View from the North 40: Maybe read books - not minds

Back in the dark ages when I was young and the internet wasn’t even a twinkle in Al Gore’s eye, my contemporaries and I would imagine what it would be like to read people’s minds.

We were convinced it would be awesome to the nth power, even though many smart people who studied human behavior — like psychologists, sociologists, secret service interrogators and moms — all said that knowing what people are truly thinking is really not a good thing.

We dismissed their warnings. We wanted extra sensory perception to learn everyone’s secrets, to get the answers to all the tests at school, to get that someone to like us, to understand people in general and, admittedly, to mess with them, too.

We were pretty sure the naysayers just didn’t want us reading their own minds, or want us to have special superpowers and be wildly awesome.

Now, the modern technology of the internet has ruined everything. It has proving that we can know what people think, but also that, tragically, the naysayers were right — we really don’t want to know. It’s better if we don’t know.

The real estate site Estately.com did an elaborate and exhaustive study of the questions that haunt people in each of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia. To narrow the search they compiled a list of hundreds of the most common Autocomplete questions.

This means that they got on the internet, asked Google vague question starters like “What is,” “How do,” “Will,” “Who,” “When” and others. Google automatically completed the sentences in a multitude of ways based on what people have been searching for. Some examples for “What is” came out as: What is zika? What is a mullet? What is spirituality? What is anarchy?

They compared the top questions — hundreds of them — to state-by-state statistics about internet search trends, then assigned each question to the state where that question was asked the most.

Basically, they asked the internet to tell them what people are thinking about, and the internet said people are amazingly multifaceted and frightening and disappointing idiots.

You can see the whole list by state here: blog.estately.com/2016/05/you-wont-believe-the-questions-each-state-googles-more-than-any-other-state.

It was hard to chose what to focus on, but here are a few interesting ones.

Surprisingly sane Arizonans wanted most to know about vetoing bills, hominy, minimum wage and computer speed. Don’t let this lull you into a false sense of security, though.

I present the questions of West Virginia: Are zombies real? Who invented the internet? Who died? Who is Donald Trump? How to lose weight? What is normal? What is pansexual? When is Cinco de Mayo? Is Facebook down? How to last longer in bed? Where is Chuck Norris? Why is there a leap day? Why are cats afraid of cucumbers?

Hawaiians wanted to know the meaning of life. Indiana wants to know if aliens and Bigfoot are real and if midgets have night vision, while Iowans want to know if penguins have knees.

Kansasans had only two questions: What is Syria? and How to make meth? Georgians are curious folk with a slew of questions that run the gamut from Who created God? to How to become a stripper?

If those don’t scare you enough, the folks of Michigan want to know where Canada is, apparently unaware that it is right next door to them. Always has been. Contrast that with Montanans wanting to know how to move to Canada. And the Minnesotans whose only question was: Is funner a word?

And if Estately was handing out an award for biggest existential crisis, it would be co-awarded to the people of Virginia, who don’t seem to understand their state’s motto so asked Why is Virginia for lovers?, and Wyoming, where residents asked one question most: What is Wyoming?

Now? I am officially cured of any desire to read minds.

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I also officially want information on how to un-know things like the fact that the state of Georgia has a statistically relevant number of people who want to know why their nipples are sore. Don’t ask me. I obviously don’t have a clue what people are thinking at [email protected].