- by Owen Morton
Good morning. Now, stop reading this article. Instead, open another internet explorer window, and type in 'www.googlism.com' in the address bar. Use that website at the same time as reading this article, so you know what I'm talking about.
I was reading the Times yesterday. (I only started reading the Times because of Su Doku, a jolly fun number puzzle, I'm sure you all agree.) In the Times, I was referred to a website called 'Googlism', which allows you to type in anything, and it'll tell you - in short sentences - what the internet thinks about it. I was dubious, to be honest, and moreover I didn't quite understand what it did. But I tried it out just now, and was impressed at such a stupid website.
If you type 'He-Man' into your Googlism page, as I did (not because I'm obsessed or anything, of course, but purely as a matter of experimentation), then you will find a list of things on the internet about He-Man, ranging from the mundane 'He-Man is what I grew up with' and 'He-Man is back on the Cartoon Network', through the mildly interesting or confusing 'He-Man is a friend' and 'He-Man is not dead in our eyes', all the way to the immensely bizarre items such as 'He-Man is arrested for murder', 'He-Man is a pimp and he's coming back' and the absolutely intruiging 'He-Man is wat mijn vriendjes en ik naspeelden op de speelplaats', which I suspect may be in a different language.
Googlism is clearly a very useful tool. I can find out what people are saying about me ("Sorry, Google doesn't know enough about Owen Morton yet"), my girlfriend ("Sorry, Google doesn't know enough about Kate Brasher yet") and even my website ("Sorry, Google doesn't know enough about Heath the Rat yet"). The picture I'm getting from my four experiments is that Google doesn't know about anything except He-Man.
Let's try my old friend Andrew Pearce. This is encouraging. It's taking a little while to load. It's finished now, and it's come up with a few pieces of information, all of which seem to indicate Andrew has done rather well for himself - "Andrew Pearce is a founder member of Inkfish Call Centres Limited", "Andrew Pearce is Director of Operations for Telewest Carrier Services", "Andrew Pearce is a systems technologist at computer sciences corporation in Wollongong" and, of course, "Andrew Pearce is the man with the answers". But we knew that already.
The point of Googlism, or so I understand, is that you can look up anyone you like and get a bit of information about them. Perhaps if you're trying to sell something to them, you can find out the best way to do so. The problem is, there doesn't seem to be any way to distinguish between which Andrew Pearce is which. I'm willing to bet that not all of the Andrew Pearces I found out about are the same person, and I'm fairly sure that none of them is my old friend, unless he moved to Wollongong without anyone being aware of it. (Where is Wollongong, anyway?)
Googlism claims to look up things as well as people. I tried 'fish', just for the sheer hell of it, and found out that 'fish is dead michael salinger beep hello?', 'fish is fun', 'fish is waiting for you ten salmon' and 'fish is not a fish'. Call me stupid, but I can't see the use in this.
It does places. I looked up my home town of West Bridgford and discovered that, 'West Bridgford is 600 yards on your left', 'West Bridgford is endeavouring to raise £20' and that West Bridgford is currently at stage 5'. All very interesting. I wonder what stage 5 means, why the denizens of my town are finding it so hard to raise £20 between them, and whether it's always 600 yards on your left, wherever you are and whichever way you're facing.
Googlism can also do dates. I looked up my birthday and found nothing remotely amusing about it. But this would seem to be an exception. The point of Googlism, I am coming to realise, is that it's funny. What it does is lift pieces of text about something out of their webpages and thus out of their context. Who knows what was originally meant by 'fish is not a fish'? More than likely it is part of a sentence like, 'Contrary to popular belief, the spizzlefish is not a fish.' But on Googlism, we can have a brief laugh about something which would ordinarily not be funny. It's a pretty entertaining website, for that very reason.
Though I suspect that 'fish is dead michael salinger beep hello?' would be fairly amusing in any context.