Those Mysteries, Eurovision Edition


I spent most of yesterday watching Twitter friends, none of whom know each other, talking about Eurovision. And that was fun. Since I wondered why Australia was in it I went to DuckDuckGo because yeah, I’m that kind of guy, and started asking the question. This led to this fine selection of autocompletes:

DuckDuckGo autocompletes for 'why is australia'.
Related queries: why is there France? Why is there Spain? And why am I here and why is there rain?
  • why is australia called the land down under
  • why is australia called oz
  • why is australia a continent
  • why is australia in eurovision 2015
  • why is australia not an island
  • why is australia dangerous
  • why is australia so expensive
  • why is australian dollar falling

I appreciate the joy of that sixth one particularly. Anyway, it seems that Australia was in Eurovision 2015 because everyone involved thought that would be nice. And then they were brought back in 2016 because everyone figured that worked out so well last time why not do it again? There are much worse reasons for everything everybody does.

My love mentioned getting the Eurovision question as an autocomplete after just entering “why is au” on Google. So I thought to try it on DuckDuckGo and while Eurovision didn’t turn up, “why is autonomy important” did. This suggests DuckDuckGo’s user base is much more likely than Google’s to be a bunch of Intro to Philosophy students cramming the night before finals.

DuckDuckGo autocompletes for 'why is au'.
I never heard of Austin and Ally so at least I’m not broken up over its ending. I had expected “Au the symbol for gold” to be on the list.

Also there’s people who had to look up why Australia would be called Oz, because apparently they’ve never said the word “Australia” aloud in their lives? I don’t know either.

Author: Joseph Nebus

I was born 198 years to the day after Johnny Appleseed. The differences between us do not end there. He/him.

3 thoughts on “Those Mysteries, Eurovision Edition”

  1. Actually, the answer given in interviews by the team who moderated the contest, at least in the feed sent out over here in gutenberg land, is that soon, perhaps even next year, they want to do an Asian version of the show, staged in Australia, and the year or two after, one in the US. THEN, they will stage a Universe Song Contest. Like the Miss Universe pageant.
    Be still my heart.
    Ps From my stand point as a musician, who videotaped it, then gave each act thirty seconds before moving on, since my voice students always have questions, the best thing about it was the satiric bit in the middle where the moderators tell how to win the contest- ie an ancient local dressed in quaint clothes playing a bizarre instrument no one knows, then add Japanese ritual drummers, and a dj who scratches, fireworks, costumes no one understands ….

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