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punkscowardschampions · 5 years

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Ali & Carly

Ali: this is why i don't wear shoes Ali: i have lost one??? Ali: rescue it if you see it Carly: what do they look like Ali: just a kinda tan sandal thing Ali: just a penneys special so not the end of the world, should chuck the other one so someone can have the pair Carly: come & bring me food & then youll be here to reunite them Carly: but yea k will lean out my door & see if its there Ali: love the enthusiasm, babe 😜 Ali: can feel your come down from here Carly: dont barely remember the come up Carly: wtf happened last night Ali: not in a much better position myself but uhm Ali: mayhem, that's for sure Ali: i think you might've gone home with the wrong cousin Carly: shit Carly: my bad Carly: better read my txts Carly: who did you go w ? Ali: didn't go that far with anyone Ali: 💍 remember and such a 😇 Ali: ronan was in a mard though and i weren't up for listening to that so 🤷 Carly: aw Carly: sorry baby i'll calm him down Ali: it's chill 😂 bless him Ali: no need on my account tho i'm sure he'd be down, despite protests otherwise Carly: my inbox is Carly: cba w this rn Ali: oh baby, want a bacon sarnie and a secretary? Carly: yea Carly: gonna throw my phone w your shoe Ali: i woke up to a mystery dickpic on my phone Ali: is it rude to ask which one it belongs to because lads, sorry, not that memorable that i'm picking it out of a line-up Ali: you'll know, been more recent, i'll come over with food and lucozade for real and ruin your day with that lovely image and the actually rather creative sexts that went with it Ali: 10/10 for effort, sir Carly: cant put it on the cv or school report but my memory for 'em is good Carly: if ive seen it i'll id it Carly: ill laff if its the large ginge cousin whose name i never got Carly: sounded like a cough Ali: that's a talent and if the man can't see that, fuck him Ali: and his job in tescos, like Ali: i mean, shouldn't have a preference but i hope not 😂 Ali: soz honey but Carly: thanks baby Carly: I hope its that token english Carly: he was fit Ali: can reply if you like Ali: worse ways to waste a sunday morning than messing with boys Ali: sounding like a priest Ali: oops Carly: ha Carly: i found some fucking funny vids of us so maybe the phone shouldnt go out window before youve had a look Ali: yes, i need to see that Carly: [sends her fave of the vids] Ali: aww Ali: we're fun drunks Ali: love that for us Carly: yea Carly: im a messy bitch tho Carly: no wonder i went w the hero cousin Ali: meh, things happen at parties, everyone knows that Ali: not like you're proper attached is it Ali: though he's gonna be annoying now probs but day in the life when you're irresistible, yeah? Carly: youd know babe Carly: he wont be on site long never is Carly: so idc Carly: saved me for a nite boy youre welcome Ali: duh Ali: hottest couple in town Ali: one for the wank bank anyway Carly: yea & he is fit Carly: give him that Carly: esp when i dont understand what hes saying Ali: the best kind Ali: a boy you don't have to speak to 😜 Ali: if that's all it takes like, whip out the Gaeilge Carly: youve got the giggles but yea Carly: true Carly: but on site id just have all the oldies chatting at me if i could Carly: not trying to make them go weak Ali: they ain't daddies? boo 😥 Carly: some got many kids but thats it Carly: say something to me then Ali: [sends voice memo, probably has dirty words she'd recognise from site life and lots of loling] Carly: k Carly: so hot Carly: if your gf is mad at me for stealing you last nite you can smooth things over w her like that Ali: might have to Ali: though it ain't you she's 😤 with Ali: poor ronan, shoulda done more than snog him if she comes for him, not even worth it for that Carly: ill protect him when he lets me back near Carly: cant stay mad at this Carly: sure your girls the same Ali: She's mad 24/7 babe, just gotta hold on, like 😂 Ali: we want different things now but that's not a convo for this morning like jesus Carly: whos got the energy Carly: cba w angry Carly: yea you want a sarnie Ali: exactly, and i wanted to have fun last night but may as well have said i want his dick in or around my mouth k bye babe Carly: ha Carly: that would be fun tho Ali: tell that to past you, dashing his threesome dreams like 🤷💔 Carly: still time Ali: not me you need to promise baby Carly: yea but id rather talk to you Ali: 💚 Ali: you cute Carly: all you Carly: how you look so good coming from band? wtf Ali: psh please Ali: it was all about you 🙇 Carly: if that was true why is every memory i got from last nite just you Carly: facts Ali: had to get you away from that mirror somehow, like 😉 Ali: it was fun Carly: ha Carly: cuz your talents got me like Carly: yea it was Ali: helps when the canvas already beautiful babe Carly: aw Carly: youre sweet Ali: 🍓 Carly: gonna make me cry Ali: don't cry lil one Ali: the bacon is coming Ali: got roped into doing a shady kid swap, where is my ma, take this demon child Carly: you can bring him if you want Carly: ill put clothes on before Ali: cockblocked again 😉 Ali: nah, he needs to go get shoes Ali: ironically and unlucky, twat Carly: what size is he Carly: i can ask around when i look for yours Carly: lads flog everything and anything here on sundays Ali: his feet are big man Ali: he's only little but he's lanky af, unlike me Ali: that's fun tho Ali: imma go shopping Carly: aw Carly: yea wish i was taller Carly: ffs ma and da Ali: literally Ali: least neither of my sisters are model tall or i'd be more raging Ali: we make it work, babe Carly: & i dont have any sisters Carly: well done on that one tho ma & da Ali: speak for yourself Ali: i'm gutted Carly: oww Carly: trying to replace me like the vows were no thing Ali: you know you're my one and only Ali: but a woman got needs Carly: thats what your gf is for Carly: no Ali: yeah but i'm allowed wishful thinking too Ali: damn Carly: ive given you the mental image of me naked Carly: what more you need Ali: