As reported by The Atlantic Cities, Keir Clarke has been building a Yahoo! Autocomplete Map, showing search suggestions when you type in a city, state or country. The results range from funny to random, often a pretty choice insult: “New Jersey is a dump,” “Delaware is the worst state,” “Louisiana is a third world country,” “Philadelphia is ugly,” “Detroit is crap,” “Washington is Hollywood for Ugly People,” “Chicago is so two years ago.”
Then there are the few positive ones: “”Wisconsin is awesome,” “West Virginia is the best Virginia,” “Virginia is for hustlers” (as is Colorado), “Charleston is always a good idea,” “Des Moines is not boring,”
And the head scratchers: “Tennessee is nice but it ain’t Texas,” “Arkansas is the only state,” “Oklahoma is closed,” “New Mexico is stretching,” “Portland is leaving,”
Some other great ones: “Iowa is too white,” “North Dakota is a myth,” “Idaho is stupid.” “Wyoming is not real,” “Florida is sinking,” “South Carolina is too small to be a republic,” “Oklahoma City is going on a diet.”
Overall, it doesn’t say much for our collective empathy for our fellow human beings, but let’s just blame it on the algorithms.
Going international, there’s “France is bacon” (??!!), Wales is crap,” “Poland is not yet lost,” “Denmark is a prison,” “Italy is racist,” “Kazakhstan is the greatest,” “North Korea is a joke,” “Japan is weird,” “Saudia Arabia is evil,” “Iraq is in what country,” “Australia is boring” “Brazil is here foals.”
We also decided to pull a few more localized Yahoo! autocomplete results for the boroughs of New York City:
Play more with the Yahoo! Autocomplete Map! See more maps in our Fun Maps Column.