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Romanians are Smart or How to Change the Google Autocomplete Suggestions

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Re: Romanians are Smart or How to Change the Google Autocomplete Suggestions

#41

Post by moilolita »

vixen99 wrote: post #16
nullflux wrote: post #8

I'm going to ask the dumb question that the article doesn't explain: why do people hate Romanians so much? I've never found Romanians awful people. Is this just more ethnocentric rubbish and typical hostility toward Eastern European immigration?

In the UK at least, they get a bad press.thanks to the criminal element who find lucrative pickings in Britain.Go to a popular newspaper such as the Daily Mail, search and count the negative stories and you'll soon have your explanation.

UK and other western countries were sitting ducks in the face of the eastern european gipsy invasion and their supernatural ability to exploit the social protection programs and other benefits. And now all the romanians take the blame. I'll retract my stereotypes when you will show me one gipsy having a real job.

Re: Romanians are Smart or How to Change the Google Autocomplete Suggestions

#42

Post by driax »

armandososa wrote: post #13

I tried with a bunch of nationalities and every one returns equally negative results for "[Nationality] are". I don't know why people get so upset about stereotypes. I bet almost every one is stupid/lazy/ugly by the opinion of random strangers in the world.

I did the same. It's puzzling how some suggestions really comes up a lot. "racist" and "rude" seems very common. I get why "racist" would be so common, but "rude" odd. But maybe it tells something about how other people view a new country. I'm guessing that it is very easy to feel another nationality is rude, if you are traveling there and miss some/all of the subtleties of the culture. Or maybe it just tells us that people are easily precieved as rude.

Re: Romanians are Smart or How to Change the Google Autocomplete Suggestions

#43

Post by kzrdude »

rdtsc wrote: post #32

One thing I'll say about Romanians is that I noticed they distrust each other, or they are just not friendly towards each other. For example I've noticed how the immigrant community acts and while other communities opt to stay together, mingle and be friendly with each others, Romanians abroad don't give a hoot about other Romanians, they are willing to integrate into the local culture as fast as possible and forget…

Swedish people they are willing to integrate into the local culture as fast as possible and forget about other swedes, as well.

Re: Romanians are Smart or How to Change the Google Autocomplete Suggestions

#44

Post by Ecio78 »

zby wrote: post #28
armandososa wrote: post #13

I tried with a bunch of nationalities and every one returns equally negative results for "[Nationality] are". I don't know why people get so upset about stereotypes. I bet almost every one is stupid/lazy/ugly by the opinion of random strangers in the world.

Technically the auto-suggestions are not stereotypes since they are not anybody's opinion - they are only what people are searching for.

Technically the auto-suggestions are not stereotypes since they are not anybody's opinion - they are only what people are searching for.

And that makes me wonder why the first two searches for "italians are" are:

-italians are jews

-italians are not white

for the first search, according to a couple of articles i've found, there were in 2003 less than 50k jews in italy (of 60mil of inhabitants), so a very small part

for the second one, i dont know how to interpret it, maybe black people?

Re: Romanians are Smart or How to Change the Google Autocomplete Suggestions

#46

Post by pdelgallego »

Ecio78 wrote: post #44
zby wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically the auto-suggestions are not stereotypes since they are not anybody's opinion - they are only what people are searching for.

Technically the auto-suggestions are not stereotypes since they are not anybody's opinion - they are only what people are searching for. And that makes me wonder why the first two searches for "italians are" are: -italians are jews -italians are not white for the first search, according to a couple of articles i've found, there were in 2003 less than 50k jews in italy (of 60mil of inhabitants), so a very small part f…

It might refer to the true romance scene about the sicilians:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8XkOYcz3hI

Re: Romanians are Smart or How to Change the Google Autocomplete Suggestions

#47

Post by vlasta2 »

It is interesting that none talk about this being spam, the "suggestion box spam". Would spamming the web with "romanians are smart" actually change something? Isn't this the actual non-working method that spammers use? Instead of building good "content", they just pretend to...

Re: Romanians are Smart or How to Change the Google Autocomplete Suggestions

#48

Post by JonnieCache »

My favourite was when it used to complete "chinese people are" with "aliens." extremely odd.

I also enjoyed it recently when the top result for "define an english person" was the wikipedia article "cunt." That one smacked of deliberate organisation.

Anyway, aren't the search autocomplete suggestions based on the distribution of n-grams in google's index, as much as in the search terms?

Re: Romanians are Smart or How to Change the Google Autocomplete Suggestions

#49

Post by jim-greer »

JonnieCache wrote: post #48

My favourite was when it used to complete "chinese people are" with "aliens." extremely odd. I also enjoyed it recently when the top result for "define an english person" was the wikipedia article "cunt." That one smacked of deliberate organisation. Anyway, aren't the search autocomplete suggestions based on the distribution of n-grams in google's index, as much as in the search terms?

> I also enjoyed it recently when the top result for "define an english person" was the wikipedia article "cunt." That one smacked of deliberate organisation.

The funny thing about some of these is that they become victims of their own success - the bomb doesn't work now because all the results are for blogs, reddit, etc talking about the bomb.

> Anyway, aren't the search autocomplete suggestions based on the distribution of n-grams in google's index, as much as in the search terms?

My wife would know for sure, but I believe it is more based on search volume. When you type "hacker news" you get:

hacker news search

hacker news mobile

hacker news api

Pretty clear that it's getting those from search volume, not n-grams.

Re: Romanians are Smart or How to Change the Google Autocomplete Suggestions

#50

Post by ktizo »

moilolita wrote: post #37
armandososa wrote: post #13

I tried with a bunch of nationalities and every one returns equally negative results for "[Nationality] are". I don't know why people get so upset about stereotypes. I bet almost every one is stupid/lazy/ugly by the opinion of random strangers in the world.

In order to understand why romanians take this so seriously, you need to understand the context. Romania is widely regarded by the western Europe as backward, poor and corrupt. On top of this, Romania has the largest Roma minority in the region ~500.000 according to wikipedia.org/wiki/Roma_(Romani_subgroup). The average westerner can't distinguish a romanian from a roma/romani/gipsy although they are quite distinct.…

I'd say that in my experience, the Roma don't beg and steal particularly worse than any other marginalised or impoverished group. There may be a culture of theft among some of the poorer groups, but that is hardly unique, a culture of theft is extremely common in a lot of widely varied communities around the world, from energy companies to impoverished slums.
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