22.9.09

Google national stereotypes

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:

Mel said...

I loved this post! But you have to answer me this...what does a norwegian sandwich look like then?

Jo said...

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.

RennyBA's Terella said...

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! :-)

Return to Norway said...

Lol - good one....

beaverboosh said...

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?

Unknown said...

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?