Internet offers safety of running with e-pack
By Beth Teitell
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
I don’t like to think of myself as insecure, but when the first link you click on while visiting news Web sites is ”most e-mailed,” it’s time to face certain hard truths.
My name is Beth, and I check to see what others are reading before choosing my own articles.
As a lifestyle columnist, I could probably justify it - I’m just checking the pulse of society - but how can I explain (to myself) why, when visiting cooks.com the other day, I scoped out which recipes others were viewing?
(A related issue: Why am I too busy to read ”On Beauty” by Zadie Smith, one of the most critically acclaimed books of 2005, but free enough to spend time pondering what kind of person would make a 7-UP cake?)
When I started my cooks.com search, I wanted a recipe for oatmeal chocolate chip cookies - at least until I noticed the crabmeat dip recipe someone else was searching for, that is. ”Hey guys,” I called out to my sons (ages 4 and 5), ”how’d you like to make a seafood dip instead of cookies!” (When you launch a query like this it’s best to use an exclamation point, not a question mark.)
”What’s wrong with me?” I asked a friend. As we pondered the meaning of this obsessive checking, I Googled a new purse I’d bought to see if I could find mentions of any celebrities who also had it.
”One downside to having all the choices that we do, especially the vastness of options that the Internet offers,” she said, ”is that the more you have, the more you doubt the ones you make.
”If I go to Amazon, select a book, and then they tell me: people who chose your book also bought: ’Drywall for Dummies,’ ’MadLibs 1, 2 and 3’ and ’Jonathan Livingston Seagull,’ well, it doesn’t make me feel too great about my choice, which I then reject.”
And yet there is an upside, she added: ”If I’m making my own dipping sauce for my homemade spring rolls, and other people are searching for recipes made with Jello, well, I’m smug for the night.”
Back in the day, we had the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. These days, there’s the ”most e-mailed.”
In other words, the Internet has turned the country into one giant high school. So please, if you like this column, e-mail it to a friend. I’d love to be voted ”Most Likely to be Forwarded.”