are you jealous of your hypothetical sister? Carly: yea if you like her more Ali: aw baby, 'course not Ali: she's a ride, yeah, but bit of a bitch too, like Carly: ha Carly: takes after our ma like Ali: sadly, straighter than you Ali: 👎 Carly: like theres a ranking Carly: just straight or not yea Ali: I mean, it is a scale but I'm not gonna try and bond with your Ma giving her the test for it, like Ali: could we tie her down for a sec, obvs Carly: hit her when shes washing up Carly: takes long Ali: okay, i'll dry 😉 Ali: what an offer Carly: trying to make me vom now Carly: take crying or blushing over Ali: soz babe Carly: her & my da dont fuck but still dont reckon youre her type Ali: don't know what's worse, that, or knowing they do Carly: im good w them not Carly: sound carries Carly: no secrets in the caravan Ali: sure there's a toilet block they could go to Ali: keeping it sexy Carly: sure my da's there doing his cry wank Carly: while my ma checks the talent Carly: we got that to look forward to in our marriage in a few years Ali: who's scouting who's cranking Ali: because frankly, i refuse either Carly: im the biggest slag so probs me Carly: sorry Ali: and I'm not Ali: igloo sisters how many times now?! 😂 Carly: ha Carly: but youre loyal Carly: me and my ma dont kno the meaning like Ali: am i Ali: you miss the part when i got on ronan Carly: o yea Carly: i forgot Ali: idk what i'm gonna do about that Ali: instant gameover but its literally so irrelevant Carly: hes a ride Carly: you should be excused for it Ali: she's a 6 on that scale, yeah, massive gay Ali: so she ain't seeing that, never mind the other shit Carly: shit yea Carly: dont tell her Ali: does that make me the worst? Ali: i should hm Carly: hes not gonna speak to her Carly: and if he brags you can call it that Ali: Yeah Ali: I don't know Carly: its that or tell her Carly: & say youre sorry Carly: we were all wasted Carly: not like you have feelings for him Ali: You're right, obviously Ali: like that's the truth but yeah Ali: might leave it unless I need to go there Ali: soz God, swing by confession later Carly: tell her youre a bi cliche Carly: she'd love it Carly: use the scale Ali: she would tho Ali: validate everything she's ever sneaky or not so thought about me Ali: soz, i need a constant stream of p n v or i die Carly: a girl has needs Carly: what am i a 1? Ali: its like dis Ali: 1- all straight 2- mostly straight but lil gay 3- equal/bi 4- mostly gay but still lil into opposite 5- total gay Ali: but not gonna resist the urge to tell you you a 10 Carly: 🥇 Carly: i like that you're 3 tho. 3's a lucky number Ali: and a magic one 🔮 Carly: yea cuz youre magical Ali: believe it baby Carly: i do Ali: right, finally leaving, be like 10 Ali: doing the opposite to a walk of shame rn, strutting back in like what's good Carly: you gotta Carly: own it baby Carly: havent found your shoe tho sorry Carly: maybe ronan took it cuz he loves you so bad Ali: 😂 oh my god Ali: like a horny puppy Carly: yea Carly: building a shrine to you rn probs Ali: or he wanna play cinderella Ali: such a ridiculous fairytale, as far as they go Carly: how wasted was the prince that he cant remember what she looks like Carly: k been there but not trying to wife anyone Ali: right?! also, sure plenty of bitches a size 5, like??? Ali: was it a magic shoe Ali: no explanation, frankly Carly: yea like me and you have the same size Carly: ill take your prince for a ride bitch Ali: 😂 Ali: he cool with that Ali: that's the tea Ali: boy gives no fucks, long as it ain't a man in drag Carly: he hasnt met your brother tho Carly: boy looks good Ali: eww Ali: stop that thought right there Carly: dont get jealous Carly: not gonna go there Ali: not jealous, but repulsed 😷 Carly: k babe Carly: if you say so Ali: trust, you wanna see jealous you'll see it soon enough if you go there Ali: 😂 bea don't fuck about Carly: have to go for one of your other hot brothers Ali: trying be my sister in law and wife Ali: kickin it country Carly: you kno Carly: been on site too long Ali: forreal, not gotta hang with the traveller lads that hard baby Carly: after last nite not gonna be hanging w them for a while Ali: let 'em fight it out amongst themselves Ali: defs for the best Carly: yea Carly: hide w me babe Carly: gonna be so bored Ali: gonna Ali: i'll peep their wares another day Ali: not a euphemism Carly: sounds dirty tho Ali: yeah, regretted it as i said it but hey Ali: love me a sale and a gypsy boy Carly: no regrets boo Carly: they love you too Carly: esp whoever send the dick pic Ali: the real mystery Ali: soz everyone else with your drama but we gotta know Carly: i do need to be knowing Carly: thats my wife lads Ali: awh you gonna defend my honour n delicate sensibilities Carly: yea Carly: youre an angel Ali: you're so cute Carly: its you Carly: my parents came back Carly: gonna have to run Ali: oh no i am en route Ali: where you going boo Carly: i'll catch you and we can find somewhere theyre not Carly: ha church Carly: can you eat there cuz im not looking to die for jesus Ali: yeah for sure, not in the pews like its the cinema, like Ali: can go park if you wanna Ali: or up the mountain if you can hack it, like Carly: youre so smart Carly: like your mouth Carly: but yea Carly: date time Ali: awh yeah Ali: this picnic ain't goals i'm so sorry babe Ali: least the weather's looking up Carly: idc Carly: get to be w my boo Ali: 😍 Carly: i look crazy Carly: havent got dressed faster w out getting fucked before since idc Carly: idk Ali: i like crazy Ali: and beside me you'll probs look totally normal 😉 Carly: you look hot every day baby Carly: facts Ali: all these compliments got me feeling 🔥 obvs Carly: thats how i want it Ali: gonna have you flying high too Ali: top of the world, baby Carly: aw Carly: whats in the food like Ali: 😂 Ali: just faith n trust n pixiedust, of course Carly: you can snort pixiedust yea? Carly: k Ali: you gon' be mad when i've got nothing but sandwiches and half a donut Carly: nah Carly: cant be mad at you Carly: too cute Ali: and donuts are life Carly: true

