Yahoo! Answers was internet’s Stone Age. It was also our friend, agony aunt, and teacher

Sex-education hungry kids to conspiracy theorists — Yahoo! Answers became the internet’s first meme corner.

Illustration by Ramandeep Kaur | ThePrint

Before one could yell ‘Ok Google’, ‘Alexa’, or ask Siri for answers to the most inane questions about love, life, and the universe, there was Yahoo! Answers. Part of the internet stone age, Yahoo! Answers represents an epoch in itself, where people from all mental calibres (truly all) flocked to ask strangers on the internet the most obscure, banal, hilarious, and often way-too-intimate questions. Because really, who can accurately answer something like this: “ Did dragons live before, during, or after dinosaurs?”

And now that the iconic Q&A forum is set to shut its virtual shutters on 4 May, one needs to pay homage to the end of an era.

With questions that make one’s mind boggle to other deeper inquiries, Yahoo! Answers paved the way for sites like Quora and Reddit. Before Google was the be-all and end-all of the internet, Yahoo! Answers was the pathbreaking website that proved the internet could at once be your friend, encyclopaedia, doctor, and therapist — you name it.

Granted, it was almost never accurate, and the questions and answers were sometimes downright strange and disturbing. Some bizarre samples include: “Do you think humans will ever walk the Sun?”, “If you die in Canada do you die in real life”, “Did anybody have sex in the 1990s”, “Why can’t we grow burger in trees?” , “In the TV show Friends what was the point of Ross?”. And a personal favourite of mine: “How to get a haircut similar to Joseph Stalin without showing the girl who cuts my hair a picture of Joseph Stalin?”

How indeed.

‘Knowledge-sharing platform’ Not.

Yahoo! Answers was launched in 2005, and since then it has become arguably the most meme-worthy corner of the internet. There are multiple subreddits dedicated to just the whackiest question and answers found on this website. It gives the absurd answers on Quora a run for their money.

While Yahoo! launched the website as a ‘knowledge sharing’ platform, I’m fairly certain they did not anticipate the chaos it would eventually descend into. Instead of sharing knowledge, it became the veritable Pandora’s box of misinformation about anything and everything. It also was the go-to place for conspiracy theorists, young kids who really wanted to learn about sex (and pregnancy hazards), and those who were simply dumb and curious.

A sample is as follows:

We’ve all been guilty of googling the stupidest things when we are too embarrassed to actually ask the question out loud. This was a trend that was arguably set up by Yahoo! Answers. The only difference between then and now is that we are much more likely to get accurate answers.

One thing the site did prove is that there is much to be desired when it comes to people’s access to and knowledge of sex education. Almost all questions related to sex proved that quite a lot of people do not have even a basic understanding of it. It is, therefore, quite unsurprising that the most popular meme to emerge from Yahoo! Answers is: “How is babby formed? How girl get pragnent?”

This meme became so famous that it has a definition on Urban Dictionary, an entire YouTube video dedicated to it, and even had a website called ‘HowIsBabbyFormed.com’, which is defunct now.

Goodbye to ancient internet

The internet is a strange space because once something is uploaded to it, it can never be erased. And yet, in the past few years, things that defined the age of the early internet are steadily disappearing or going defunct, and Yahoo! Answers is just one of them.

In an email shared with users of the website, Yahoo! said: “While Yahoo! Answers was once a key part of Yahoo’s products and services, it has become less popular over the years as the needs of our members have changed.”

And when one looks at the website now, it is obvious that Yahoo! Answers has now become the breeding ground of Right-wing conspiracy theorists and Donald Trump lovers. A recent question on the site was “If Donald Trump supposedly made America great again, why wasn’t he reelected?” And quite a few answers claimed that the presidential elections were rigged.

Yahoo! Answers is a reminder of a time when the internet was still novel. And whether you describe it as “one of the dumbest places on the internet” or laude it for, as The New York Times described, its “less-than-enriching contributions to human knowledge since its arrival in 2005”, Yahoo! Answers’ end is one that needs to be recognised.

Views are personal.