Surfing, Orgy, Apple Pie, Boobs

Katherine Mangu-Ward | June 24, 2008

Legal determinations in obscenity trials rely, in part, on "community standards," one of the parameters defined in Miller v. California. The question is whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards' would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest."

A lawyer in a current obscenity case in Florida has adopted an unusual approach to finding out what the community is really up to--checking out what they're googling. The findings:

Except for brief periods near Thanksgiving, searches for "orgy" consistently outrank attempts to find information about "apple pie" in Florida . The rest of the year, orgy searches are closer in frequency to what might be expected to be a common activity in Florida, "surfing."

We always suspected the much-ballyhooed "community" wasn't quite as wholesome as its reputation suggests. Looks like we were right--our neighbors have been googling orgies all along.

Via Ars Technica