Pederast Clown Syndrome

The Pederast Clown Syndrome meme began with my journal entry of January 7, 2003, "Send in the Clowns." In that entry, after having had occasion (as we online journallers often do) to mention pederast clowns several times, I wrote:

I just had the disturbing thought that many search engines return their search results starting with the sites that contain the greatest number of occurences of the search criteria. Which means that every time in this entry that I've used the phrase "pederast clowns," I've further increased the number of pederast clowns who will eventually stumble onto this site.

 

Soon after I posted that entry, my server logs showed that web-surfers now were, in fact, ending up at my site as a result of doing web searches using such unsavory search terms as "pederast clowns" and "clown porn." And every time I mentioned in my journal that this was happening, it increased the occurence of those terms in my journal, thus netting me still more unwholesome clown-related traffic.

This phenomenon became a running joke between me and various friends and readers. I don't remember exactly when I first started calling it "Pederast Clown Syndrome."

A year after that fateful "Send in the Clowns" entry, on January 10, 2004, my friend Lila, who, on her Guttergaunt website, keeps the kinkiest online journal I've ever read, wrote an entry featuring a complete description of how Pederast Clown Syndrome works. Here it is, reprinted with her kind permission:

The more I mention having been a Catholic schoolgirl, the more my referrer logs fill up with search terms like “catholic high school girls tied up and spanked,” and “true bondage experiences catholic school girls.” Apparently, there are a whole lot of people out there (guys? girls? probably both...) with Catholic schoolgirl fetishes. I tried running some of those search terms through Google myself, and, my God, there are thousands of sites about Catholic schoolgirls in bondage. Jeepers.

By mentioning this, I’m becoming a victim of what Nickykaa calls “Pederast Clown Syndrome” (a name I’d love to see catch on). Pederast Clown Syndrome works something like this:

1.) You mention pederast clowns in your blog.

2.) Pederast clowns start to visit your site after it shows up in their Google searches for pederast clown sites.

3.) You check your referrer logs, and you’re distressed to see that your site has become a magnet for pederast clowns. You mention this in your blog.

4.) The additional mention of pederast clowns causes your site to appear nearer to the top of the list of Google search results for pederast clown sites, which causes your blog to get even more visits from pederast clowns.

5.) You post an angry rant about all the pederast clowns who are flocking to your site.

6.) Because the term “pederast clowns” shows up repeatedly in your angry rant, your site is now the number one search result that Google returns when someone does a search for “pederast clowns.”

7.) Your site is now visited by thousands of pederast clowns every day.

That’s what’s going to happen to me, if I keep using the phrase “Catholic schoolgirls in bondage” while writing this entry about all the people who are coming to my site trying to find pictures of Catholic schoolgirls in bondage (and now, to make matters worse, my explanation of Pederast Clown Syndrome is going to start attracting all those pederast clowns who’ve been plaguing Nickykaa).

 

Lila and I have been hoping that the term Pederast Clown Syndrome will catch on, and that it will eventually come into widespread usage all over the Web. After all, the phenomenon that it describes does exist, so some people might have occasion to talk about it. Which will be more convenient to do if it has a name. And we've certainly never heard a better name for it.

Please join us in spreading this meme. And anytime you use the term Pederast Clown Syndrome, feel free to link to this page to save you the bother of having to write your own explanation.