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singerji's review
2.0
The collection of funny auto-complete entries from Google is somewhat amusing, more so for teenagers than adults. Some parts are humorous, some sad, some thought-provoking, and some just strange. It's not good for reading in order, more for dipping into random spots and reading out loud to a crowd.
otterno11's review
funny
fast-paced
3.0
A mildly amusing book, Autocomplete: The Book puts to print some of the absurd autocompletes supplied by Google searches in response to what is popular at any given time (this makes the book dated almost immediately, though may provide an interesting record of what was on people’s minds in the late 2010s). All in all, though, it’s nothing too deep.
Originally compiled for Justin Hook’s online game Google Feud, of which I had not heard, the suggestions can be, by turns, humorous, disturbing, or just plain weird. In Google Feud, you are tasked with guessing the 10 most popular suggestions supplied by Google for the second half of a google search, “Sports are…” or “Why can’t I…” for instance. In The Book, we are simply given lists of these suggestions without context, along with some fun cartoons illustrating some of the more bizarre ones. While it may be all just for fun, this leaves the book feeling a little autocompleted itself.
Without commentary, any analysis is left to you. It could be helpful to annotate what exactly is meant by things like “what is better... pubg or fortnite” or “I mistook... my wife for a hat.” Thus, it is unclear if the compilers are aware that the latter is a paraphrasing of the name of a well known work of nonfiction by Oliver Sacks and not some particularly random trending topic. But would that be explaining the joke too much? Still, Google is such an omnipresent force in the media, these autocomplete suggestions may be influencing how people are viewing the world, so maybe I can’t help but read too much into it.
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