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tumblunni · 7 years

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Mannnnn I just cannot get over how many great well-developed relationships there are within the Rune Factory 4 cast! Its just great how much all the different love interests interact with each other outside of their romance route, and how all the non-romanceable characters are still an equally big presence by being family/mentors/employers/best friends/etc to the love interests and to each other and everyone has a job role in the town and they have so many great interactions and just GAHHHH its so great!! Its like one big family made of families made of families then you marry into the family and the family and also the family perhaps. THEN YOU HAVE A CUTE CHILD. aaaaaa

Anyway.. umm.. lol... Yeah THIS IS BUNNI JUST FLAILING AT HOW GREAT THE GAME IS

ALL THE FAMS:

Ventuswill the mentor lady best friend/team mum/LITERALLY THE GOD OF THIS COUNTRY AND A GIANT DRAGON man i just cry forever for her aaaa Everybody’s own unique love for her, and how she kinda unites us all as a family aaaa The butler family coworker trio who met each other because of her! I really like to see it as clorica and vishnal having a brother sister relationship, they dont get any particular big scenes together but they just seem to be such cute friends who never have any of the rivalry you’d expect when theyre both competing as volkanon’s students. VOLKANON IS LIKE YOUR GRANDPA AND HE IS THE BEST CHARACTER The whole restaurant fam! You get to see it expand as the story goes on! And aaaa its just so heartwarming that porcoline adopts all these random homeless people and aaaa!!! DYLAS LEARNED TO COOK. THEY ALL LOVE THEIR STUPID TWIRLY GOOFBALL DAD. And its so nice that these very different personalities end up coming together and being like siblings when they probably wouldnt have befriended each other if not for this random stroke of chance. Its just so cute seeing margaret looking out for her new brothers, and dylas being so polite and formal to arthur, and arthur just being all ‘haha i dont know anything about having a loving family what a rare novelty’ *constantly crying inside* And they bicker sometimes and when they team up theyre a super powerful force, and theyre all like the parents to porcoline’s childishness and aaaaa super talented restaurant fam, super colourful quartet of hugs aaaa THEY ARE MY FAVOURITE OKAY And Forte + Kiel adorable siblings with the unique plot and semi tragic aspect of living alone together at a young age and each trying to take the place of their deceased parents and protect each other And then Bado is like their weird adoptive uncle who’s lived next door since back when their parents were alive, and promised to keep them safe. but he’s kind of a wreck of a man who’s perpetually messing up his silly get rich quick schemes but DEEP AT HEART HE CAAAAARES! but still he is kind of a mess and would probably turn up drunk on their couch half the time. i love him he reminds me of sirius black if he ate del boy from Only Fools And Horses to absorb his strength And then there’s Illuminata who’s like Bado’s evil twin kinda?? They should have more interactions, theyre the bad influence grownups duo XD And I just love the underrated relationship between her and her ‘sidekick’ amber, and how she’s kinda like a big sister who doesnt wanna be called one. I totally only have you here to serve my nefarious purposes! Umm, I mean, my purposes of justice!! And then she’s often playing the cool big sis to all the various female characters in the town, even though at the same time she’s also part of the ‘adults who need a mom friend’ group XD I think margaret and forte actually win the crowd of the true mom friends even though theyre not the oldest (I also like that they have an unlikelu friendship together, though i wish if margaret is allowed to have a canonical gay crush then why isnt she allowed to be a gay marriage option...) And then Lin Fa and Xiao Mei kinda dont stand out as much cos theyre more of a very normal mother and daughter, beyond Lin Fa just being this spacey super nice but super clumsy person. She’s not quite the funny parent-child like porco and co, but she’s funny in her own way cos of how cheerful and positive she is about all her failures. Xiao Mei got all the common sense! Its also nice and cute how Xiao Mei is physically clumsy but super competant and mature, while her mum is perfectly elegant yet completely scatterbrained. And they’re both totally