By Reid Rosefelt
One of the most stunning achievements of the Internet is the speediness with which it can spread misinformation, stupidity and lies. There have been dummies since the dawn of time, but they have previously lacked the technology to unleash the virus of their brainlessness to untold millions with the swiftness and ease we enjoy today. There is no way that so many seemingly sentient people could believe that the President of the United States wasn’t born in the U.S. if it wasn’t for the power of the web. Even as big a blowhard as Donald Trump would not to be able to accomplish this without the Internet.
And now we have Graph Search. As I wrote last week, Graph Search has the potential to do enormous good, but quickly I realized that it would also be another force for the triumph of stupidity in the modern world.
As I was turning in my blog copy, a guy named Tom Scott put up a Tumblr blog, “Actual Facebook Graph Searches,” which quickly went viral. Scott searched things like married people who like Prostitutes, current employers of people who like Racism, and more disturbingly, family members of people who live in China and like Falun Gong and Islamic men interested in men who live in Tehran, Iran. Gizmodo also found people who announced on Facebook their liking for “Shitting my pants,” and Mashable used Graph Search to suggest that People Who Like Honey Boo Boo Like Playing Dragon City, Musicians like to play Tetris Battle, Apple Employees listen to David Guetta, Google employees listen to Pink Floyd, and Mashable readers like “Inception.”
