My Search History Would Get Me Arrested by the Curiosity Police

If I dropped dead tomorrow, the coroner wouldn't need an autopsy. He'd just need to look at my browser history and conclude: cause of death — curiosity, acute and untreated.

I write a column about entertainment. That's the job. Watch stuff, think about stuff, type stuff. Sounds clean, right? What nobody tells you is that behind every breezy 900 words about a sitcom or a movie, there's a digital crime scene. A trail of searches so specific, so unhinged, that if the FBI ever seized my laptop, they'd open a file on me out of pure confusion.

The Case of the 1984 Cereal

A few months back, I wrote a nostalgic piece about Saturday morning cartoons. Simple enough. But then I thought, wouldn't it be great to mention what cereal cost back then? Just a throwaway detail. A garnish.

Three hours later, I had spreadsheets. Actual spreadsheets. I knew the price of a box of Cap'n Crunch in 1984, adjusted for inflation, compared across three grocery chains. I read a forum thread where grown adults argued — with sources — about whether the box shrank in 1987. One man had photographs. Of his cereal boxes. From forty years ago.

That detail appeared in my column as exactly seven words. Seven words that cost me an entire afternoon and a small piece of my dignity.

And here's the thing: I'd do it again tomorrow.

'Research' Is a Generous Word

The rabbit holes aren't always so scholarly. When I wrote about game shows a while back, I told myself I needed to watch clips of old bloopers "for accuracy." You know, to get the tone right. To understand the chaos.

I watched forty-seven of them. I counted, because at some point I realized I needed to know how deep the hole was, and the answer was: deep. Forty-seven clips of contestants losing their minds over a washer-dryer set. My wife walked past the living room at hour two and didn't even ask. That's how you know it's a problem — when your family stops asking.

The searches themselves are the real evidence. Somewhere in my history sits a string like: "press your luck whammy origin" → "peter tomarken personality" → "1983 board game prices" → "can you buy a replica whammy" → "whammy costume for sale" → "am I too old for a whammy costume." That's not research. That's a hostage video of my brain.

The Algorithm Thinks It Knows Me

Here's the modern twist: the internet has noticed. My YouTube homepage is now a museum of my own tangents. Advertisements for vintage board games follow me around like a friendly stalker. My recommended videos assume I'm a trivia host, a game show historian, and a man in the market for a replica Whammy, all at once.

The algorithm wants to put me in a box. But the whole point of a good rabbit hole is that it goes somewhere you didn't plan. The moment a machine can predict my next detour, I'm going to feel genuinely sad. Curiosity isn't a recommendation engine. It's a raccoon in your attic — it goes where it wants, chews through whatever it likes, and you just learn to live with the noise.

The Weirdest Detours Write the Best Paragraphs

Here's my honest theory, after years of this: the details you dig up at the bottom of a rabbit hole are the ones that make writing come alive. Anybody can say "game shows were chaotic in the '80s." But the guy who knows what the washer-dryer set was actually worth, or that one contestant fainted on camera in 1985? That guy's paragraph has a pulse.

Readers can smell fake specificity. They can also smell the real thing, and they lean into it like a dog leaning out a car window. When I drop some tiny, hard-won detail into a column — the cereal price, the fainting contestant, the fact that a certain studio's applause sign had to be replaced twice in one season — I get emails. People notice. People care that somebody bothered to check.

The truth is, the internet didn't invent the rabbit hole. Writers have always disappeared down them. The difference is that my predecessors had to drive to a library and blow dust off a microfiche machine. I just have to type seven words and fall in. It's the same sickness, just with faster onset and better packaging.

So no, I won't be clearing my browser history. Consider it my archive. My body of work, minus the work. And if the curiosity police ever do come knocking, I'll greet them at the door with a spreadsheet about cereal prices and a simple question:

Do you guys know why Jell-O changed its packaging in 1986? Because I've got theories, and I've got time.