Perhaps you’ve seen some picture of funny or odd Google autocompletes before. Well, I was messing around with autocomplete for fun (hey, what do you want from me, I don’t have any homework yet) and I began to wonder “What does Google autocomplete think of the presidential candidates?” So, I’ve found out, and in case you were dying to know, I’m going to share with you!
The first person I Googled was Barack Obama because he’s the incumbent and it seemed like a good place to start. In case you’re wondering, the first result is a website that generates non sequiturs about Obama (apparently it was popular during the last campaign and is now a book). Other than that strange result, it looks like what’d you expect people (many of which I’m rather surprised can use a computer) to Google about Obama; e.g. he’s an idiot, a muslim, gay, the antichrist, and a socialist. But the last one seems a bit odd: apparently people think that Obama is Osama (or looks like Osama)? I don’t even know.
The next one I did was Santorum, because he seems to be the new “It” candidate. Nothing too surprising here and a few things I can’t say I disagree with. But there’s “gay” again; don’t worry, you’ll keep seeing that one.
The next person I did was Romney (and lets face it: we’ll be hearing about him until November). The first result is accurate but a little strange: he’s so mormon? I mean, I’ve heard of way more mormon-y people, but ok. And some people don’t consider mormonism to be a form of christianity, so Romney “is not a christian”. And I guess if he’s not a christian, then he must be the antichrist. Also, he’s “hot”? Really? Maybe I’m just incapable of finding an idiotic mormon-antichrist-douchebag-liberal-liar attractive.
It’s The Newt’s turn. The only thing that I find surprising here is “smart” and “bad”. I don’t really think he’s smarter than any other politician (well, except maybe Sara Palin or Rick Perry or others of that ilk). The “bad” autocomplete is kind of strange; he’s just “bad”? Bad how?
Since Ron Paul is so popular on the internet (which I’ll never really understand) I figured that he’d have the most positive results, and it looks like I was correct. The positives are that he’s apparently winning, exploding (I think that’s a positive here?), somebody’s homeboy, and right. But then again, he’s also a crazy idiotic insane incorrect racist.
Perry is as you’d expect him to be: mostly not very bright. There’s “gay” again, as well as “a joke”.
Huntsman has two positives, so that’s nice for him. I guess people don’t know too much about him because the first suggestion is ” is he a mormon”, so people aren’t too sure about that. Once again, people seem to find this guy “hot”, but I just don’t see it. He’s certainly not a liberal though, unless you mean by Ron Paul’s standards (I wish they’d stop calling these people “liberals”; as a real liberal, I’d rather not be placed into the same group as these guys).
I know Bachmann isn’t running anymore, but hey, I figured this one would be interesting. So, it looks like she’s “hot”. She’s also “a witch”, which seems like a strange suggestion. Of all the things I could think of calling Bachmann, a witch is not high on the list. But the rest of them are about what I expected.
I’ve learned two things from this little experiment of mine:
- Apparently many of these candidates are “gay”. This is more than a little troubling. Not because they might actually be gay, but because people seem to be using “gay” as an insult a lot more than I expected.
- Google autocomplete is very negative. And yeah, I know it isn’t Google, but rather what people search. I guess it’s like when someone is reviewing something online: most people usually only do it when they’re pissed off and hate the thing/person they’re reviewing (e.g. Rate My Professors).