huggable, Xiao Mei dont be jealous that everyone has crushes on your mum! I feel so bad when she’s all ‘i’ll never succeed cos i cant be cute in the same way as her’, as if there’s only one definition of feminine beauty or whatever. CAN YOU NOT SEE YOUR MUM HAS FLAWS TOO. you are powerful togetherrrrrr! i am just so envious seeing these characters with supportive mums that’re like their best friend and they can talk about everything together ^_^ And then there’s the doctor family with the super lovey dovey married couple of funnyness and mushy mush, and they adopt some orphans too~! EVERYONE ADOPTS EVERYBODY: THE GAME. I love seeing the cold and distant Dolce warm up to them and regain her faith that she wont be hurt if she loves someone again. Also Pico is very cute and hilarious! Even if again I get very annoyed at this game having so much queerbaiting, lol. I kinda laughed at the wiki saying dolce and pico were ‘like sister’, i mean seriously?? Pico is like your typical ‘looks like a child but is really 100′ love interest and dolce is the poor harem show protagonist who never asked for this XD I do like though that even if it seems dolce very much doesnt requite pico’s feelings, theyre still best friends either way. Pico’s super comedic flirting attempts seem to come off like she’s completely aware that dolce doesnt love her back, and she just wants to make some humour out of the situation to let dolce know she still cares about her even if they’re never gonna date. Its nice, we dont often see relationships like that in fiction, a childhood friend who confess a crush, gets turned down, and it actually ends positively and they remain friends. Its just a shame it had to be like... one of the few openly LGBTQ characters in the game, and nobody is ever allowed to date anybody or have a happy ending or be a romance route or even mention the word gay, even as theyre constantly being incredibly vocal about how its canon these characters have crushes on each other. gahhhhh. I mean we literally have doug and dylas proposing to each other and confessing their love but LOL HA its just a ~wacky misunderstanding~ but btw lets just rub it in that they are VERY MUCH intended to be seen as gay by the audience but theyre not ~really~ gay even when we say they are and GAHHH okay sorry im getting offtopic now :P Anyway its really sad that Pico is stuck as the same unchanging ghost child while her best friend grows up and marries someone else. And man, she had to spend all those years guarding monster form dolce until someone was able to free her, and we dont even know how pico died so her life could have even more tragedy in it. After all that I guess its a relief that she can be this comic relief jerk-with-a-heart-of-gold manzai duo partner to dolce and also like the freeloading friend on her metahphorical ghost couch. And its nice how much the doctor couple completely accept ‘dolce’s friend’ and are some of the few people who never remotely worry about her haunting the town. And then AAAAA there’s the four guardians themselves who’re like a family cos they were all people who were like family to ventuswill in different time periods, and then met each other for the first time when they were purified from their monster forms and bonded over how much they all love the same friend. And theyre such a badass quartet of cool monsterfolks!! And I like that they have lil relationships inside the quartet, like how dolce and amber are polar opposite sunshine and grumpiness but dolce secretly likes her a lot more than she lets on, and how leon likes to tease dylas but also kinda be his wingman. And I like how leon takes this role to a lot of the other batchelors too, he’s this totally shameless frat boy big brother figure XD “HEY PROTAGONIST DO YOU WANNA HEAR ABOUT DOUG’S SEX LIFE” And then aaaa doug and granny blossom AAAAAA granny blossom is probably the character who gets the least scenes, backstory, and general focus, but I still love her a lot. And they have a good dynamic together! I like that it starts off seeming like just a completely normal grandma granson relationship, but then you learn later that he’s adopted, and that he actually began as a spy for the evil empire who realized the error of his ways after infiltrating the town and finding so much love inside it. And then he’s just so scared cos blossom’s illness might bring her to an early grave, and he’s always being disobedient and rebellious because he wants to do anything to protect her even if she tells him not to put himself at risk and AAAAAA

