You Ask Me for A Hamburger.

April 29, 2016 11:05 AM

What is Cuil Theory? One Cuil ( ‽ ) is one level of abstraction away from the reality of a situation. A pictorial guide.

They hand you a hotdog.

posted by lalochezia (21 comments total)

I... followed that.

I think I should go home now.
posted by Mooski at 11:09 AM on April 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

So I guess Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon would be an example of a five-Cuil film?
posted by Strange Interlude at 11:11 AM on April 29, 2016 [5 favorites]

I have wet myself. A hamburger laughs at me. Purple.
posted by damnitkage at 11:14 AM on April 29, 2016

It's a perfectly cromulent theory.
posted by cmoj at 11:17 AM on April 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

I claim prior art.
posted by benito.strauss at 11:19 AM on April 29, 2016 [4 favorites]

My personal world view I understand now is clearly is 3.27 ‽'s in depth. (Well mapped to a 0.7 dimensional semantic manifold) .

Question: if you intercut scene for scene Mulholland Drive and Dune, played a middle third backwards, where would that fall on the Cuil scale?
posted by sammyo at 11:20 AM on April 29, 2016

I stopped drink some time ago so this means nothing to me
posted by Postroad at 11:24 AM on April 29, 2016

Cuil story bro
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 11:27 AM on April 29, 2016 [15 favorites]

I claim prior art.

oh em f' gosh, benito, that really needs to be expanded with historical examples (Alewife rotary?) and published for incoming residents of the area. classic! accurate!
posted by sammyo at 11:27 AM on April 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

For some context/history: Previously, on Metafilter.
posted by mhum at 11:33 AM on April 29, 2016

As flawed as Cuil.com was, there was some clever tech being obscured by the hilarious bugs they got from launching too early.

Google took great pains to sort through the wreckage and buy the patents. Cuil's company president, Anna Patterson, is back at Google as a VP of engineering. Do a whois on Cuil.com and you'll see Google Inc.
posted by w0mbat at 1:20 PM on April 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

Children will be blessed for
Killing Of Educated Adults
Who Ignore 4 Simultaneous
Days Same Earth Rotation.
Practicing Evil ONEness -
Upon Earth Of Quadrants.
Evil Adult Crime VS Youth.
Supports Lie Of Integration.
1 Educated Are Most Dumb.
Not 1 Human Except Dead 1.
Man Is Paired, 2 Half 4 Self.
1 of God Is Only 1/4 Of God.
posted by theorique at 1:57 PM on April 29, 2016 [3 favorites]

I find it amusing (and puzzling) that there is a website that seems dedicated to making fun of a search engine that died years ago and was never very popular when it was around (sort of like making a career out of mocking Microsoft Bob). Does that make me uncuil?

(I'm also amused that I knew Tom Costello, the founder of Cuil, although not well, when we were at school. I guess that gives me a Cuil number of 1).
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 2:18 PM on April 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

Geeeeeez, that's the last time I piss off the librarian at that Phoenix library.
posted by numaner at 2:23 PM on April 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

Is this something I'd need a collapsed waveform of probabilities to understand?
posted by mccarty.tim at 2:55 PM on April 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

And did Cuil just become the Laserdisc to Google's VHS?
posted by mccarty.tim at 2:55 PM on April 29, 2016

No porn?

Cuil had received widely critical press coverage. Concerns were expressed about the website's slow response times, irrelevant or wrong search results and in at least one case, inappropriately pornographic images displayed alongside search results.

Also, one wonders what an appropriate porn image might be.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 3:56 PM on April 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

As a longtime supporter of the Interrobang ‽ ‽ ‽ ‽ ‽ ‽ ‽, I must ask WTF ‽

hamburger {|}
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:43 PM on April 29, 2016

One Cuil ( ‽ ) is one level of abstraction away

So, CuilFilter it is, then.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 5:50 PM on April 29, 2016

Thanks for your eponysterical pointer to Meshes Of The Afternoon, Strange Interlude.

I did not know it, and now I can't ever forget it.
posted by Devonian at 7:19 AM on April 30, 2016

Ahhhh so this is what Don't Hug Me I'm Scared is all about!
posted by Theta States at 12:24 PM on May 3, 2016