The Disinformation Of Modern Life.

[gordo12]

I have used the OLD term "wail like a banshee" many times. (EDIT: The actual term was Wail of the Banshee. My mistake. It misled a lot of responders) My wife asked what it actually meant. I told her what I remembered but went into Bing to check my memory.

Like so many other common words or expressions, the term has been co-opted by a game, and now the results read like a fan page. Nothing to do with the original meaning at all. (Your search results may differ.)
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For anyone young enough not to remember the original source of things, they'll be left with a distorted view of reality.

Having seen the problem more times than I can count lately, it's apparent that popular is winning over right in the search engines. Thus providing a distorted view of society and life.

Am I alone in not liking this?

 

[RejectReality]

Google and Bing both give me the definitions from various sources, idiom references, and then folklore. Zero gaming content on page 1 despite me watching a lot of gaming content on YouTube ( which certainly influences Google results ) and visiting a lot of gaming websites regularly.

My Bing is fairly pristine, as I rarely use it or Edge. Edge is used to keep Dark logged in on Lit, for my website's back end, and that's about it. Bing doesn't have much history to draw from, where Google is getting the constant synonym searches and such, which would naturally cause the dictionary sites to top out as they do.

 

[ElectricBlue]

My search engine (Bing) brings up pages of dictionary definitions and crossword clue solvers, all of which reference the Irish legends, so not quite sure what you're seeing.

I guess you're talking about the aggregation of cultural references by the same few organisations, coupled with several generations with information at their fingertips. I think the same process - a distillation of cultural history into "classics" - went on back in the day, just much slower, and led by critics and academics rather than popular aggregation. It's not so much disinformation, more a glut of information.

Music, for example - decades of classic rock recordings as defined by Rolling Stone magazine, New Musical Express, Melody Maker and so on. Movies defined by the high end film journals rather than Rotten Tomatoes. Literature by a coterie of influential reviewers rather than Amazon sales.

Nowadays, you just need a better bullshit filter because it's all coming at you faster, but it's the same process. Gold still gets recognised because it glitters, and crap still floats to the top.

 

[lovecraft68]

Anything I want to seriously know about I'll buy a book on the subject or(gasp) hit the library seeing I live about a mile from one.

I refuse to let corrupt big tech tell me what things mean. At this point they-and the politicians they serve are rewriting US and world history and the search engine Alexa generation are too stupid to question anything on the interwebz.

 

[NotWise]

I entered "wail like a banshee," and Google's first link was the entry on Dictionary.com, which gave the definition and origin of the term.

 

[KeithD]

I entered "wail like a banshee," and Google's first link was the entry on Dictionary.com, which gave the definition and origin of the term.

Same here. Original usage first listed.

 

[gordo12]

I draw spell casting in various references which all boil down to points in Warcraft. It's midway down page two before you see the Irish legends and after that Dictionary.

Google and Bing both measure clicks of reference sources and use that info as part of their ratings. Thus tons of clicks on game references vs the small amount on the legend or dictionary would produce what I'm seeing.
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I'm Googling "WAil of the Banshee" for the term. "Banshee Wail" gets somewhat different results with the legend and dictionary showing up halfway down the first page.

Go google APPLE. Every result but one is about the company rather than the fruit. Popular over Right!

 

[gordo12]

Sorry, I typed in the wrong term in the first paragraph. Wail of the Banshee was the term I used. When I use wail like a banshee I get Dictionary results 3 & 4th however all the rest of the results are related to Crossword puzzles

 

[HordHolm]

Go google APPLE. Every result but one is about the company rather than the fruit. Popular over Right!

I just did the search out of curiosity. The first entry for fruit came on page 8.

 

[gordo12]

I believe Wail of the Banshee was the term that used to occur in literature!

 

[jaF0]

It isn't just that. I've searched for all sorts of things like movie quotes or song lyrics and I usually get some remake or modern version instead of the old/classic/original version.

Sometimes you have to be pretty specific to find what you're looking for. There are some things I can't even find anymore even though I know they're out there.

I've even tried looking up old store names that were once sort of well known and found them hard to get details on.

 

[MadeleineSinha]

Go google APPLE. Every result but one is about the company rather than the fruit. Popular over Right!

Surely google results are based on Internet hits, apple the company is as accurate an answer to the search term 'apple' as apple the fruit.
If you searched Pink Lady or Granny Smith and were pointed to apple.com you might have a point.

 

[NotWise]

Surely google results are based on Internet hits, apple the company is as accurate an answer to the search term 'apple' as apple the fruit.
If you searched Pink Lady or Granny Smith and were pointed to apple.com you might have a point.