why are there so many amazing fams and theres even so many small hints of characters who maybe only interact once or twice and then there’s room to headcanon even more fams and AAAAAA and the protagonist’s place in the complex web of fams is up to you to decide!! ITS LIKE EVERYTHING I EVER WANTED IN A GAME

oh and randomly I liked that xiao mei’s father isnt a major character in the game, but there’s not any tragic reason or anything. he’s just a travelling merchant and lin fa is very accepting of her husband being gone off on trips for long periods of time, she has every confidence he will never stray away from her and she supports him pursuing his travelling dreams! and also it was funny how his one brief appearance has him with the generic traveller 3d model, to point out how much he isnt a main character compared to his wife XD and it was just really cute how happy everyone was when he visited, and how the player accidentally helps improve their family business! and aaa the backstory story about arthur’s mother is SO DAMN SAD, and dolce’s biological parents who she left behind when she sacrificed her life, and just AAAAA even the tiny one-line-only minor fams are such quality fams FAMS GAME REVENGE OF THE FAMS

#bunni plays rf4 #please someone shut me up

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trendingnewsb · 7 years

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How Mad Men Star Kit Williamson Made His Own Gay Soap Opera

The problem, says Kit Williamson, is that EastSidersthe Emmy-nominated LGBT soap opera he created in 2012almost shares a name with EastEnders, the well-known BBC soap opera currently in its 32nd year.

And so when Williamson recommends people check out his drama about handsome LGBT Los Angelenos living, loving, screwing up, and doing what people on soap operas are wont to do, they end up going down totally the wrong rabbit hole on YouTube, and finding instead a group of East Londoners doing their own variation of the same, if at a much louder volume.

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My recommendation: Watch both.

Season 3 of EastSiders, released on Nov. 28 digitally and on DVD, takes the shape of a cross-America road trip, complete with stunning skies and endless horizons, beginning with Douglas/Gomorrah Rey (played by Willam Belli) having a blow-up row in full drag and 116-degree heat beside the side of a highway, as his boyfriend Quincy (Stephen Guarino) tries in vain to pacify the situation.

Bellis heels melted in the heat, and Williamson, 32, directed the action clad in cooling wet towels. The glamor of independent web TV, he says, laughing.

Williamsons character, Cal, and partner Thom (Van Hansis) are heading back west after their sojourn in New York City, and have an encounter with a drifter played by model and porn star (and Donald Trump supporter) Colby Keller. Also returning for the third season are John Halbach, Williamsons real-life husband, and Constance Wu, Williamsons longtime buddy, as straight couple Ian and Kathy. (To confuse you even more, a leading mother-son duo in EastEnders is called the same.)

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I wanted to create characters that I didnt really see on television, Williamson, who played Ed Gifford on Mad Men, told The Daily Beast. I think you see a lot of cautionary tales in LGBT representation and then hyper- morally-upright representations. Youre either in a couple, living in the suburbs with 2.5 kids, or youre a drug addict in the 1980s. Its rare that LGBT characters are allowed to operate in between, like all human beings operate.

Williamson is heartened by the growing diversity of representation in the TV shows of Shonda Rhimes and on cable, and hopes his EastSiders characters have flaws, make messes, and pick up the pieces, just like straight characters on TV.

EastSiders has been mostly financed through Kickstarter funding, raising $250,000 across three seasons. The third season is also partially funded by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation and Impulse Group Global, and the show incorporates both organizations safer sex messaging.

Its incredibly moving, says Williamson of the publics generous financial support for the show, which makes him even more determined that the show does its fans justice. EastSiders aims to be as culturally mixed as a small cast and limited number of episodes can allow. Inclusive storytelling should be everybodys goal, says Williamson.

