What do "woman who like fucking married men or vice versa", "The new slut seekers hall of fame", "White Girls LOVES Black Dicks", "Chests, Pussy, Assholes and Faces full splashed with Sperma", and "Disney Photo Challenge" all have in common? They all came up on the first page of search responses while I was searching on flickr. Let me explain.

This past weekend, I visited the New York Transit Museum in Brooklyn, and snapped a few photos. One of the photos was of classic signage. No smoking, no spitting, no throwing litter, etc. It was official looking, ominous and declarative, stating that those in violation of the sanitary code "WILL BE PROSECUTED". See above. I posted it to my flickr account, and began looking for groups to post it to. For those out there unfamiliar with flickr, it's a social networking site where a person creates an account and uploads photos for display. One can make contacts, see what those contacts have uploaded, and join groups, where one can post photos following a particular theme. Well, the sign I snapped has a particular theme, so I wanted to post it to a group.

I threw it into a group called "New York City" and another called "subway", both pretty self-explanatory. I could have posted them to any number of groups for signs, such as "I Love Old Signs", or "Sign City", but I wanted something a little more abstract, something that captured the nature of the sign, its content, beyond it just being a sign. After all, a sign is telling us something. It's informing us, helping us, or, in the case of my sign, enforcing rules. Signs all have a message, and this sign's message was something along the lines of "stop what you're doing" or "NO!" I wanted to post the photo to a group that recognized content as well as design or kitsch. So I did a group search on flickr for "don't do that" on the off chance that someone had created a group for signs like mine, signs that tell people what's not allowed.

Flickr has porn. LOTS of porn. Rule 34 being what it is, a site where a person can upload any photo they like is bound to attract a fair amount of smut. What's funny is how an innocent search on flickr, or anywhere in the tubes, for that matter, can turn up porn. This doesn't happen all the time. For example, searches for "upside down", "listen to me", "canned heat", "watch out below", and "tall trees" all turned up pretty innocuous results, but disturbingly, "chubby babies" turned up "Shake It: The Naughty Polaroid". And if one actually searches for smut? Well, that's when the fun begins. Below are some samples, with search query followed by one or two results. All results appeared on the first page. A note: flickr doesn't just throw adult subject matter out at its users and let them sort through the mess. These results came up because I do not have any safe searching filters.

• Sex - "gay male sex slaves", "dogging...public sex"
• Fucking - "Ass fucking anonymous", "Post Your Fucking Pictures"
• Titties - "Men in Bras", "Married Sex Addicts and our Wives"
• Big ass - "Ass Hall of Fame"
• Sweaty Bears - "Just Hairy Pits (all male) Armpits"

There really isn't any point to this, other than to mention that porn or fetishistic material sometimes pops up when one least expects it. It's a lot like being startled by a car horn or a cat jumping out from behind a bush. What's interesting is that flickr does not advertise, nor purport itself to be a porn site, yet there it is. In an online community where the powers that be provide only a limited amount of rules, it is only inevitable that adult themes become a part of the conversation.

Just like there are groups for images of sex, there are also groups for images of violence. Car accidents, injuries, fights, explosions, it's there. However, these images are far less graphic than most of the porn. That makes sense. Real images of violence, whether it be from war or any other source, remain generally unknown to the population at large. After all, sex is something that is a normal part of human existence. Violence, however, for those who have experienced real intense forms of it, is rare. For most people who experience it, it's a singular moment, one that will never have an equal throughout that person's life.

Finally, there's nothing wrong with any of the adult groups. But I do look forward to the day when I'm searching for something that interests me and the engines can tell if I'm horny or not.