Monthly Archives: August 2023

The Trending of Trends

Posted on by under New Economy

For a few years now, Google has had an idiotic feature by which a user can see “trending searches.”

In case you have not been paying attention, “trending searches” are search terms or strings that are very popular with the masses. I don’t know how Google determines this (frame of time, country of origin, etc.) but I do know that Google records every search everyone ever makes in the search engine. So these trending searches somehow compile this for display, from all the billions of searches being executed every day.

Presumably, Google assumes that users will see these and think to themselves “Hey, everybody is searching for information on third round draw carabao cup, so maybe I should too.”

This is the twenty-first century equivalent of herd behavior, people madly rushing about (virtually, of course) trying to get to the next great thing, and beat others to it in the process. It is mindless behavior, mob mentality.

And it is of course an extension of Google’s autocomplete feature, where it suggests searches based on what you begin to type in the search box. These are searches that, according to Google, “have been typed previously by Google users or appear on the web.”

Evidently, Amazon now also thinks this is a great idea and is using it. Amazon, of course, logs every search everyone ever makes on their platform too.

I don’t know how successful this feature is, but with Google it cannot be turned off. (Apparently, you used to be able to turn it off but I don’t see that option now.)

Believe me, I would if I could.

Because I will never click on a trending search. Why? Because I just don’t care. I don’t care about what searches other people using, and I don’t care about that for which they are searching. Why should I? They are not me, and I am not them.

I am myself, and I’m reasonably self-aware. Other people’s trending searches will have miniscule relevance to my life. I would think the same is true for most other people.

And yet here we are.

Tucker Carlson is a Miserable Human Being

Posted on by under Career, Critical Thinking

It is widely known by now that one of this country’s most awful people, Tucker Carlson, was fired from Fox News.

My first thought was that it should have happened sooner. Why it didn’t says a lot about Fox News and the people who run it.

What I only just learned is that Carlson, born in 1969, is only a few years younger than me. In other words, he is a member of Generation X.

This I find shocking and sad.

Why? Because I generally think that Gen Xers are better than that. I look back on the events that brought me to where I am today and I feel that I was shaped by those events. These are what the Pew Research Center calls “period effects” and they are the social changes, economic circumstances, technological advances, or political movements of a period in time and how people react to them.

My response to those period effects made me turn out to be socially liberal, fiscally conservative, a critical thinker who feels that diversity and inclusion are good things, and that all people deserve to be treated with a certain amount of baseline dignity and respect as a result of our shared humanity.

Carlson ended up completely different. He ended up as an egocentric self-promoter who cares more about money than he does about other people. He apparently thinks that diversity in America is a weakness, not a strength. He is someone who feels no remorse over peddling abject falsehoods, under the disguise of “scholarship” and “journalism,” for his own personal gain.

He somehow missed the lesson on shared humanity and has instead arrived at middle age as miserable human being.

Carlson it appears, is the evil twin of Eric Garcetti. Garcetti may also have an outsized ego, since many politicians do. But he devoted twelve years of his professional life to steering Los Angeles, a large and diverse city–home to more people than the entire state of Wyoming–in a positive direction. One cannot do that by peddling division and discord.

I don’t think we’ve seen the last of Carlson. But wherever he pops up next, I can guarantee it will be bad for America.