Monday, May 17, 2010

Celebrity Predictive Text


OK, fine. Since yesterday's post was kind of lame, I'll do two today to make up for it. And don't get me wrong, today isn't a much better news day than yesterday was. But whenst one is bored, there is always a little bit of amusement to be had through a little Googling. Today, I played around with Google's predictive text results with celebrity inquiries. Odd, I tell you. Very odd.

Just putting in a celebrity name will yield you some predictive text results, but they're not always that exciting. (Granted, none of this is really "exciting", but I've gotta build this stuff up somehow.) You have to pretend to want to inquire something about the celebrity. The use of "was" or "is" or "hates" or "likes" seems to help. Take, for example, the latest teen sensation, a one Justin Bieber. Do a search on "Justin Bieber is" and Google helps you out with ten suggestions of what it thinks you are most likely looking for. And in this instance, the most likely things that you're searching for about Justin Bieber are, in order of obvious importance, "Justin Bieber is....a fag....dead....bi....a jerk....a girl....a tool.....". Hard to believe from that sampling that he is just about the hottest thing out there right now. Hard. To. Believe. (A girl. Heh heh.) If you were wondering about things that "Ellen DeGeneres has", you're only going to get three predictive answers. But the most common one is about her...big ears? That's the most common? Not that she has a talk show? Has a wife? Has been putting us to sleep with her less than amusing stint on American Idol? No, you people want to know about her ears so much you're at the point of Googling them? You people need to get out more.What about that dear, sweet Betty White? That lovely 88-1/2 year old woman who hosted the funniest Saturday Night Live last week? Is there anything she doesn't like? Apparently, and it's related to you. That's right. "Betty White hates....your grandmother". But we don't know why. Hmmm.


Looking up stuff on Jay Z brought up results I wasn't expecting. He seems like an all right guy. Why, then, is the most predicted result when searching for "Jay Z is..." comes up "devil worshipper"? Really? It also says that he is not only "a freemason", but "a master mason" as well. It also covers the bases if you were thinking he was "the devil" and/or "the antichrist". Whatever the deal is with Jay Z, if he's only one quarter of those things, he's a pretty busy guy.
I was surprised when I read that "Jay Z is the antichrist" because I had been thinking all along that Barack Obama was the antichrist. Nope. Turns out "Barack Obama is your new bicycle". Wait. He's what now? Look, I even clicked on it and I still don't get it. But I was really happy to see that "Barack Obama is a muslim" was down to Number Six on the list, so I feel like there's really been some progress made here. Somewhere.


If you want to know what "Britney Spears was", you'll learn that "Britney Spears was upset unicorns". Um, what now? Unicorns? She was? Apparently, she was.
Now, if you want to know what "Britney Spears is", you'll learn that "Britney Spears is a three headed alien." Of course she is. Wait. What now?
If I were to guess at what the results would be for Googling what "Oprah has", I would guess "a lot of money" would be up there somewhere. "A talk show" might make the list. "Slept with Gayle King" would might even make an appearance. I was not expecting to learn that "Oprah has six toes". That would explain why "Oprah has eleven toes" is further down on the list, but it still really isn't explaining the most basic of all questions "Who are you people who are asking about Oprah's toes?!"

As you can imagine, The Google is not kind about Sarah Palin. Behold!

Yeah, like you were expecting any different.

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