Down East 2013 ©
Blogger and venture capitalist Renee DiResta recently moved from New York to San Francisco and started wondering how people across the United States viewed those from other states. To answer her question she plugged into Google the question "Why is [state] so" and let the search auto-complete. DiResta recorded the top four suggested ways to autocomplete the question and posted the results on her blog No Upside. [1]
The most common results for Maine were: Boring, Cold, Liberal, and Poor. That may seem harsh, but other states didn't fare any better. Oregon is: Liberal, Weird, Rainy, and Boring, while Louisiana is Hot, Poor, Humid, and Corrupt. A total of eighteen states were labeled as boring by Google search, and apparently Connecticut and Pennsylvania are haunted.
10 of 12 adjectives used to describe states were negative. However, when we plug into Google "Maine is the" the first auto-complete suggestion that comes up is "Best State." So we may be cold, rainy, liberal, and poor, but Google says we're still the best.
(via Bangor Daily News [2])
Links:
[1] http://blog.noupsi.de/post/28896819324/why-are-americans-so
[2] http://bangordailynews.com/2012/08/15/news/the-fattest-boringest-and-most-racist-states-according-to-you/