
People Searching for "Cancel Google" End Up on Wrong Page, Add Comments - stakent
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2010-02-13-n77.html
======
_delirium
The comments he quotes sound most likely to be fake rather than genuinely
confused people. "I got the Internet from my dad so I can get the pokemons" is
the sort of thing an internet denizen is more likely to say sarcastically,
than an internet newbie is likely to say genuinely.

~~~
jcmhn
I remember seeing that page the other day during the RWW facebook thing and
being pretty sure it was going to fill up with those sorts of jokes.

Real users are way funnier than troll-wannabes could ever be, because they
sometimes manage to mangle and misunderstand things in a way that reveals that
they live in a completely different universe than you do.

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GloryFish
Searching for "cancel google" brings up <http://cancelgoogle.com> for me.
Looks like a mix of legit, fake, and non-native English speaking responses...

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jrockway
If this isn't an argument for removing commenting capability from all blog
software, I don't know what is.

~~~
kl4m
We should remove commenting capability here as well while we're at it!

~~~
jrockway
There's a difference between sites designed solely for commenting on arbitrary
articles, and comments sections tacked on as an afterthought.

Have you ever seen an intelligent, multi-comment discussion in blog comments?
What about here? That's the difference.

~~~
mlinsey
Yes, frequently, especially attached to intelligent blog posts! For instance,
good, well thought-out articles linked here have insightful comments that
sometimes people even point out here.

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diego_moita
Amazing! If true, this and the similar article about Facebook login
(<http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/11/facebook-login>) are mind
openers. Pure gold.

~~~
ubernostrum
"If true"?

OK, I've held off for a while, but...

If you know that your browser has a box into which you can enter an address,
and use it regularly for that purpose, you're in tiny, tiny, _tiny_ subset of
all web users. Ditto for knowing what a "web browser" is (in the abstract
sense, not in the sense of "the Internet button, that one that looks like a
blue E".

If you know that there's such a thing as a "secure connection" to a web site
(knowing the name "SSL" or not), again you're in a very small subset of users.
If you also know which user-interface cues your browser presents to show you
when you're using a secure connection, shrink that subset significantly
further.

I could go on and on about this, but hopefully the point is clear: the way you
use the web is not the way most people use the web. They're not "stupid" or
"idiots" or "illiterate" because of this, they're just people who've never
_had_ to learn these things. And the disconnect between what various small
subsets of the population do, and what everybody else does, is one of the most
important things you can know about in this business; if you don't understand
how the rest of the world surfs, you'll never be able to effectively reach
them.

(and don't even get me started on how this informs successful business
decisions made by companies which HN readers regularly vilify...)

