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Video

Eww, Gross!

VIDEO: Real or not, YouTube can be aimlessly entertaining.

Norman Misura 16 Apr 2008TheTyee.ca

Norman Misura is a Vancouver-based writer, actor and all-around good guy.
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Even grosser than googling "food and sex."

Most of YouTube isn't about politics, activism or independent filmmaking. Most of it is aimlessly gratuitous. People noodle around on YouTube for hours instead of watching late night TV. They enter random search terms, then are occasionally shocked or entertained enough by the results to forward the link to friends.

For example, as some of you might already know, or will know after you finish this article, the results from googling the words "food and sex" can be disturbing, funny and vomit-inducing. (As for why I googled them? Purely professional interest, of course. I did it for you.) But suffice it to say I will never look at a cucumber or zucchini the same way again.

But lots of people are uploading and watching videos on this topic. In fact, the phrase "food and sex" produces (pardon the pun) 15,800,000 web results plus a few thousand videos.

Why do people google words in combinations like these? People I asked said it's the possibility of getting even more of a good thing. If you like red and like blue, why not see if you like purple? Why not try out purple instead of doing something constructive with that time.

After a couple of hours conducting research I was hungry, and decided to venture out for some sustenance. But as I was strolling home, enjoying my slice of Hawaiian pizza, I had to stop to withdraw a stringy piece of pork fat from my mouth. As that was happening, I bumped into a friend who told me he had just viewed an interesting video on the Net. After some small talk, I made my way home and did as my friend suggested: typed "pork" and "coke" into YouTube's search function -- two more random search terms. But the results are far more graphic and disturbing than those related to "food and sex."

Is the video real? Many commenters and other websites say not, but that doesn't change its entertainment value, as evidenced by the 400,000 viewers who have watched this video on this YouTube channel alone -– 100,000 of them overnight on Monday. And the hundreds of thousands of others who have watched related videos.

And whether real or not, I was aimlessly entertained and shocked. I quit drinking soft drinks five years ago, and now after viewing The Original Coke on Pork Video I think I will give up pork.

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