
What boyfriends and girlfriends search for on Google - davidw
http://www.predictablyirrational.com/?p=704
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mrcharles
If you pair the questions together, they solve themselves!

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btilly
I thought this was just a cute flippant answer until I went back and re-read
both lists.

The pairing isn't perfect, but it is surprisingly good.

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mrcharles
I'll admit, it's a tad sexist, but it's still good for a laugh.

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btilly
It is hard to say anything true about relations between the sexes without
being somewhat sexist. I think that's because nobody really likes the naked
truth on that topic.

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joe_the_user
How would you back up that assertion?

Is true to say "most relationships could be improved by both people listening
better?" Is it sexist?

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btilly
Here is a good example.

Let me observe that both men and women don't just want to find someone of the
opposite sex, they would like to be with someone who is as good as possible.
When you are with a person who is as good as is possible for you to land, that
person will be someone you have difficulty getting to be interested in you
like you're interested in them.

So, for instance, a man who dares say something moderately insulting to a
woman early on establishes that he thinks that he could do better. If he does
not offend her too badly and turns around and gives her some hope, that gives
her the message that he's someone she has a chance at but has to work for. If
she believes that message, she'll think of him as a good potential catch.

Going the other way, a woman who doesn't feel compelled to return a man's
calls promptly, puts off sex, and who insists from the start on time for
herself is demonstrating that she believes she is a reach for him. If he
believes her, then he is more likely to work to establish the relationship,
including making the commitment to take care of her and help raise their
children. (Which is what marriage is.) No man likes those games, but most of
us respond to them.

These parallel pieces of advice are both effective and offensive. You'll find
the advice for men as part of the standard repertoire in virtually any guide
for pickup artists. It is standard because experience shows that it helps get
women in bed. Conversely the advice for women is straight from
[http://www.amazon.com/Rules-TM-Time-Tested-Secrets-
Capturing...](http://www.amazon.com/Rules-TM-Time-Tested-Secrets-
Capturing/dp/0446518131/ref=pd_sim_b_3). That is sort of a female counterpart
to the pickup artists guide and is about how to land a man who will commit.
The polarization of the reviews is evidence of both offensiveness and the
gratitude of women who found the advice effective. (Read the reviews and you
can verify the reasons for the votes.)

So there is a concrete example for you. Landing someone of the opposite sex
and getting them to do what we want them to do is of interest to the vast
majority of us. (Yes, some people are gay or asexual, but the vast majority
are straight heterosexuals.) Yet advice that is effective for that is quite
offensive.

And, of course, when we're offended by advice about the sexes, we usually call
it sexist.

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dgabriel
Seriously, The Rules simply do not work if you're looking for a loving, equal
partnership. It's all manipulation and games. Same with the "pua" approach.
The _vast_ majority of people do not behave this way toward partners or
potential partners.

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btilly
You are right that neither is a recipe for an equal partnership. Both are
based on setting up a power imbalance from the beginning that makes what you
want more likely to happen.

However I emphatically disagree about what the vast majority of people do and
do not do. In our culture men generally prefer to date younger women of lower
socioeconomic status who are physically smaller than themselves. And it seems
like most women find this acceptable. How is that not a built-in power
imbalance in the relationship? How does that square with having an equal
partnership?

This is yet another example where an obvious truth about the relationship
between the sexes offends people.

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dgabriel
It's not offensive, it's just sort of incorrect. Most people date and marry
those in the same age and socioeconomic bracket. You are greatly exaggerating
the socially condoned differences.

Like any partnership, both parties bring valuable things to the table, some of
which are less quantifiable and tangible than height and money -
organizational and management skills, social benefits, etc. Depending on
context, the partner with less physical and monetary power may still be the
stronger party in a relationship. This is where trust and honesty and a will
to please the other, rather than just take what you want, come into play to
keep the power balanced and the relationship healthy. Any sufficiently
imbalanced partnership, romantic or otherwise, is doomed to eventual failure.

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telemachos
Is it me or is anyone else surprised that people use Google this way? I don't
mean the content, I mean the kind of query.

I generally type specific words or phrases (often with a 'site:' prefix when I
know where I'm looking). I never type full questions (i.e., sentences) into
Google.

 __Edit __: My wife reminded me that there was a New York Times article in
December about how children search this way
automatically:[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/26/technology/internet/26kids...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/26/technology/internet/26kidsearch.html)

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whatusername
I've started to do this more and more.

Think about this: Google is better at optimising itself for my query than I am
trying to optimise my thoughts for google.

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Herring
_> Google is better at optimising itself for my query than I am trying to
optimise my thoughts for google._

What, no. Not even close. That would require natural language processing & i
doubt google even dreams of that.

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fnid
Not really. It just means that when people type "How do I" in front of a
search and then click on a link with how do i and then whatever it was, then
google picked the right result, even though it doesn't know that you are
asking for instructions on how to perform a task.

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yason
The people who click those haven't seen all the answers (that would be listed
with a non-human query). I want the best answers, not the most popular ones.

Further, typing long phrases or questions unquoted gives a lot of false
positives. I don't want that, I want to capture the essential minimum I need
to look for something specific.

