The algorithm giveth, and the algorithm taketh away.
Last week, we reported that our own star reporter Mr. Sato had become the literal face of sexiness on Google. By sheer luck, a co-worker had spotted Mr. Sato’s mug after googling the Japanese word “ikemen”, which in Japanese means “hot guy” , especially one with delicate and slim features.
This was surprising since most people would figure Mr. Sato fell more on the “macho” end of the spectrum, but this particular photo had been taken in 2011 when he was just a virile cub reporter. It also appears to have been doctored by an eye-stretching ikemen app of some sort.
Still, a win is a win, and Mr. Sato wasted no time lording this honor over all the other men in the office, such as his big-headed boss and French-fry-box-shoe-wearing colleague.
However, during one of his frequent egosearches Mr. Sato was devastated to find that he was no longer a Google-certified ikemen. Instead the results were the same lineup of doe-eyed, tussled-hair youngsters that one might expect from such a search.
Even worse, not only was he not “the ikemen” anymore, he wasn’t even “an ikemen,” according to the search results. His face had been completely purged from the system.
Had he just been knocked down to the second row of image results he could still say, “Yeah, I used to be first but you know how competitive the ikemen world is.” But now without any trace of him among the results, any effort to tell people he was once Google’s No. 1 ikemen will be met with an uncomfortable nod and smile as the other person thinks up an excuse to leave.
Mr. Sato didn’t suspect human interference by a jealous Google employee, since a search for “Hidenori Sato” still yielded a slew of his images.
Furthermore, his co-worker Seiji Nakazawa had been crowned the face of baldness last January by Google and he’s only slightly lower on the list now.
▼ December 31, 2019
▼ July 31, 2020
It was all a serious blow to Mr. Sato’s self-esteem, but in the end he knew that it was better to have been an ikemen and lost it than to have never been an ikemen at all.
Google’s search results work in mysterious ways and if you ever end up in its cross-hairs just hope its for a good reason like Mr. Sato briefly experienced. I, on the other hand, appear when you google both “cracker” and “wasp” which can be really worrisome depending on the intentions of the person searching those particular words.
Photos ©SoraNews24
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[ Read in Japanese ]