This Is Not Tom

..........Hello?

Hello...........

..........Uhh... is this Tom?

No, I'm afraid this is not Tom...........

..........Ok, thanks. Sorry to bother you. I'll keep looking.

*click*

All across the internet, this is dialogue occurs between the curious viewers of Thisisnottom.com and their Google search results pages. Thousands of people are trying to figure out the extremely difficult riddles that are posted there. This is what appears on the first page of Thisisnottom.com.

I, myself, have only gotten through this one. It took surprisingly long, and as with any riddle, it seemed completely easy once I figured it out.

Riddles, of course, have been around for ages. But they haven't been on the internet for even just two decades. Having riddles on the internet opens up so many new options. Answers to the riddles can be hidden in hyperlinks anywhere on the site. They can be typed into URL's. They can be entered as passwords. There are many ways of submitting an answer to a riddle, and there are even more ways of finding out the answers to riddles. In the past, the only way to figure out a riddle was to use logic or otherwise your own mind. Online riddles can do this, and they can also use the internet as a massive database of knowledge, allowing for riddles that involve a little bit of trivia. Online riddles open up an entire new aspect of riddling.