When people look at the Lycos 50, they often ask us if it represents a real cross-section of pop culture. After all, isn't the Internet just populated by teenagers and computer geeks?
Of course, nothing could be farther from the truth. Lycos has become an important place to get information for every age group in every part of America -- and, as we've learned from searches like Big Brother South Africa, the world.
Nonetheless, every once in a while something happens that reminds you that, yes, the "nerds" are still out there and still loving the Internet. That happened in the last two weeks when a number of D-level actresses and models saw their searches jump.
We scratched our heads in puzzlement. A number of actresses, none of whom had any new movies or TV shows out, with a big rise in searches. What was the connection?
Gradually, it started to sort itself out. Two of them had been early "models" for the computer game character Lara Croft. Two others appeared on the TV show Farscape. Finally we saw this note on Alexandra Tydings' website: "Gen Con was huge? now I'm off to DragonCon."
That made the correlation pretty clear. Turns out that last week was the world's biggest science fiction conference, DragonCon 2001. It took place in Atlanta, and it drove a ton of Internet traffic. So, let's get acquainted with the girls that the geeks love!
You've got to start with the Lara Croft models. After all, playing Lara finally put Angelina Jolie into the Internet stratosphere. Before Jolie, however, a number of women "portrayed" Lara, basically by showing up at science fiction conventions in khaki shorts and ridiculously tight t-shirts, probably stolen from the wardrobe of a six year-old.
Two of them must have appeared at DragonCon, because both Lara Weller and Nell McAndrew saw searches explode in the last two weeks. Interestingly, a third ex-Lara, actress Rona Mitra, did not see searches go up. She must have retired as Lara and moved on with her career -- you may remember her as Dr. Klein from last season's ABC drama Gideon's Crossing.
Xena: Warrior Princess is always popular on the convention circuit -- after all, it is a show about a number of hot women who may or may not be lesbians, running around in very little medieval clothing. This is the show that Alexandra Tydings gets her fame from -- she played Aphrodite -- and we also saw a number of searches this week for Hudson Leick, who played Callisto.
As for those Farscape actors? Well, Virginia Hey, plays a character named Pa'u Zotoh Zhaan. That name just rolls of the tongue, doesn't it? And lest you think only the women are getting attention, we also got plenty of searches last week for actor Ben Browder (Commander John Crichton).
TOMORROW: The new Lycos 50.
