If you came here from Reddit, and lurked around there long enough, you've probably noticed at least one instance of users making fun of Bing - otherwise known as Microsoft's failed attempt at a search engine. That's not unusual. Bing is pretty universally hated on Reddit, along with The Big Bang Theory and republicans.

But scroll down far enough and inevitabily you'll find a reply that says something like, "Except for porn. Bing is the best search engine for porn." Usually this comment will have more upvotes than downvotes, and a few replies from curious users wondering what makes Bing so great when it comes to porn. That's when, also inevitabily, another user chimes in, "You can preview thumbnails on Bing blah blah blah."

This conversation happens so regularly, and is so damn predictable, that I suspect it might be one big marketing scheme by Microsoft, and not just another case of Reddit hivemind.

It makes sense. Microsoft wants to appel to geeky, college-aged men, considering that demographic spends a disproportionately large amount of time on the internet, and essentially made Google the giant it is today. It's why they shamelessly advertised their shitty search engine in movies like Spider Man and Source Code, and also why they tried to write a scene into The Walking Dead in which the characters find an abandoned library and proceed to "bing it". (seriously.)

I have to ask myself: which demographic, then, watches the most porn? Or, to take things further, which demographic is the most obsessive and methodical when it comes to the porn that they watch? I'll bet geeky, college-aged men is a pretty good guess.

Bing sucks as a search engine, and their marketing team knows it. But if they can rebrand themselves, at least in the minds of redditors, as a search engine for porn, well, at least people might use it.

I realize this isn't a typical /v/conspiracy post, but it's something that's been bugging me, and it felt good writing it out. That's all I got.