Either Google is starting to lose its mind, HAL-style, or it’s been fucking with me a lot lately. Maybe both, maybe neither: maybe I expect too much out of search engines. But come on, is this really the first thing your Toolbar is going to suggest to me?
Seriously?
Either Google’s got a couple screws loose or the American public school system is in even worse shape than I thought (I’ve heard rumors that now they just show a video about how nocturnal emissions aren’t fatal and then give this speech: “any other questions, ask your parents”). Still – that can’t be the most common “how do” people ask the Google Motherbrain.
Then there are the times when the Google Toolbar spits out something like this:
Yikes.
I mean, hell. I’ve heard the rumors too*, and I admit to performing a similar search about Jamie Lee Curtis years ago (results inconclusive), but – hell. I’m pretty sure Lady Gaga uses Google too. Probably her parents. Couldn’t you just make that maybe the second or third result? Just for the sake of decorum?
Then there’s Google Ads, which strike me about as effective as a guy who sees you thumbing through a Sports Illustrated at the dentists office and tries to sell you a hockey mask. Usually they’re easy to ignore, but sometimes they make something like a happy afternoon watching duckling videos on YouTube into a goofily macabre meditation on the impermanence of life:
YOU HAD BETTER NOT SHOOT THESE DUCKS GOOGLE: You motherfucker
All I wanted to do was watch duckling videos! Clearly! Now I’m thinking about what’s probably going to happen to these little guys when they reach flying age. HIGH FIVE GOOGLE. I know you’re just doing your stupid, stupid job but I promise you I wasn’t looking up duckling videos just to creep myself out. I’ve got a whole different YouTube account for that.
* - My two cents: Ms. Gaga (real name: Stefani Germanotta) is not a hermaphrodite, or transsexual, or intersexed, or anything other than a lady who dresses like a scary drag queen. She’s just Italian. Being of Italian descent myself and having looked through my share of photo albums I can vouch that not all Italian ladies are conventionally gorgeous – some of them have noses and overbites, and not all of them decide to turn themselves orange and get reality shows.
You can find many great Google autocompletes at http://autocompleteme.com/
Such wonderful autocompletes as:
"computers are" leads to "computers are about murdering you in a lake"
"what if gr" leads to "what if grasshoppers had machine guns"
And one of my personal favorites, for the vagueness of the entered text and the specificity of what it suggests:
"is it" leads to "is it illegal to dress up as batman in australia"
Hey, boycotthouston.com, try doing a google search for "christianity is"
And, welcome to the krewe of the offended. JM, I speak for every birdwatcher/hunter (there are seven of us) when I say, "Clack, clack, BOOM!"
Search engines don't go crazy. People go crazy. Search engines just document the crazy using a proprietary algorithm that approximates the bizarre yearnings of Webtopia.
re: lady gaga
perhaps google is culling internationally popular searches as well. on a recent trip to taiwan, my cousin informed me that the lady gaga=hermaphrodite rumor is so popularly believed to be true that MTV taiwan and other entertainment news sources have reported the story as fact.
I think Google's results are really starting to deviate from once being helpful to now confusing. I don't know what to trust because I now see all kind of sites in the early results that, frankly, don't belong there.
Regarding the type-ahead lady gaga thing, I'm pretty sure there's a popularity component to what displays first, so...apparently a lot of Taiwanese are fascinated by the rumor.
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