I saw an article on telegraph.co.uk today about Google suggestions relating to national stereotypes. You know when you start typing a word into Google’s search engine and it tries to be helpful by anticipating your search using the most common search terms – presumably to save you the incredible effort of completing typing the sentence.....
Well the Telegraph website provided some screenshots of what Google thinks people might be looking for when they start typing ‘Why do British people….?’ For example: ‘Why do British people have bad teeth?. Ditto Australians. Why do Australians have corks on their hats? Surprisingly, the Telegraph didn’t think the results for Irish and Norwegian stereotypes would be of sufficient interest to publish them. But we know better, don’t we?
Here is what it comes up with for ‘Why do Irish….?’
why do irish people have red hair
why do irish dancers wear wigs
why do irish drink
why do irish have red hair
why do irish people have freckles
why do irish dancers not move their arms
why do irish car bombs curdle
why do irish dancers keep their arms down
why do irish dancers have curly hair
why do irish men wear kilts
Well there you go now, begorra! Before I got carried away reading up on curdling car bombs (!), I thought I'd check out what Norwegian stereotypes were flying around cyberspace.
But either Google can’t be bothered to come up with any suggestions for ‘why do Norwegians...’ or the Cyberworld doesn't much care about Norwegians. Can this really be true??? No, course, not. It must be an oversight on Google's part. Until the internet mammoth rectifies this unforgivable deficiency in its system though, I decided I'd come with a few stereotypical suggestions of my own:
why do Norwegians eat brown cheese
why do Norwegians not let foreigners vote
why do Norwegians not eat proper sandwiches i.e. ones with two slices of bread and something in between
why do Norwegians scowl so much
why do Norwegians act as if you don't exist when standing in an elevator with them
why do Norwegians speak Norwegian
why do Norwegian women have blonde hair
why do Norwegians put up with insanely high prices on all consumer goods
why do Norwegians have cabins
why do Norwegian women wear ugly shoes
why do Norwegians get drunk when their company is paying and/or when abroad
why do Norwegians wear bunads
why do Norwegian teenagers all dress exactly the same
But that’s just a start. I’m sure some of you have even better suggestions. So over to you J
Link to telegraph piece here.
Oh and for the record, I do not have red hair, and have never Irish danced arms down or otherwise. I do however have a few (!) freckles and drink (lots of water, of course).
6 comments:
I loved this post! But you have to answer me this...what does a norwegian sandwich look like then?
I also loved this post, interesting. Erin has done Irish dancing for the last 7 years! She had just given it up about 3 weeks ago, I am very sad about that, I LOVE it. I still dont know about the arm thing though.
Interesting observations about Norwegians from an expat Irish and I as a local: you hit the nail on the head!
Btw: Glad you liked my Oslo guided tour post. Another is up and with more information about the Blog Gathering next year. Hope you're still in Norway next August! :-)
Lol - good one....
why do Norwegians insist they are social democrats, egalitarian and practice janteløven while supporting a royal family?
why do Norwegians not care how much stuff costs here and complain about it?
why do Norwegians think Norway is better than anywhere else in the world?
Like the post! I'm a Norwegian in Ireland - and you're pretty right there :)
I found some off google, though:
why norwegians don't play golf
why norway is better than sweden
why norway is not in eu
why norwegians immigrated to america
why norway is awesome
Some of my own:
Why do norwegians complain about norway while there, but get really patriotic once in a different country?
Why do norwegians defend whaling at all costs?
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