Google autocomplete results have already been the source of many poignant memes and listicles scattered all across the Web.
However, this project takes it to a different extreme and is likely to cause more painful grins than happy smiles.
Brazilian copywriter Tiago Abreu and art director Linus Oura joined their talents and initiated a thought-provoking awareness project titled People Are Equal. Inspired by Google’s autocomplete functionality, Abreu and Oura wanted to explore what information people search on other cultures.
What they found was not pretty. At all.
‘French are … rude / famous for / beautiful.’
“Google’s auto-complete feature gives suggestions based on the most frequently performed searches. When we search for any nationality on it, most of the results are prejudices,” Abreu and Oura explain on their website.
Startled by people’s negativity towards each other, they decided it’s no longer appropriate to sugarcoat it — on the contrary, it is time to address the issue in a rather daring kind of manner.
‘Chinese are … rude / coming / cruel / smart.’
Abreu and Oura invited a bunch of photographers from all over the world to contribute portraits of people of different nationalities and then paired them with the most common results from Google.
When put all of these photographs side by side to send an incredibly powerful message.
You can see the negative, demeaning search terms repeat themselves regardless of the nationality. Judging by this, pretty much the entire world is racist and rude. But is it really so?
‘Germans are … smart / cold / aryans / known for.’
‘Americans are … brainwashed / spoiled / ignorant / I hate Americans.’
‘English are … German / rude / reserved / the best.’
‘Brazilians are … annoying / not Latinos / not Hispanic / white.’
‘Ugandans are … romantic / the laziest in East Africa / lazy / beautiful.’
‘Russians are … the scariest white people / the black people of white people / idiots / tough.’
‘Estonians are … slow / racist / rude / known for.’
‘Indians are … rude.’
‘Japanese are … weird / rude / Chinese.’
‘Hungarians are … Mongols / racist / Turks / from Mars.’
‘Swedes are … boring / racist / cold.’
‘Australians are … weird / idiots / lazy / racists.’
‘Polish are … tall / rude / known for / taking our jobs.’
‘Cubans are … arrogant / annoying / racist / white.’
“We are not trying to prove anything, but to make people think about how the world is filled with hatred and prejudice,” Abreu and Oura told A Plus.
“At the end, there are no lazy, ugly or stupid people. We just need to realize that we are simply … equal.”
