Wow. That's really thought-provoking and utterly sad. I tried the "Why do girls" search a minute ago and it's different, and equally if not more disturbing, than your list. What a sad statement about Google-users. But what an amazing conceptual portrait on your part.
I don't find this very disturbing at all. People tend to take good times and good things for granted. If you are having a happy marriage, you wouldn't go in and type "Why is my marriage so damn great?" on Google... Of course the searches lean toward the negative, because bad times are when you are spurred to try and figure out how to fix things.
The questions asked are those that are baffling or mysterious or confounding or painful to people - that's why they're asking.
You wouldn't typically Google questions like, "Why do girls play baseball?" or "Why do fathers love their children?" because the answers are easily attainable through typical life experience & observation.
I agree that people aren't going to go to Google to answer the easy questions and they aren't going to go and Google "why are women so fantastic?". However, what I thought was interesting was the gender differences in terms of what is asked and what it says about our perceptions of women/men, mothers/fathers, girls/boys.
Typing the start of questions into google to see what it predicts is actually one of my favourite games!
I agree with everyone above who does not find this in the least bit disturbing. I don't even think one or the other gender comes off worse with stereotyping here.
I'm not sure if this is obvious or not but I thought I should add that google aggregates these predictions from the common searches so it's not really according to google as some sort of detached, editor it's according to google users (which is pretty much everyone right?).
It IS interesting however that if you type "why do people" you get a much more mundane list. So perhaps the negatively themed queries emerge only when people are "othering" - exploring the worst things they associate with a kind of person they don't fully understand from their own subjective position.
Yes, I know that Google is aggregating based on people's searches, which makes it certainly much more telling/interesting in my opinion than if it was some editor at Google.
I dont really find it disturbing or surprising. I know I turn to the internet for questions that harder to discuss with actual people or for which there is no "expert" in my life. Also I think you could type those things in at any given moment and get some kind of disturbing or really banal results. That is just people to me. Ex: I typed in "why boys" and the first suggestion is "why boys need parents" Now that should be obvious!
I don't find the men/women/mother/father results disturbing as there are neutral and negative queries on both sides. I do find it sad that the why do boys results all seem to be written by girls desperately seeking male attention.
Friday, March 1, 2013
Reader Comments (15)
Reminds me of when Virginia Woolf's character in A Room of One's Own heads to the library to research the question of women.
Wow. That's really thought-provoking and utterly sad. I tried the "Why do girls" search a minute ago and it's different, and equally if not more disturbing, than your list. What a sad statement about Google-users. But what an amazing conceptual portrait on your part.
I like the "why do boys wear compression shorts?" I've asked my son the same thing. The rest, I don't really want to think about.
Um, disturbing.
I don't find this very disturbing at all. People tend to take good times and good things for granted. If you are having a happy marriage, you wouldn't go in and type "Why is my marriage so damn great?" on Google... Of course the searches lean toward the negative, because bad times are when you are spurred to try and figure out how to fix things.
The questions asked are those that are baffling or mysterious or confounding or painful to people - that's why they're asking.
You wouldn't typically Google questions like, "Why do girls play baseball?" or "Why do fathers love their children?" because the answers are easily attainable through typical life experience & observation.
Yeah, google users are just scary. I just typed in "why" and the first option it gave me was "why are Jews so smart"...
You all make valid points about the fact that we don't seek answers to questions that are easy to answer. Thanks for that insight.
The questions people ask google are so weird. It's like they think it's a friend and/or a personal therapist.
I agree that people aren't going to go to Google to answer the easy questions and they aren't going to go and Google "why are women so fantastic?". However, what I thought was interesting was the gender differences in terms of what is asked and what it says about our perceptions of women/men, mothers/fathers, girls/boys.
Typing the start of questions into google to see what it predicts is actually one of my favourite games!
I agree with everyone above who does not find this in the least bit disturbing. I don't even think one or the other gender comes off worse with stereotyping here.
I'm not sure if this is obvious or not but I thought I should add that google aggregates these predictions from the common searches so it's not really according to google as some sort of detached, editor it's according to google users (which is pretty much everyone right?).
It IS interesting however that if you type "why do people" you get a much more mundane list. So perhaps the negatively themed queries emerge only when people are "othering" - exploring the worst things they associate with a kind of person they don't fully understand from their own subjective position.
Elysia:
Yes, I know that Google is aggregating based on people's searches, which makes it certainly much more telling/interesting in my opinion than if it was some editor at Google.
I dont really find it disturbing or surprising. I know I turn to the internet for questions that harder to discuss with actual people or for which there is no "expert" in my life. Also I think you could type those things in at any given moment and get some kind of disturbing or really banal results. That is just people to me. Ex: I typed in "why boys" and the first suggestion is "why boys need parents" Now that should be obvious!
I don't find the men/women/mother/father results disturbing as there are neutral and negative queries on both sides. I do find it sad that the why do boys results all seem to be written by girls desperately seeking male attention.
Very interesting experiment. Why do boys sag is making me giggle inappropriately. It is too bad that these lists weren't more positive.