Entering "define apple" (without the quotes) gives you links to information about the fruit.

 

[HordHolm]

Surely google results are based on Internet hits, apple the company is as accurate an answer to the search term 'apple' as apple the fruit.
If you searched Pink Lady or Granny Smith and were pointed to apple.com you might have a point.

The results will also be a result of who has paid Google a crap ton of money for preferential positions in the search results. I doubt many orchard owners can stump up the same as Silicon Valley...

 

[gordo12]

Surely google results are based on Internet hits, apple the company is as accurate an answer to the search term 'apple' as apple the fruit.

Is it an accurate answer?

Over the last twenty years, businesses and wannabes have co-opted terms like that rather than inventing their own.

Let's say Apple the fruit gets 100,000 searches a day. You choose to call yourself Apple, whatever your product is. Gradually, as your business builds, those 100,00 searches become potential customers for your product, rather than building from scratch. Be successful enough, and you become the defining term.

It's cheap advertising in the long run.

But in the meantime, the original term has disappeared under a deluge of social media and advertising unrelated to its lost meaning.

To kids nowadays probably identify with apple the product line more than apple the fruit.

 

[MadeleineSinha]

The results will also be a result of who has paid Google a crap ton of money for preferential positions in the search results. I doubt many orchard owners can stump up the same as Silicon Valley...

How would a fruit farmer benefit from being further up the search results than a tech company?
If you search for ‘apple orchards Cupertino ‘ the top answer is Yamagami’s garden centre
That’s a more likely scenario than confusion because some hypothetical questioner gets misled into thinking apples don’t exist.

 

[gordo12]

How would a fruit farmer benefit from being further up the search results than a tech company?

If I was an apple distributor or supermarket I'd go looking for orchards. The higher ones would be the ones I'd call first.

If you search for ‘apple orchards Cupertino ‘ the top answer is Yamagami’s garden centre
That’s a more likely scenario than confusion because some hypothetical questioner gets misled into thinking apples don’t exist.

Precisely what I'm talking about. Some business, a garden centre that probably sells individual trees for landscaping, has co-opted that term for themselves. I doubt they're central to the overall apple business.

BTW I get different results including yellow pages and a nursing home!

I should also point out that you're not searching for apple but apple with some other defining terms.

 

[HordHolm]

How would a fruit farmer benefit from being further up the search results than a tech company?
If you search for ‘apple orchards Cupertino ‘ the top answer is Yamagami’s garden centre
That’s a more likely scenario than confusion because some hypothetical questioner gets misled into thinking apples don’t exist.

But the essential point is that the peculiarities of search engine results can skew our understanding of the world. The fact that companies pay to be advanced in search results also has the potential to skew our understanding of the world.

I am not likely to think apples don't exist, and neither is anyone else. It is merely a flippant indication of the relative importance of commercial considerations on search engines.

 

[NotWise]

I should also point out that you're not searching for apple but apple with some other defining terms.

If you don't give a search engine enough terms to define what you want--and one word is probably never enough--then the search engine will fill in the blanks any way it wants.

Try "apple fruit" without the quotation marks if you want to know about the fruit and/or its sources. Otherwise, they'll expect that you're looking for something about the company.

 

[gordo12]

Try "apple fruit" without the quotation marks if you want to know about the fruit and/or its sources. Otherwise, they'll expect that you're looking for something about the company.

Because after hundreds of years of being about the APPLE the fruit, it now has to be about a company?

Let's not get fixated about Apple either. It's just one term in thousands that have been co-opted like this.

It's about disinformation. Historical terms are hijacked by businesses to the point that the original meaning is being lost or difficult to find.

Bought Windows lately? The first page results that don't relate to Microsoft are paid ads.

Been an Explorer? The first page results belong to Microsoft and 1 to Ford.

 

[gordo12]

If you don't give a search engine enough terms to define what you want--and one word is probably never enough--then the search engine will fill in the blanks any way it wants.

I'd also point our you need to know enough about the subject ahead of time to add defining terms. If you don't...

 

[jaF0]

Duck the Goo!!!

Just Duck it Baby!!!!

 

[jaF0]

Spread the Duck kinda sounds wrong on Lit, but could we all strive to be Mother Duckers.

 

[jaF0]

Howard!!! The Duck!!

Duck You too.

 

[gordo12]

And the first post in this thread provides a perfect example of people providing 'Disinformation'; based on the first reactions, I'm not the only one who assumed it was a search using the query "wail like a banshee" that led you to those game-websites.

No, that was clearly my mistake in not copying the search term directly here. I searched for something and went from memory. Duh! In fact I should edit the post to prevent further confusion.