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Romanians are Smart or How to Change the Google Autocomplete Suggestions
- igul222 14y agoThe problem with this is that, unlike traditional Googlebombing which relies on lots of links to a certain page, "Romanians are smart" will quickly drop off the search suggestions as soon as this campaign loses popularity. Gaming search suggestions requires constant upkeep effort.
- __float 14y agoIs this really a problem though? It would seem "Romanians are ___" is a rare search term as it is--the negative terms are likely old and low-frequency, especially in comparison to this recent surge in positive queries.
- igul222 14y agoThis specific instance might not be, but search suggestions could become as problematic as search results. Try "Rick Santorum is ____".
- zackattack 14y agoThat's if you're competing in your own niche. What if you wanted to positively influence the search results that came up for your company? "igul222 i buy so much in a year that i want a discount" "igul222 write testimonial" "igul222 frequent buyer program" "igul222 secret promotion"
- hinathan 14y agoI had no idea Romanian looked so much like Latin, at least for that trivial "Romanii sunt" clause.
- maaku 14y agoRomanian is a latinate/romantic language, like Italian, French, Spanish, or Portuguese... but for some reason it never gets listed with the others. Relevant linguistic map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Romance_20c_en.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Romance_20c_en.png
- riffraff 14y agocause people have been exposed to spanish, portuguese, french and italian all their life and noticed the similarity, while few heard spoken romansh, romanian or ladino. Romania (and moldavia) were behind the iron courtain until yesterday. Also, as an italian, while i find it possible to understand written romanian, it's much harder to understand it spoken, as the slavic pronounciation is very different.
- lucian1900 14y agoOn the other hand, Romanians often find it very easy to understand Italian, more so than most other latin languages. I know I do, I can watch Roberto Benigni films and mostly understand everything, without ever specifically learning italian (but Italian/English subtitles do help).
- mc32 14y agoAnother Romance language I found out about that exists unexpectedly in Eastern Europe is Aromanian. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aromanian_language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aromanian_language Most other Romance languages are regional languages in a Major romance language dominated area (such as Occitan/French, Catalan/Spanish). This one, on the other hand, is a romance language surrounded by Slavic and Greek languages.
- cristianpascu 14y agoThe moment this campaign started, I felt it was unnatural. Just drive through the center of Bucharest once, and you'll see just how smart Romanians are. I'm not one of those that feel like that they don't belong to this country, but we still have a long way to go. Funny thing is that even romanian searches would yield 'Romanians are rude' and similar suggestions. Cause we are, just like other nations around us from the former communist countries. After aprox. 50 years of living under constant pressure that what's yours will be taken away, now everyone sees everyone as a potential threat. It's our/their blood. And it'll take a while until things will change. They're changing, but I'm not sure campaign like these will make a big difference.
- pbz 14y agoThe problem with Romanians (imo) is low self esteem and negative self image. Like you said, after many years of psychological abuse it's hardly any surprise. If they could only see their potential ... unfortunately, most times you have to be unplugged from negativity to see the positives.
- rdtsc 14y ago> The problem with Romanians (imo) is low self esteem and negative self image Hmm interesting. I always thought them to be smart and persistent, rather than having "low self esteem". Romanian programmers are one of the best out there. But they also create some of the worst viruses as well. Maybe years of being bullied and managed by everyone creates a distrust of any laws or authority. But I still don't see the negative self image thing though...
- pbz 14y agoMy comment was about the population in general. They focus on the negatives (perceived poverty, perceived lack of culture, perceived mediocrity, etc) while ignoring the positives. Similar to how an above-average looking girl beats herself down because her nose is not perfect, or something else trivial, while ignoring and downplaying anything nice or even extraordinary she may have. Programmers, working usually in a global market, are more aware of their standing, and hence have a better self image.
- nullflux 14y agoI'm going to ask the dumb question that the article doesn't explain: why do people hate Romanians so much? I've never found Romanians awful people. Is this just more ethnocentric rubbish and typical hostility toward Eastern European immigration?
- StavrosK 14y agoAs a Greek, no idea. If anything, I'm positively predisposed towards them.
- vixen99 14y agoIn the UK at least, they get a bad press.thanks to the criminal element who find lucrative pickings in Britain.Go to a popular newspaper such as the Daily Mail, search and count the negative stories and you'll soon have your explanation.
- almost 14y agoPlease don't go the Daily Mail for anything more than an idea of what small minded scared bigots we English sometimes can be.