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fnid
Google doesn't give you the best answers, they give you the last answer
someone else chose. That's how google works, because google believes the best
answer is the one after which the searcher does not click on anything else.

How would google measure a "best" answer?

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bdr
Note that this doesn't directly tell you what people want. It tells you what
people want _and aren't getting_. For example, the fact that boyfriends don't
search for "...love me" doesn't mean that they don't want to be loved; maybe
they want to be loved but are loved enough.

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Herring
Or sex is generally how love is expressed for guys.

for more sad/hilarious results, look up "how can i get my wife/husband.."

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jvdh
Hilarious indeed, number 10 on the "How can I get my wife" list is "s facebook
password"

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almost
Is anyone else a little disturbed that this has 121 points and is at the top
of the HN frontpage? Maybe I'm just being grumpy but it seems like total fluff
that's of no use to anyone. I'm surprised it hasn't been killed, are there no
mods around today?

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davidw
I probably wouldn't have posted it a few months ago, but seeing some of what
goes by lately I figured it wouldn't hurt. It's amazing that it got so many
points though - it's really not _that_ interesting. Especially compared to
some of my other recent submissions that I thought would be way more
interesting to this crowd in terms of startups and hacking.

~~~
almost
That I see as the problem, because now a whole bunch of other people will see
this and think the same as you and we end up drowning in the stuff. Because of
course this sort of stuff appeals to the lowest common denominator and doesn't
require any mental effort whatsoever to process it tends to get lots of votes
and drown out the more interesting but possible slightly challenging material.

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davidw
I think the site is basically at a point where either pg gets really strict
about fluff/politics/economics or it will continue to slide.

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almost
It is the nature of these sort of sites that they're always right on the edge.
Let's try not to push it over though :)

Maybe (probably) it will degenerate at some point like all the others have but
it would be nice if it stayed around a little longer.

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chris123
"Everyone thinks of changing the world [his or her girlfriend or buyfriend],
but no one thinks of changing himself." --Leo Tolstoy

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djb_hackernews
buyfriend? intentional, mistake, or Freudian?

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chris123
Mistake, Freudian, or my dyslexia :)

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pavel
This is an amazing visualization which does the same exact thing
<http://hint.fm/seer/>

~~~
binarycheese
<http://i49.tinypic.com/nogciv.png>

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btilly
I thought the obvious next version was interesting as well. It doesn't exactly
paint a very nice picture of men.

 _How can I get my husband to_ ...fall in love with me again ...be more
affectionate ...love me again ...help around the house ...want me ...be more
romantic ...lose weight ...talk to me ...leave the house ...stop drinking

 _How can I get my wife to_ ...love me again ...swing ...lose weight ...shave
...trust me again ...love me ...shut up

I assume that I got more common completions for the first than the second
because women are more likely to use Google to seek advice.

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leelin
If you intersect the two sets, everyone wants to get back together or scheme
up a George Costanza-like plan to have the partner be the one to initiate a
breakup.

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ugh
Hey, works across cultures! The results in German are pretty much an exact
mirror image. That would be cool if it weren’t so depressing.

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DrJokepu
I don't find it depressing at all. Men want a more active / interesting sexual
life with their partner. Women want more bonding with their partner / want
their partner to do stuff for them. It's nothing we haven't known for many
millenia.

Clearly there are a lot more into relationships but these are the most common
"entry-level" problems and there's nothing wrong with that. People who have
enough experience at human relationships (because they're old enough) won't
use Google to solve their problems, don't you think?

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joe_the_user
Actually, both partners want both. Perhaps there's a little more emphasis with
women on the partner side but "last longer in bed" was also among the choices.

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mahmud
You know, this is the second story about Google auto-completion this week. The
behavioural economists have jumped on the Ajaxian/ReadWriteWeb/SmashingMag
bandwagon memes.

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berlinbrown
Try wife and husband ... "how can i get my wife to shut up"

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silentbicycle
I'm guessing that one pairs with, "how can I get my husband to stop
drinking"...

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joe-mccann
Reading "Predictably Irrational" now and it is a truly fascinating book. This
is a good laugh, but the book offers more useful data and insight.

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swombat
I wonder why the font on the middle line is slightly off...

<http://skitch.com/swombat/nqhn8>

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timb
Because OS X tries to compress letter spacing before cutting the line off.

<http://imgur.com/cyTjS.png>

See what happens when I resize this window? The text gets squished before it
gives up and shows the "..."

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swombat
Wow, very interesting. Thanks for the explanation!

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PanMan
Nice post, but I get different results: For the boys (girlfriends) :
<http://skitch.com/panman/nq5d5/google>

For the girls (boyfriends) : <http://skitch.com/panman/nq5d2/google>

Seem to be bore in sync..

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binarycheese
<http://i49.tinypic.com/nogciv.png>

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j_baker
I'm surprised no one's pointed out the obvious. It's difficult to pull any
interpretations out of this based on gender. Remember, there are girls who
have girlfriends and boys who have boyfriends too.

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ptn
You can get a couple more if you drop the "to":

How can I get my gf

and

How can I get my bf

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slig
How can I get my parents works too.

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nostrademons
I had it autocomplete [how can i get my par] and most of them were sensible
suggestions, until it got to [how can i get my parakeet to eat my diarrhea].
WTF?

