155: Search History

Search History

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Title text: SomethingAwful has a wonderful compilation of crazy AOL searches in their Weekend Web archives, 2006-08-13.

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Explanation

The comic references the AOL search data leak, where users had potentially identifying and embarrassing search histories published. Randall, drawn as Cueball, thus publishes his own potentially embarrassing searches in solidarity with the AOL users. All of his searches relate to his fear of dinosaurs, mainly velociraptors, as a consequence of the Jurassic Park movie he saw when younger. The search "Utahraptor" may be a reference to Dinosaur Comics, which xkcd has parodied in 145: Parody Week: Dinosaur Comics. Alternatively, "Utahraptor" may be referenced because the raptors portrayed in Jurassic Park were much more like utahraptors than velociraptors in terms of size.

The title text refers to a document posted on a humor site (very NSFW): part 1, part 2, part 3.

Although real search history displays the most recent search first, Randall has listed his searches chronologically for humorous buildup. Here is each search in order with an explanation given:

Table

Search query	Explanation
velociraptors	Randall is curious about velociraptors and wants to learn about them.
site:imdb.com "jurassic park"	The 'IMDb' "Internet Movie Database" is a website devoted to documenting all aspects of films: cast & crew, quotes, plots, goofs, reviews, etc. Randall is now looking at the film Jurassic Park, and perhaps its sequels and other references; possibly reviewing it, but probably trying to extract all known 'facts' about the depiction of velociraptors and similar dinosaurs within it.
raptors	Randall is continuing to research raptors, as he really wants to be safe against them. The word "raptor" is less formal and might suggest Randall starting to become scared of them.
dromaeosaurids	Dromaeosauridae is the taxonomic family that encloses all types of raptor. Randall has chosen this scientific term in the hopes of learning more scientific and technical detail than his previous search gave.
utahraptor	He now wants to get information about different raptors, so in this case Utahraptors.
"home depot" deadbolts	Randall is now scared that raptors may attack him at home. Knowing that they can open doors in Jurassic Park, he thinks they may be able to pick or break locks and has chosen to install deadbolts. He is choosing to buy the deadbolts from Home Depot, a common American home improvement store.
security home improvements	He is now reinforcing his home more generally, possibly including other entry points that cannot be deadbolted, like windows.
surviving a raptor attack	Randall's paranoia increases, and he now assumes his security measures will not hold up against raptors, or he will be attacked outside his home. In the event a raptor reaches him, he looks for advice on surviving a direct raptor attack.
robert bakker paleontologist	Robert Bakker is an American paleontologist who has written the book Raptor Red about the life of a female Utahraptor. Randall has presumably included "paleontologist" to filter out results about Robert Bakker, the Dutch rower.
robert bakker "possible raptor sympathizer"	The previous results about Robert Bakker's work led Randall to believe the paleontologist is a raptor sympathizer. This search would be made to try and find confirmation of this, but is unlikely to return results.
site:en.wikipedia.org surviving a raptor attack	site: is a Google operator. Randall repeats his earlier survival query, but filtered to a site he considers reliable: Wikipedia, which is a generally comprehensive source but sometimes subject to vandalism and inaccuracy.
learning from mistakes in jurassic park	If you google this search term, the results are largely about where Jurassic Park depicted its dinosaurs wrongly. But, given the themes of the rest of the searches, he probably wanted to know where those characters in Jurassic Park made mistakes in keeping the dinosaurs in captivity, or in dealing with the new dangers once they got loose, or both.
big-game rifles	Randall wishes to purchase a rifle with which to shoot raptors, possibly based on a perceived failure to do so in Jurassic Park.
tire irons	Realizing rifles did not work in the movie, or could fail in several other ways, he now wants tire irons to hit them with. Tire irons are heavy, so they should hurt raptors.
treating raptor wounds	In the unlikely event that he gets wounded by a raptor and actually survives, he wants to know how to treat the wounds.
do raptors fear fire	Randall is considering fighting off the raptors using fire, and wishes to know if it would be effective at scaring them.
how to make a molotov cocktail	It's not clear whether the previous search results found that raptors fear fire. In the case they do, he wants to make flammable molotov cocktails to fight off raptors if needed.
do raptors fear death	Randall upstages his "fear fire" search, as he now believes the raptors do not fear fire and may not fear death itself. If they do not fear death, he cannot hope to scare them off.
can raptors pick locks	This search is actually more reasonable than most of the previous, backtracking to the original concern of securing his home against raptors. Alternatively, he is even more paranoid as he no longer wishes to risk leaving his home.
how to tell if my neighbors are raptors	Randall is now completely paranoid about raptors. Even though velociraptors died out 71 million years ago, Randall thinks that his human neighbors may in fact be raptors in disguise (possibly advising him to be less scared of raptors), who he will also need to protect himself from or flee the neighborhood. As raptors cannot assume human form,[citation needed] this is a completely ridiculous and embarrassing punchline to the search history.