- moilolita 14y agoUK and other western countries were sitting ducks in the face of the eastern european gipsy invasion and their supernatural ability to exploit the social protection programs and other benefits. And now all the romanians take the blame. I'll retract my stereotypes when you will show me one gipsy having a real job.
- duskwuff 14y agoI can only speak to my own experience: I used to hang out in #linux on Undernet in the early 2000s. There were a lot of Romanian users on the network at the time, but basically every one of them that joined the channel was showing up to ask about something sketchy (how to hack a server, how to use a proxy, how to delete/disable logs...).
- 14y ago
- igul222 14y agoAlso interesting is that the campaign chose "Romanians are smart", when they could have used much more positive phrases like "Romanians are friendly". Typically being "smart" is a stereotype already well-covered by too many other ethnicities (primarily Asians).
- spyder 14y agoThis campaign doesn't change the reason why peoples are searching for bad things about Romanians. It's just fixing a symptom but not the source of the problem.
- ocdprogrammer 14y agoAnd you have a solution for this "problem" ?
- JacobAldridge 14y agoYes and no - I'll often note what Autocomplete prompts when I'm doing a search. Negative autocompletes may impact my perception of something when doing a related search (say, "Romanian holidays" and at "Romanian" autocomplete throws up some of the negative terms in the OP). So it lessens the spread of those negative terms. As you point out, of course, it doesn't change the (far more important) source issue of people believing those stereotypes before going into Google.
- armandososa 14y agoI tried with a bunch of nationalities and every one returns equally negative results for "[Nationality] are". I don't know why people get so upset about stereotypes. I bet almost every one is stupid/lazy/ugly by the opinion of random strangers in the world.
- riffraff 14y agothe opinion of random _dumb_ strangers. And the phenomenon is not limited to nationality: the first suggestion i saw once for "how do i" is "how do i google something". We must all remember that not only the rest of the world have stereotypes, they are also on average dumb (and that we are rest of the world to most people).
- ocdprogrammer 14y agoIn order to understand why romanians take this so seriously, you need to understand the context. Romania is an ex-communist country from eastern Europe and is widely regarded by the western Europe as poor and corrupt. On top of this, Romania has the largest Roma minority in the region ~500.000 according to wikipedia.org/wiki/Roma_(Romani_subgroup). There is a lot of confusion regarding the terms: romanian, roma, romani. In the last 20 years there were several waves of romanian immigrants hitting the western europe, including the Roma minority which are highly nomadic by tradition and very visible in the west because they beg and steal aggressively and live in slums in very primitive conditions. This lead to the association romanians = gipsies, thiefs, primitives etc. The current campaign is a response to these stereotypes, which unfortunately are easily promoted in western europe especially since western mass media can't pick on blacks and arabs anymore cause that's clearly racist and open racism is not trendy anymore.
- uriloran 14y agoPart of the problem is that humans tend to focus on negative things. If you make something wrong, theres always some person there to point his finger at you, if you make something great, you don't always getting praise for it. It's the same with your memories, you tend to remember bad times more and longer than good times.
- zby 14y ago
- dgquintas 14y agoFor what it's worth, "romano" means Roman in Spanish. As in, an inhabitant of the city of Rome, both in the classical and modern senses. The proper Spanish term would have been "rumano". I guess the guys over at the Italian capital are happy about the free compliments
- ubernostrum 14y ago"People called Romanes, they go, the house?"
- Tangurena 14y agoFor those who don't get the reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIAdHEwiAy8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIAdHEwiAy8
- drKarl 14y agoFirst of all, as dgquintas pointed out, los romanos son (Spanish) is wrong, as this means Romans are. The correct term is Rumanos. Secondly, google autosuggest is not necessarily smart... try writing "I hate it when". Finally, I think prejudices against romanian people are based on the fact that an important part of romanian inmigration into european countries is composed by gipsy romanians, which sadly tend to beg for money, steal or perform other crimes (not all of them, of course, it is a generalization based on what people see and perceive themselves). But of course, only a small portion of romanian people are romanian gipsies...
- JoachimSchipper 14y ago"The stereotype that (group) is (bad) is completely incorrect! You see, only (subgroup) is (bad)."
- rdtsc 14y agoOne thing I'll say about Romanians is that I noticed they distrust each other, or they are just not friendly towards each other. For example I've noticed how the immigrant community acts and while other communities opt to stay together, mingle and be friendly with each others, Romanians abroad don't give a hoot about other Romanians, they are willing to integrate into the local culture as fast as possible and forget about other Romanians.
