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Marquette Wire

The student news site of Marquette University

Marquette Wire

KELLY: Googling ‘how to’ reveals our jobless, lovelorn culture

My friends and I were bored the other day, and someone was playing around with Google.

We became fascinated with the search box that takes what you type and tries to guess what you’re looking for.

Even for the most mundane queries, Google came back with some pretty hilarious suggestions.

I thought it was awesome that you could type one or two words and Google just fills in the blank for you based on its most popular searches.

I was interested in what people wanted to learn, in the most basic sense.

So I typed “how to” in the search box and read through Google’s most popular searches.

The top ten searches for “how to,” in order: tie a tie, kiss, get pregnant, lose weight fast, cook a turkey, solve a Rubik’s cube, make a Web site, write a resume, download YouTube videos and lose weight.

I’m no sociology major, but from the above information, I think we can glean that your typical Google-loving American is confused at both ends of the relationship spectrum.

We don’t know how to start up the macking, nor do we have any idea how to finish the job.

Also, we’re overweight, underdressed, unemployed and have loads of free time on our hands.

As much as we might fight it, this pretty much affirms the American stereotype held by the rest of the world.

Using the word “does” as a search trigger brought back equally entertaining results.

Typing “does” as the first word showed me just how desperately we look to heal our insecurities with the all-knowing power of The Google.

Women took the No. 1 and No. 4 spots with the relatively tame “Does he like me?” and “Does he love me?” while men (I assume) took the No. 3 and No. 8 spots with “Does Extenze work?” and “Does Extenze really work?”

Stripping away what we say and how we act around the opposite sex to its bare bones leaves us with an amazing conclusion: Women are insecure and looking for love; men are insecure and looking to make a, ahem, certain part of the body bigger.

Sunday night revealed even more of a sleazy side.

After watching Brett Favre gunsling and intercept his way to another NFC Championship overtime loss, I did a little Google trends perusing. “Brett Favre daughter” was the fourth most searched-for term of the day.

“Brittany Favre” and “Deanna Favre” came in at No. 8 and No. 10. “Brett Favre,” the guy actually playing, didn’t even crack the top 20.

Maybe we just got tired of the Favre story getting beaten into the ground this week more than “Team Jay! / Team Coco!” and we were looking to come up with a unique angle on the 40-year-old blue jean enthusiast.

Or more likely, we’re creepy so we decided to look up pictures of the Ol’ Gunslinger’s wife and daughter.

That’s not where you expected the thoughts of a nation to be on Championship Sunday, did you?

So what does all of this say about us as Americans?

With the posturing over health care reform, campaign donation limits, the hot-button news topic du jour, and how ‘Sconnies actually feel about Brett Favre (Do you love him again now or what? I can’t keep up), what we get is a raw sketch of the aggregate American: We’re jobless, dateless, penis-enlarging, lovesick, quarterback-daughter-leering fatties. A pretty picture, no doubt.

It’s ugly, but nothing says who we are better than what we do. Or in this case, what we search for.

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