January 23, 2013
January 22, 2013
from VICEGoogle Knows What You Search For, Pervert
Note: the findings in this piece were accurate at the end of 2012. If you search Google Trends right now, at this very second, you might find different results. For example, as of January 21, 2013, Pakistan is the country that has dug into Google most often about “terrorism.” Feel free to poke around Google Trends yourself. It’s fun.
I want to congratulate the Australian and American readers. You’ve won. You sick fucks. Why were you searching Google for videos of guys putting needles in their balls or castrating themselves? Did you think that your searches would go unnoticed? You might think that you’re anonymous on the web, but Google knows who you are.
Curiosity gets the best of us sometimes. We’ve become so accustomed to having Google at our fingertips that we forget the power of what it does. We forget what it tracks. While Google can’t publish the confidential stuff, they do release a zeitgeist every year. The 2012 Zeitgeist is largely a redundant list of things everyone already knows. We know Gangmam Style was huge, we know The Hunger Games was a hit, we know everyone wants to know about the next big Apple product.
Sure, Zeitgeist has some significance in demonstrating cultural waves year after year. But what does it exclude? What do people search at 3 AM that they wouldn’t dare post to Facebook?
On Google Trends you can search anything you want. I took the opportunity to search for unusual fetishes, crude slang, and disturbing ideas. The results from this highly scientific experiment were truly surprising.
Related trendy searches for “how to make a bomb.”Type in orgasm and you’ll find Zambia has searched it the most. Pakistan is curious about horse porn; South Africa wants to know how to make a bomb; Ghana is worried about gonorrhea; Nigeria, well, they searchedterrorism more than others. The list goes on, and despite every country in the G20 having access to the internet, some developing countries blew others out of the water when it came to taboo searches. But we’ll get to that later.
Google Trends doesn’t calculate the total number of searches made for a particular word. Instead, the search engine uses relative volumes. Since Kenya searched dog porn the most, the relative volume is 100. Next came Pakistan with the volume of 64, and India with 49. These numbers tell us that if people in Kenya searched dog porn approximately 100 times, Pakistan searched it 64 times, etc.
Google Trends, and the Zeitgeist in particular, reflects moments that capture what’s going on in the world. The results are mirrored in a graph that also depicts points in the year where the media publishes a story on the topic.
January 18, 2013
January 15, 2013
from giradiscosestragadosI’m indifferent to you, but that’s not indifferent to me. I love loving you, but my head’s a mess. It took us a while to love each other equally. I watched your love catch up with mine. And when it did… a tune started going round in my head. You know I love it when we kiss. But then the tune went… ”What’s she doing here? Who’s that monster? How dare she touch me with her mouth? She must think I like it! Her breath stinks.” I know you smell good… but I’ve convinced myself that you stink. When I look at you, it’s not your beauty I see… but the space you take up: standing, sitting, lying down. As I watch you, the tune goes… ”I don’t want this girl anymore.” I don’t want anyone else to have you… yet I don’t want to be loved. The few times we talk now, I don’t take you seriously. I talk and listen, but I’m watching you. I see your shell and insult you silently, to hurt myself. Then I feel pity for you…and myself. So I hate us. Lonelier together than apart, who could ever love us? We’re gluey together. I want it to be like before… To stop all the spying… to stop all the sabotage… Bye, angel. I won’t be home late.
Boy Meets Girl (1984), a film by Leos Carax.
I don’t know where I’m going from here but I promise it won’t be boring.
