Translate

Friday 15 June 2012

Google Bomb An English Person

As someone once said, if you don't want to hear bad about yourself, don't eavesdrop.

The modern equivalent of this has to be googling yourself. Personally I don't even have a linkedin account, let alone facebook or twitter, therefore I can't get the vicarious thrill of seeing my name lit up in a small part of the www firmament, that will be forever me.

However, someone sent me a game, in which what the rest of the world think of your nation can be uncovered e.g

  • French Person - top result 'French People' - wikipedia, followed by images for French people.
  • German person - top result 'Translation of person in German, followed by Images for German person.

Now try the same for 'English person' ...... top result ....... Eeek! I have saved it because Google will no doubt act and remove this result, but its already been picked up by the media.

Caution - rude word

Personally, I think it makes one proud to be English.

But sadly its not actually a true reflection of what people think of us (outside of France and Argentina that is), but is in fact what's known as a "Google Bomb". These are created by many users back linking to the search result to give it a high ranking. So although this is a genuine result, it would have been maybe page 25 of the results, until it was manipulated by a campaign to force it to become the top result for the term 'English person'.

Actually, why are these perfectly clean 'Anglo-Saxon' words for female body parts 'swearing', while the Latin words e.g. Vagina, acceptable? Answer, because we were beaten by the norsemen aka 'Normans' in 1066, who brought us the Latin French of the lands they had conquered in France a couple of generations earlier. So the language of the conquerer became the accepted 'clean' medical versions, and the oppressed 'English' words were the vulgar dirty words. That's how history works, to the victor the spoils .... literally.   

Anyway, this 'Google bomb' got a laugh in our office today, which shows that unlike most nations, who react like crazy to any slight to their pride e.g. Argentina, we just laughed and shrugged .... now that makes one proud to be English.

No comments:

Post a Comment

All comments are welcomed, or even just thanks if you enjoyed the post. But please make any comment relevant to the post it appears under. Off topic comments will be blocked or removed.

Moderation is on for older posts to stop spamming and comments that are off topic or inappropriate from being posted .... comments are reviewed within 48 hours. I don't block normal comments that are on topic and not inappropriate. Vexatious comments that may cause upset to other commentators, or that are attempting to espouse a particular wider political view, are reviewed before acceptance. But a certain amount of debate around a post topic is accepted, as long as it remains generally on topic and is not an attempt to become sounding board for some other cause.

Final decision on all comments is held by the blog author and is final.

Comments are always monitored for bad or abusive language, and or illegal statements i.e. overtly racist or sexist content. Spam is not tolerated and is removed.

Commentaires ne sont surveillés que pour le mauvais ou abusif langue ou déclarations illégales ie contenu ouvertement raciste ou sexiste. Spam ne est pas toléré et est éliminé.

Followers

Blog Archive

Its a Pucking World

Its a Pucking World
Dreamberry Wine Cover

About Me

My photo
A middle aged orange male ... So 'un' PC it's not true....