How To Use A Search
Engine
All right
boys and girls, time for the uninformed to get a clue. There is this grand
magickal scrying device on your desktops and you are not taking advantage of
it. (Yes, Beig dropped by the chat rooms again)
The thing you
are staring at to read this article is called a computer. A computer can do a
lot of things for you, including answering your questions. Wow, it answers my
questions?
Yes, by now I
am sure most of you know what a search bar is for. Actually, I am sure that a
lot of you just do not have even the beginnings of a clue as to what a search
bar is for which is why I am writing this. Why is it that when you are trying
to learn something on the internet, that you go to a chat room? Most of the
time here is how the chat room learning experience goes:
Newbie:
Hello all my fellow beautiful witchy people. What is paganism?
Chatter1:
Try typing "paganism" into your search engine
Chatter2:
Paganism? I thought this was pecanism? Aren't we all pecan fetishists in
here?
Chatter3:
Paganism is the vast mystery that we all study and you aren't worth wasting
the chat time to talk to about, now where were we in the great cyber orgy?
I know, you
have questions and want answers, and there is so much information out there
that you don't know how to find the particular answers that will make sense of
the insanity that you see your life has become.
Lo and
behold, thanks to the great guru Internet, you too can be transported from the
intellectual weakling you think you are into the intellectual version of
Arnold Schwarzenneger. All you need are some answers.
Well here is
how to find those answers:
(For the sake
of this exercise we will use the single most popular question ever asked in
pagan chat rooms aside from ASL)
What is
Paganism? Go to www.dictionary.com and type it in to get the fast
definition.
What is
Paganism? Follow every one of those 132 links. When you finish that you
will have far more interesting things to ask than "What is Paganism". That's
when you come into chat.
Now this
method of information gathering works for almost anything you want to find out
about. For example, if you are looking for Wiccan jokes, type "Wiccan jokes",
"Wiccan humor", or "funny Wicca" into your search bar.
Of course if
you follow each of the links that you find, and all of the links that you are
led to, not only will you find you have just killed hours of time, but you
will begin to notice a lot of things about the different sites you have
visited, the common ground the cover, and the divergent paths some of them
take.
That is the
perfect time to come into chat. Because in chat rooms you will meet a lot of
the people who have made those sites you were reading. Then you can ask them
questions about what they meant by certain portions of their site, you can ask
them where they found the information for your favorite articles, you can even
ask them about what they left out of the articles (most writers write only
what they think people want to read, asking them about the parts the left out
and their reasons for doing so can really be an eye opener.
If you do
not find an answer for what you asked, try misspelling the key words. Not
everyone stayed out of the paste in elementary school.
Want to take
a really interesting internet road trip? Do searches for things like
"Absolutely Nothing", or even "I am Lost".