I’ve used Yahoo Mail for 12 years and it’s good for what it is. I can check it anywhere with no problems, and it’s been periodically upgraded. I’m happy with it, and thankful for the free service.
Being a free service, I expect there to be some ads and such. I’m good at ignoring that kind of stuff. But the way Yahoo seems to want to be like other web sites is just getting sad.
They have a status update thing that works like Facebook. Lame. Half of their “articles” on the news feed look like they should appear in Cosmopolitan or the National Enquirer. Pitiful.
But what really made me say “fail” today was their Trending Now list. Although I’m not exactly sure what this is supposed to be, one assumes it’s topics people are searching for and viewing on Yahoo. Jennifer Lopez? OK, I’ve heard of her. Someone somewhere might care about her. Harry Potter? Sure, why not? But at #1 on the Trending List:
Basil Rathbone
WTF?
Yes, I’m sure the internet savvy youth of today can’t get enough of Basil in his Sherlock Homes getup. Or perhaps they prefer him as the villain in “The Court Jester”, long a favorite of techno hipsters. With all due respect to his memory, I doubt Basil Rathbone is the subject of the most interest today on Yahoo.
Or then again, maybe he is. The one person besides me who uses Yahoo frequently may be an old Sherlock Holmes fan, he conducted the one search not on Google on the internet today, and it was Basil Rathbone. Way to go Yahoo for making yourselves look more lame than I thought possible. :rolleyes:
Humph. Love for *only *Jeremy Brett in this corner. That could be because I don’t recall ever having seen Basil Rathbone in anything, though.
More on the subject, I suspect the way trending items like Basil Rathbone end up trending is that people see that he is and have no idea who he is or why he might be in the news, so they search him, thus perpetuating it.
Now as to whether he was planted by Yahoo in the trending list to start off the cycle, I can’t comment, but that seems unlikely and kind of pointless. I imagine it’s more likely that he was legitimately in the news recently, and that sparked a flurry of “who is this guy?” searching.
Important note to anyone else trying this. Don’t make the same mistake I did; it’s Rathbone, the “h” is important. I know it’s hard to find at the supermarket, but don’t substitute with some snap traps and some peanut butter.
I see (and respect) your point, but the problem is that the Bond title goes to David Niven.
Connery was just some hack who preferred cashing paychecks to respecting continuity. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. A man’s gotta eat, after all. . .
Oh yeah, that thing is full of shit. It used to be called Top Searches, or something. Its utter bullshit nature is harder to detect when it lists pop culture topics, but it was obvious it was making stuff up when it said “Eyjafjallajökull” was the most popular search query.
YES! WTF?! I got home from work last night, opened my Yahoo inbox and saw that. “Trending Now: Basil Rathbone.” I was like, “What the hell? Basil Rathbone?!”
My guess is that the trend is not the most searched but the search with the biggest jump. TMC playing Basil’s movies could move him for 100 millionth to 100 thousandth-- giving him the biggest jump.
Blasphemer! Niven is no more Bond than Lazenby. Way too highbrow (no pun intended). Totally rocked in the dawn patrol tho… and is my favorite master thief of all time.
That’s actually a pretty good explanation. Thanks.
For the record, I was as confused as the OP. I thought maybe it was his birthday or an old lost movie had shown up or someone claimed he was gay or a Nazi or a gay Nazi, but clicking his name on the Trending link didn’t reveal a thing.
