So I started wondering, how do Americans really think about “those people” in other states? What are the most common stereotypes? For each of the fifty states and DC, I asked Google: “Why is [State] so ” and let it autocomplete. It seemed like an ideal question to get at popular assumptions, since “Why is [State] so X?” presupposes that X is true.

Gizmodo picked this up:

More: http://gizmodo.com/5935190/this-map-of-the-united-states-of-america-shows-all-the-stereotypes-of-states-with-google-autocomplete

A map of American state stereotypes, generated by Google autocomplete.

Brilliant! Adam has also been doing a fair amount of research lately using Google Autocomplete.

I like how Pennsylvania and Connecticut are considered to be haunted!

I love Google Autofill.

It's hilarious that the values of X that I see most often are: boring, hot, humid, expensive, and racist.

Why would anyone Google why [State] is so boring???

This reminds me of the "how can u" vs "how can an individual" autofill experiment.

Brilliant!

This story was also mentioned here:

http://pandawhale.com/post/17150/this-map-of-the-united-states-of-america-shows-where-the-most-cragslist-missed-connections-happen-in-each-state