If Williamson has a dream, it is that one day television will be able to sustain having two LGBT-themed shows on at the same time; or even that there will be LGBT lead characters on TV, whose sexuality or gender identity is part of their identities, rather than defining them.

Until that rainbow shines, we have a smattering of characters and shows like Queer as Folk, The L Word, and Looking, which flicker into life, cause their controversies and debates, then go. The capriciousness of LGBT representation on our screens is down to the capriciousness of mostly straight-run broadcasters.

Hansis himself found fame as Luke Snyder on CBS daytime soap As The World Turns, as a landmark gay character whom fans clamored to be allowed to kiss his boyfriend, Noah (Jake Silbermann). (Oh, have you seen their horsing-around towel wrestle? You must see the towel wrestle.)

EastSiders refers geographically to the parts of East Los AngelesSilver Lake, Los Feliz Echo Park, DTLAwhere the characters live, a boho-y, very different sort of vibe to the muscle boys of West Hollywood, although (as their social media accounts reveal) the extremely handsome and charming Williamson and Halbach look just as hot as any WeHo guy.

Some scenes in the show are filmed at the mens home, and looks attractively ruffled and laid-back, filled with vintage furniture, mismatched cushions and twinkly lights.

Williamson had problems getting straight actors to play gay when EastSiders first began, even though there were no sex scenes in the first two seasons. Any show with gay content is immediately presumed to be exploitative, Williamson notes.

The road trip of Season 3 was filmed on the road itself, with cast and crew starting out in Woodstock, upstate New York, and ending up in Los Angeles, trundling across the vast expanse of America in a vintage camper trailer and another vehicle.

It took two weeks, with an extended stay in Idaho to scout locations and shoot scenes. It was exciting, invigorating and harrowing, says Williamson, laughing. Its no small undertaking taking two carloads of people across the country, and making sure theyre in bed at a reasonable hour.

The team ran afoul of a runaway tire that put a dent in the camper early on. They were snowed out of Yellowstone National Park. They shot on the fly, and in some places permits allowing them to film were withdrawn when it was revealed that it was a gay-themed TV show.

We started telling places where we wanted to film that it was called Go West, and just said it was about two friends driving across the country together, Williamson says.

The Black Hills of South Dakota were especially breathtaking, he says. You owe yourself ten minutes off the main drag to see the Badlands (National Park in South Dakota). I could have explored it all day if I had the chance. I am a huge lover of mountains. Even though it was terrifying driving that fucking camper trailer up and down mountains it was still breathtaking, even if I nearly killed everybody two or three times.

Williamson concedes that he is biased about California where he lives, but recommends the eastern part near Nevada for that big sky feeling, and that moment you get to the coast after weeks on the road to arrive at the Pacific Ocean and put your feet in the sand. It felt like a cool homecoming for the characters and the crew.

It was a really challenging place to grow up gay, and I also grew up very religious which didnt help matters.

Williamson himself grew up in Mississippi, where the countrys most anti-LGBT law, HB 1523, has just taken root. He is surprised as to how little attention the law has garnered nationally, compared to the outcry over similar laws in North Carolina.

I think a lot of people write off Mississippi as a lost cause, says Williamson, who emceed a Pride celebration there two years ago. I understand why, but its still sad to me as a person who grew up there. I really want people to understand there are great people living in Mississippi fighting for their own rights and fighting for their neighbors.

There was a lot of homophobia when he was growing up, says Williamson. It was a really challenging place to grow up gay, and I also grew up very religious which didnt help matters. It was definitely a challenge for my family to understand me.

His whole family are employed in the area of law, and he surprised all of them by wanting to act. They were supportive of me, even if part of them thought Hell get over this eventually and enter the family business. I tell them, One day Ill play a lawyer on TV. Thats all I can guarantee.

As a boy, Williamson was a big nerd. I read a lot of fantasy novels. I had a mullet. I was very socially awkward, and it was difficult at school to be friends with other people. It was really hard for me. I knew I was different, I didnt know why. I was savagely bullied as a kid, people were terrible to me.

Williamsons older sister modeled herself on the cult animated character, Daria. I thought the way you handled bullies was being sarcastic and funny, he says. It didnt turn out well.

He and Halbach once compared notes on childhood bullying. I was Gay Kid and he was Gay Boy. We both had really unoriginal bullies. Williamson laughs softly. Little did they know that Gay Kid and Gay Boy were going to get together.

I didnt really think growing up that it would be possible wed have gay marriage nationally, he adds. To be able to take advantage of it as a citizenhe and Halbach married last yearhas been so incredibly moving to me.