- alexseman 14y agoAs a Romanian myself, yes you are mostly right. But another thing to notice is that most of the Romanians that leave the country aren't well... the cream of the society so to speak :).
- ovi256 14y agoThat's not an accurate view, brain drain is a real problem for Romania. While the phenomenon of Romanian manual labourers crowding Spain and Italy is well known, and oh so stereotyped by local media, there's a lot of emigration of highly trained (or soon to be highly trained) engineers and researchers to Western Europe and the US. But these people tend to be cosmopolitan and blend in extremely well, so they don't raise awareness of Romanians among foreigners. And precisely this is the second focus of the campaign: raising awareness that there are a lot of emigrated high-achieving Romanians, quietly blending in.
- moilolita 14y agoWhile I agree that romanians integrate easily into the local culture (especially when the local culture is italian, french, belgian or spanish) I don't fully agree that romanians distrust each other completely :D. There are 3 classes of romanian immigrants that don't mix with each other: 1.The engineers, medical workers (doctors & assistants) and programmers: These are the silent romanians, one barely notices. 2.Construction workers and other low paid workers: These are the generic romanians and 3. The romanian gipsy group composed of organized beggars, pimps, prostitutes and thiefs = the bad romanians. When I hear someone talking romanian outside of romania, I try to classify him, and if he belongs to 3, I stay as far away as posible.
- nsns 14y agoObviously no "people" are smart or stupid or anything else. You can only generalize like this if you don't know many of them, and so such generalizations are always a mark of ignorance, never of true knowledge. This is not only true for human users, it seems also true for the current state of the net. It should always be remembered that the internet doesn't encompass the entire world, far from it, it is still a playground for a very limited elite, with certain views and perceptions (just recall for example how many people around the world don't even have a bank account, they are many, but are seldom heard on the net). I've googled certain cultural terms from different societies, and at times couldn't find anything or could only find extremely limited information, because these themes were outside the scope of the usual demographics of internet users. This of course is rapidly changing, with net use going the way of mobile phone use. And I guess a general adoption of the net will also mean English will lose its hegemonic place.
- runningonempty 14y agoI was born in Moldova. When searching for "Moldovans are" I get...biggest drinkers. Maybe I should start a similar campaign...
- vlasta2 14y agoIt is interesting that none talk about this being spam, the "suggestion box spam". Would spamming the web with "romanians are smart" actually change something? Isn't this the actual non-working method that spammers use? Instead of building good "content", they just pretend to...
- ovi256 14y agoThis is supposed to correct a perception problem. Of course Romanians are not perfect, but we're working on that :)
- JonnieCache 14y agoMy favourite was when it used to complete "chinese people are" with "aliens." extremely odd. I also enjoyed it recently when the top result for "define an english person" was the wikipedia article "cunt." That one smacked of deliberate organisation. Anyway, aren't the search autocomplete suggestions based on the distribution of n-grams in google's index, as much as in the search terms?
- jim-greer 14y ago> I also enjoyed it recently when the top result for "define an english person" was the wikipedia article "cunt." That one smacked of deliberate organisation. The funny thing about some of these is that they become victims of their own success - the bomb doesn't work now because all the results are for blogs, reddit, etc talking about the bomb. > Anyway, aren't the search autocomplete suggestions based on the distribution of n-grams in google's index, as much as in the search terms? My wife would know for sure, but I believe it is more based on search volume. When you type "hacker news" you get: hacker news search hacker news mobile hacker news api Pretty clear that it's getting those from search volume, not n-grams.
- andyking 14y agoI regularly do a Google search for "Ofcom MCA maps", a rather specialist subject that takes you to the following page that's impossible to find on the website itself: http://www.ofcom.org.uk/static/radiolicensing/mcamaps/MCAs.htm http://www.ofcom.org.uk/static/radiolicensing/mcamaps/MCAs.h... When I first searched on this, Google didn't suggest it at all, and the page itself was half-way down page 1. Now, it's up there at the top (even when logged-out). I can't imagine very many people search this term--so I can only assume my regular searches have pushed it into the search engine's consciousness.
- DanBC 14y ago[Ukrainians a] gives a few negatives. But, weirdly, [ukrainians are] autosuggests [iranians are] in the first few positions with ukrainians down the list. I didn't submit feedback.
- andersh 14y agoApparently I am racist, mean, cheap and British.
- aufreak3 14y agoTyping "google is" brought up "google is evil", "google is watching you" and "google is racist" ... among "google is awesome" and "google Israel".