After 16 years of asinine questions and dubious answers, Yahoo Answers is shutting down next month.
The company announced that starting April 20, users won’t be able to post new questions or answer other people’s questions; on May 4, the site will become inaccessible, and will redirect to the Yahoo homepage. Users who’ve posted questions and answers in the past can download their data via request before June 30, 2021, here.
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“While Yahoo Answered 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,” an announcement that went out to users, as spotted by the good people of the r/DataHoarder subreddit, said.
Before we had social networks like Twitter to ask silly shit in relative anonymity, we had Yahoo Answers. It’s a relic in the memories of most people over the age of 30 who used the internet without a ton of parental supervision; you could log on and pose questions to the world that you would be too embarrassed to ask your closest friends. They say there’s no such thing as a stupid question, but Yahoo really stress tested this theory, and there were definitely stupid answers.
Classics include “how is babby formed? how girl get pragnent?” which became a whole meme of its own, “is sitting in the back seat of a toyota prius bad for my penis and balls?” (one answer: “Your dick and balls will be fine. The energy from the batteries goes to the engine, not the car seat.”)
More memorable questions:
“What does ”she wants the d’ mean?” asked by a 16 year old. Answer: “it means Diamond as in the engagement ring.”
Anything about Ouiji boards.
Some good conspiracy theories brewed there.
“Is it okay to boil headphones?” To drive the evil out, obviously.
What’s that techno song that goes “dun dun dun dun / dun dun dun dun err / dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun / dundundundundundundundundundun”?
A question for the data hoarders: “Can a laptop get heavier if I put more files on it?”
You will be missed, you beautiful website. Maybe Quora will take its place.