Williamson and Halbach met in March 2007. Williamson was then a bartender at NYC theater-land hangout Angus McIndoe, and the men were introduced by a mutual friend who told each of them separately, Hes single and not crazy. It was a perfectly judged match. That night, the men stayed talking until the bar closed.

Williamson had underplayed the significance of marriage equality because the possibility seemed so far off, he adds. When the Supreme Court ruled, it hit us both. Wed been denying ourselves something that we really did find meaningful. Im so glad we did it.

Williamson has worked successfully as a filmmaker and actor for years. Making Mad Men was a masterclass, he says, watching both those in front and behind the cameras. The sexy pictures on his Instagram account are in service of promoting his work and LGBT rights, he insists, adding with another laugh, and in shamelessly promoting ourselves. Instagram is a tool for good and evil, and we try to use it for good, for the best of possibilities.

Williamson chuckles that the idea was to use social media to direct people to EastSiders and the mens other work, promoting fashion and fitness influencers and LGBT destinations, but now people recognize him and Halbach from social media itself.

How EastSiders fans respond to the inclusion of Colby Keller remains to be seen. His scenes were shot before he revealed his support of Donald Trump.

I was really surprised and caught off guard when I saw that, says Williamson, who, a Hillary Clinton supporter, had been shocked when Trump triumphed in last years presidential election. I was driving to Idaho when the gay blogs erupted in fury over his (Kellers) political leanings. We did make the choice not to replace him. I havent talked to him about what happened.

When it came to keeping Keller in the season, Williamson asked himself whether he would work with Susan Sarandon, another Clinton naysayer who backed Bernie Sanders.

I think were living in really, really divided times, and I dont want to do anything to add to that divide, says Williamson. I also dont think we should be casting people out of the village. Its complicated. A lot of my family members support Trump, not for ideologically pure reasons beyond really liking the guy and what he stands for.

Keeping Kellers role in EastSiders intact presented an interesting dilemma, and I dont have the answer to it, Willliamson admits.

I ask, had he known that Keller was a Trump supporter, would Williamson have still signed him up?

I dont know. When we were planning the season we were 99 percent sure Hillary Clinton was going to be president. Faced with the reality of working with an active Trump supporter right now in 2017 my answer would be no. Its just too much of open wound for me, and friends I know who are afraid of being deported. I do think its a very serious situation.

If Hollywood is to have any leg to stand on in shaping the culture we need to own up to the abuses of power that are very real.

Williamson recently posted on social media his experience of sexual harassment when he was starting out in the entertainment industry.

At 18, he was invited to a party at an agents house. He proceeded to tell me not to come out if I wanted to be an actor, to stay in the closet, and then tried to put his hand down my pants, Williamson recalls. It was this one, two punch of harassment and homophobia that was a bitter pill to swallow, and it soured me on Los Angeles for a couple of years.

He did not suffer any graver sexual assaults, as allegedly committed by the likes of Harvey Weinstein and Kevin fucking Spacey. I think its really important we have these conversations. If Hollywood is to have any leg to stand on in shaping the culture we need to own up to the abuses of power that are very real.

What his experience also shows, again, is Hollywoods powerful gays seeking to keep the closet intact, part of a historyfor Willliamsonof different groups acting as their own morality police and oppressors.

Its very sad and true. Theres still not been a gay movie star. Look at a lot of people who have succeeded on television. Most come out after their big break. Im not here to judge: Its brave to come out at the height of your success, but in 2017 I think we need to look at the paths other people have blazed for us and be brave enough to walk down them without fear.

Next for Williamson may come more EastSiders. He is also writing a series about queer thirtysomethings set in New Orleans.

Id love to get to a place where the leads of a show can be gay where that is normal and not extraordinary, says Williamson, and where the storylines can be both unique to us and more universal in the same breath; where we are allowed to be doctors, husbands, wives, crazy, not crazy, parents, single, slutty, and settled.

The whole incredible range of human experience should allowed to be represented in LGBT characters, where we are not defined solely by our sexuality.

The open road Williamson and his crew traveled for Season 3 of EastSiders perhaps says it all.

The third season of EastSiders will be released on DVD by Wolfe Video and digital platforms on Nov. 28. More details here.

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Everybody lies: how Google search reveals our darkest secrets

What can we learn about ourselves from the things we ask online? Seth��StephensDavidowitz analysed anonymous Google search data, uncovering disturbing truths about our desires, beliefs and prejudices

Everybody lies. People lie about how many drinks they had on the way home. They lie about how often they go to the gym, how much those new shoes cost, whether they read that book. They call in sick when theyre not. They say theyll be in touch when they wont. They say its not about you when it is. They say they love you when they dont. They say theyre happy while in the dumps. They say they like women when they really like men. People lie to friends. They lie to bosses. They lie to kids. They lie to parents. They lie to doctors. They lie to husbands. They lie to wives. They lie to themselves. And they damn sure lie to surveys. Heres my brief survey for you:

Have you ever cheated in an exam?

