple Moon'' series, Mavis' Internet buddy that 'lives in Chicago' is actually one of her classmates. When she learns about this, she refuses to believe it. However, nobody's email address is short or interesting... but in [[The Nineties]], [[Cyclic Trope|they were supposed to be]] random words slightly connected to the character and accompanied by numbers.
* Scarlett Thomas's ''[[
* The first example is subverted in ''[[Twilight (
* Averted in ''Always Coming Home'', a '''''1985''''' novel by [[Ursula K. Le Guin]]. It already predicts the difficulties of searching a planet (and beyond) wide database.
* The [[MacGuffin]] in ''Count Zero'', the conclusion of [[William Gibson]]'s ''[[Sprawl Trilogy]]'', is an "Aleph": a portable gray box containing a duplicate of the entire contents of [[Cyberspace]].
* In ''[[Ender's Game]]'', Peter Wiggin eventually becomes the {{spoiler|supreme ruler of humanity}}, because of his ... political blogging skills.
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== Live Action TV ==
* ''[[War of the Worlds (TV series)|War of the Worlds]]'': Kinkaid's handle is "Rogue". Other people on the network are "Lonelyheart" and "Ace". The Internet has a total population of about six. (To be fair, the Internet ''was'' a much smaller place in 1988.)
* ''[[So Weird]]'': Fiona's handle is "Rockerbaby" (she's the daughter of two rock stars).
* ''[[Joan of Arcadia]]'': Luke's handle is "gravity_boy", a rare example of an underscore on TV.
* An early episode of ''[[Law
* When (on ''[[The West Wing]]'') Josh posted to lemonlyman.com, no one stopped to consider the possibility that anyone other than the real White House Deputy Chief of Staff would post under his name. Granted, the whole affair was based on what happened to Aaron Sorkin when he posted to the forums on [http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com Television Without Pity]...
** This contrasts strongly with a [[Real Life]] incident where ''[[
*** David Duchovny claimed the same thing happened to him in an ''[[The X
*** Max Barry claimed it happened to him in the [[Nation States]] chatroom.
*** This happens [[Once an Episode|Once A Week]] on the ''[[The Colbert Report|Colbert Report]]'' forums. General consensus is that either no one is Stephen, or everyone is; one theory is that Stephen is amusing himself by trolling his own fans and ''pretending'' to be poor impersonations of himself. [[Alter Ego Acting|Given who we're talking about here]], it's entirely possible.
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** A similar event happens in a ''[[Law and Order SVU]]'' episode, where two detectives -- and later their captain -- play a game enjoyed by a reclusive child who is also a murder suspect. Though, to be fair, they did seem to be playing it because they actually enjoyed the game.
*** Further justified because they wanted to be able to bond with the suspect through the one thing that they knew he had an emotional connection to (the boy was mildly retarded, and was a suspect because he attempted to use a spell from the game on the victim (he was actually trying to ressurect her)) and walkthrough info would not neccessarily given that to them.
* An episode of ''[[Arrested Development (TV series)|Arrested Development]]'' shows a Google search for "Sacremende" generating no results, not even a typo. Careful examination of the frame reveals an unprintable character inserted after the word to force this result.
** Somewhat justified in that searching for Sacremende even now only brings up pages related to ''[[Arrested Development (TV series)|Arrested Development]]'', and that episode was done before Google really started their "did you mean" function at the top of bad searches.
* In a hilariously ridiculous example from ''[[
** [[Reality Is Unrealistic]] here; Googling "chicks" does in fact give a website about chickens in the top three. And the actual Chicks.net has nothing to do with poultry ''or'' porn.
*** For the curious, it's the personal website of Christopher Hicks.
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** In another episode, Gus recognizes a missing poker player's screen name from an online poker site because he too plays online poker. Apparently there is only one online poker site in existence, and it's small enough that someone would recognize the name of another random player.
** In ''another'' episode, Gus Googles the name of a park and gets zero results. Shawn suggests he adds "ing", and they get info on a parking lot with that name.
* Parodied on ''[[Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!]]'' with "The Innernette," which is contained on one CD-ROM. Marketed as a safer alternative to the real Internet, since your computer isn't actually connected to anything. It includes an "online retailer" that requires a fax machine and a "chat room" with some exreemely dense AI's.
* Also parodied on ''[[
* ''[[Defying Gravity]]'' One of the astronauts explains how they've fit hundreds of movies and [[YouTube]] into their computer's databank. Yes, all of You Tube.
** When it comes to "all of YouTube" the burning question isn't so much how, it's ''why''... all the fanvids? Guitar Hero playthroughs? 2G1C "reaction shots"?
