Google wants you to believe these were the top political searches of 2015. Here’s what they actually were.
Google just published their “Year in Search 2015” on Tuesday, detailing what they allege were the most searched terms of 2015. It’s been picked up by AdWeek, Wired (“the year and search is back and better than ever!”), CBS, Newsweek, and every other major media outlet. It’s being lauded as an informative look at what society valued in 2015. The problem is that it is completely and utterly made up. Below is the video, but feel free to skip down to where they are compared to their real counterpart.
“How can I help the refugees?”
Although Google would like us to believe that the number one search of 2015 was “how can I help the refugees?”, their own GoogleTrends show that this couldn’t be further from the truth. Our desire for “no refugees” is twice as high as our desire to help refugees, and our fear of ISIS cells within refugee waves is many more times as high. (Note that I left out the “the” before refugees; including “the” makes the search term slightly less frequent than its complete opposite: “kill refugees”. See for yourself.)
“Why can’t women be army rangers?”
You might be thinking, “wait, what are you implying here? Where’s the search for the question?” There is no search for the question. Because the question was never searched. It is a straight line. There was literally no search for, “why can’t women be army rangers?” Just to show you what that means: the question of whether women have penises was infinitely more often searched than the question whether women can be army rangers. So was the statement, “women are weak.” (Note, I do not condone these searches; they are descriptive, not normative.)
“What does the confederate flag stand for?”
This one might be my favorite. As many people searched for the meaning of the confederate flag as searched where to buy the confederate flag. See, in the video you didn’t watch for fear of getting an aneurysm (good choice), there’s an image of the confederate flag being taken down among happy protesters. This is an obvious political statement: we wanted to know what the flag meant so we could take it down for being insensitive. But that’s not what happened, is it? Because Google says, using the same logic, that we searched for the meaning before buying it.
“How can we overcome prejudice?”
I… Well, I don’t really need to say anything. But hey, maybe they were just expanding on a simpler search? Maybe… “end racism?”
Nope. Alright. Nevermind, uh… Moving on.
“How can the world find peace?”
Well…
“Caitlyn Jenner”
One last thing:
Remember: don’t use Google.