Transcript

[In a slim panel at the top of the comic Randall (drawn as Cueball) stands to the left and his speech is written in the rest of the panel to his right.]

Randall: In solidarity with the many AOL users whose often embarassing web searches were released to the public, I offer a sample of my own search history:

[The long panel beneath the first panel shows a screenshot of Google's front page. The Google logo is partly cut through the top third of the logo. It is in the typical Google color code. Beneath the logo are six links for where to search, one of them is black, because it is chosen, the others blue. One has a red super script indicating there are news there. Below is the search bar. To the right of this, there are three lines with links, for what type of search preferences etc.]

Google

Web   Images   Video^New!   News   Maps   more>>

Advanced search

Preferences

Language Tools

[Below the search bar is a box with a thin line around, which comes up when Randall presses the bar, it has the following 20 entries that Google suggests for autocompletion:]

velociraptors

site:imdb.com "jurassic park"

raptors

dromaeosaurids

utahraptor

"home depot" deadbolts

security home improvement

surviving a raptor attack

robert bakker paleontologist

robert bakker "possible raptor sympathizer"

site:en.wikipedia.org surviving a raptor attack

learning from mistakes in jurassic park

big-game rifles

tire irons

treating raptor wounds

do raptors fear fire

how to make a molotov cocktail

do raptors fear death

can raptors pick locks

how to tell if my neighbors are raptors

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Discussion

Here's a link to the somethingawful page mentioned in the title text (part 2, part 3). ‎141.70.81.143 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

People of the distant future, this is what google looked like today. Kripmo (talk) 00:50, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Knock knock, distant future here: hardly anything had changed. 108.162.221.82 15:03, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

It's a bit more AI-filled, but not much else has happened. Psychoticpotato (talk) 22:33, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Google actually looked like that?! Truly, the modern world is a wonderful place, compared to the drop-shadow hellscape pictured in this comic. Just look at all that font hinting, and no anti-aliasing in sight! The horror! ~AgentMuffin

Should we create a table explaining each one? 172.68.47.6 01:24, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Yes! I know what I will be doing for the rest of this lesson. Beanie (talk) 09:32, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

It has been just shy of five years since Kripmo's. Google has changed very little, the fonts having slimmed down slightly and very little else.

Either they have reached stability or it has not been long enough. 172.68.38.98 03:06, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

I think the table is in the wrong order. It makes more sense for Randall to search "robert bakker paleontologist" first before moving on to the more specific query about bakker. Similarly, it makes more sense for the more general search term "raptor" to be search before more specific queries about types of raptors. Finally, if read top to bottom, the search results present a reasonable line of thought that gradually devolves into absurdity, a common theme that shows up across xkcd comics. I know that this is the opposite of how actual google searches would be presented in real life, but it's reasonable to think that Randall would have sacrificed exact accuracy in favor of a more easily readable format. 108.162.210.104 05:53, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

In google, the most recent search terms are on the top. I did the table with the most recent on the bottom, to make it easier to follow. Beanie (talk) 10:15, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Although yes, Randall didn't seem to pay much attention to how the searches were organized. Beanie (talk) 12:43, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

For sure he intended it to be read from top to bottom, even though this would not look like this on Google. I have corrected the table to be in reading order as in the comic. And made a note that this is the wrong order if in real life. --Kynde (talk) 15:01, 26 May 2022 (UTC)
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