* Averted a couple of times on ''[[
{{quote| '''Buffy''': Maybe The First isn't ready for modern technology. (Googles "evil") "Displaying results 1 through 10 of 900,517." OK, I gotta narrow this down. I'll call you back. (No way to know whether this was an accurate number at the time, but it's sure as hell a lot bigger now.)}}
** Played straight in the first-season episode "I Robot, You Jane" when Buffy consults a computer geek who informs her that anytime you have an e-mail address to start from, "you can pull up someone's profile based on their user name." Although this may have been slightly more likely to be true in 1997 than it is today.
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== Newspaper Comics ==
* Parodied in ''[[
== Video Games ==
* The SNES version of ''[[Shadowrun]]'' pre-dates wireless networking, but apparently not ''[[Minesweeper]]'', hence the maze-like minigames.
* Averted in ''[[Chaos
* The hyper-futuristic setting of ''[[Ripper]]'' features a network of hyper-advanced virtual reality wells...consisting of about a dozen possible places where you can go, including a public library, and half of them are personal storage wells.
* In ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'', you can receive email from people you helped, in that game or [[Mass Effect 1|the first one]]. You can also get spam.
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== Web Comics ==
* In the ''[[
{{quote| '''Sam''': Not just mail (...) you can keep your passwords, private documents, financial information, medical records, and skeletons-in-your-closet all in one handy location accessible from any online computer!}}
* Played straight, but mockingly, in ''[[Questionable Content]]''.
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== Web Original ==
* Played with by the [[
** It's zipped, duh.
** It mentions in the SCP file that the disks have an infinite amount of available storage space and that they can automatically update their contents whenever the actual site changes.
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* Parodied on ''[[Minoriteam]]'', when the [[Big Bad]] attempts to discover the heroes' secret identities by simply typing "Secret Identities" into an Internet search engine. It would have worked, if not for [[Explosive Overclocking]]. (An actual Google search for "secret identities" returns the Wikipedia article on the concept, which links to a ridiculously complete list of DC Comics secret identities, as its first result. Other results are links to less complete lists from other universes.)
* Subverted by the ''[[PvP]]'' animated series when first page of search engine results for "sky" are (as they had hoped) sites about naked women skydiving.
* Parodied in an episode of ''[[
{{quote| "Shut up, friends! My Internet browser heard us saying the word "Fry" and it found a movie about Philip J. Fry for us. It also opened my calendar to Friday and ordered me some French fries."}}
** Also averted in the episode where they enter the internet in VR, and it's a huge, sprawling [[Wretched Hive]] of [[The Internet Is for Porn|porn]] and [[Sturgeon's Law|mediocrity]]. Although kind of played straight in there being apparently only two sex chat rooms...
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** The Alchemist, who comes up with the right answer in that episode, already believes the Internet has few purposes, or at least few good ones. "I don't want to play ''[[World of Warcraft]]''! Get me a ''real'' dictionary!"
*** With his [[Genre Savvy]], the Alchemist guessed correctly that a man writing a riddle 100 years ago wouldn't have used current pop references, thus the uselessness of the internet which flooded Pete White with cocaine (and probably Coca-Cola) references. Al knew that the riddle would refer to Coke as the residue of steel preparation, a definition only Wikipedia would hold, at best. (Venture Brothers is a [[Crapsack World]] after all)
* When the ''[[Kim Possible]]'' villains [[Dark Action Girl|Shego]] and [[Minion
** Searching Google for "really valuable" and "heavily guarded" returns that particular episode. Apparently, fans have looked those terms up so many times, it's at the top of the list of suggested searches if you type in so much as "really va".
* In one [[Darker and Edgier|"Red Sky"]] episode of the [[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1987
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** In Russia everyone except rebellious geeks uses ICQ. Even though various Jabber flavors like Gmail are growing popular, ICQ is still the default way of doing IM.
** Brazilians love MSN (in no small part due to the fact that many people bought their first computers after Windows XP - which shipped with MSN Messenger - came out) and Orkut, and are discovering love for Facebook.
* Take any case of someone famous, usually someone older and [[The New Rock and Roll|slightly befuddled by new media and particularly social networking]], who is shocked, shocked! to find that people can and will impersonate them on sites like [[Twitter]] and [[
** ''[[Wiretap]]'': Jonathan Goldstein told a story about how, when he signed up for Twitter, he eventually found that someone else was claiming to be him... and because the impostor's account was more interesting, he had more followers than the real Jonathan Goldstein.
** [[Margaret Atwood]] joined Twitter and discovered that there were already two people on Twitter pretending to be her. As she put it, "This grew; I gave commands; then [[Never Mess
** ''[[The Social Network]]'' star [[wikipedia:Jesse Eisenberg|Jesse Eisenberg]] told a story of how when he began the movie he'd never used [[
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