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It looked like I had uncovered the digital footprints of a terrorist plot: The person who had been at the computer terminal before me had visited, in succession, two travel agencies and a flight school. This was at an Internet coffee shop on Capitol Hill. Upon further investigation, however, the signs of a terror plot diminished. The flight school didn't offer training for flying jets (it was strictly Cessnas). And the other hits on the computer's history log had been Sportsline.com, a stop at Friendster, and LampsPlus.com (a lamp store).

Shweew, I'm glad nothing nefarious was going on in an Internet cafe here in Seattle. The downside, though, is this: Nothing at all seems to be going on in the Internet cafes of Seattle--at least according to an informal survey of web histories on terminals around town. Indeed, after stopping in at nearly 10 Internet cafes around the city (including a check at the downtown Seattle Public Library, where you need to glance over people's shoulders because once they're finished using the computers, their surfing histories are erased), a digital snapshot of Seattle is dullsville.

"Oh man, you want to check that back computer in the corner," an excited barista at a downtown Internet cafe told me when I let her know what I was up to. Her coworker nodded knowingly. Like me, they thought the folks who set up shop at computer terminals were conjuring up subterranean web pages that magnified some 21st-century digital poetry--revealing Seattle's private zeitgeist.

Well, if what's really happening in our city can be gleaned from what people are doing on the web when they hunker down with their lattes to commune with computer screens, we live in boring times. After clicking the history button at "that back computer in the corner" of the downtown cafe, I got ESPN.com, Friendster, AlaskaAir.com, Travelocity, and Ikea.com.

Certainly, Seattle's web traffic isn't without its personality. Unique hits included ihatemimes.com (an offshoot of a website that seems to be obsessed with making fun of clowns) and if-you-dont-smoke-you-still-die.com. Seattle webgoers also seem to have a heavy predilection for goth sites like seagoth.org, GothicMatch.com, NaughtyGoth.com, and Projekt.com, along with New Age stuff like Astro.com and Welcomehere.org (a site about the Rainbow Gathering).

But of the 300-plus sites that showed up over two weeks of checking web histories, it looks like Seattle has little personality: We're browsing HowardStern.com, downloading tax forms, shopping for plane tickets (by far the most popular thing at terminals around town), banking, checking out gay online personals, looking for jobs, gathering pet tips (abc.net.au/creaturefeatures), looking for drugs (BuyBuspirone.com and HumanGrowthHormoneSales.com, which offers injectable HGH), shopping for clothes, using Mapquest, perusing escorts (Eros-Seattle.com), checking out movie trailers, buying rock-show tickets, and reading the news.

HumanGrowthHormoneSales.com and NaughtyGoth.com included, Seattle's digital psychological profile is certainly revealing. The problem is, it reveals just how mundane our lives still are.

josh@thestranger.com