Have you ever fantasised about killing someone?

Were you tempted to lie?

Many people underreport embarrassing behaviours and thoughts on surveys. They want to look good, even though most surveys are anonymous. This is called social desirability bias. An important paper in 1950 provided powerful evidence of how surveys can fall victim to such bias. Researchers collected data, from official sources, on the residents of Denver: what percentage of them voted, gave to charity, and owned a library card. They then surveyed the residents to see if the percentages would match. The results were, at the time, shocking. What the residents reported to the surveys was very different from the data the researchers had gathered. Even though nobody gave their names, people, in large numbers, exaggerated their voter registration status, voting behaviour, and charitable giving.

Has anything changed in 65 years? In the age of the internet, not owning a library card is no longer embarrassing. But, while whats embarrassing or desirable may have changed, peoples tendency to deceive pollsters remains strong. A recent survey asked University of Maryland graduates various questions about their college experience. The answers were compared with official records. People consistently gave wrong information, in ways that made them look good. Fewer than 2% reported that they graduated with lower than a 2.5 GPA (grade point average). In reality, about 11% did. And 44% said they had donated to the university in the past year. In reality, about 28% did.

Then theres that odd habit we sometimes have of lying to ourselves. Lying to oneself may explain why so many people say they are above average. How big is this problem? More than 40% of one companys engineers said they are in the top 5%. More than 90% of college professors say they do above-average work. One-quarter of high school seniors think they are in the top 1% in their ability to get along with other people. If you are deluding yourself, you cant be honest in a survey.

The more impersonal the conditions, the more honest people will be. For eliciting truthful answers, internet surveys are better than phone surveys, which are better than in-person surveys. People will admit more if they are alone than if others are in the room with them. However, on sensitive topics, every survey method will elicit substantial misreporting. People have no incentive to tell surveys the truth.

How, therefore, can we learn what our fellow humans are really thinking and doing? Big data. Certain online sources get people to admit things they would not admit anywhere else. They serve as a digital truth serum. Think of Google searches. Remember the conditions that make people more honest. Online? Check. Alone? Check. No person administering a survey? Check.

The power in Google data is that people tell the giant search engine things they might not tell anyone else. Google was invented so that people could learn about the world, not so researchers could learn about people, but it turns out the trails we leave as we seek knowledge on the internet are tremendously revealing.

I have spent the past four years analysing anonymous Google data. The revelations have kept coming. Mental illness, human sexuality, abortion, religion, health. Not exactly small topics, and this dataset, which didnt exist a couple of decades ago, offered surprising new perspectives on all of them. I am now convinced that Google searches are the most important dataset ever collected on the human psyche.

The Truth About Sex

How many American men are gay? This is a regular question in sexuality research. Yet it has been among the toughest questions for social scientists to answer. Psychologists no longer believe Alfred Kinseys famous estimate based on surveys that oversampled prisoners and prostitutes that 10% of American men are gay. Representative surveys now tell us about 2% to 3% are. But sexual preference has long been among the subjects upon which people have tended to lie. I think I can use big data to give a better answer to this question than we have ever had.

First, more on that survey data. Surveys tell us there are far more gay men in tolerant states than intolerant states. For example, according to a Gallup survey, the proportion of the population that is gay is almost twice as high in Rhode Island, the state with the highest support for gay marriage, than Mississippi, the state with the lowest support for gay marriage. There are two likely explanations for this. First, gay men born in intolerant states may move to tolerant states. Second, gay men in intolerant states may not divulge that they are gay. Some insight into explanation number one gay mobility can be gleaned from another big data source: Facebook, which allows users to list what gender they are interested in. About 2.5% of male Facebook users who list a gender of interest say they are interested in men; that corresponds roughly with what the surveys indicate.

How, therefore, can we learn what our fellow humans are really thinking and doing? Big data. Photograph: Thomas M Scheer/Getty Images/EyeEm

And Facebook too shows big differences in the gay population in states with high versus low tolerance: Facebook has the gay population more than twice as high in Rhode Island as in Mississippi. Facebook also can provide information on how people move around. I was able to code the home town of a sample of openly gay Facebook users. This allowed me to directly estimate how many gay men move out of intolerant states into more tolerant parts of the country. The answer? There is clearly some mobility from Oklahoma City to San Francisco, for example. But I estimate that men moving to someplace more open-minded can explain less than half of the difference in the openly gay population in tolerant versus intolerant states.

If mobility cannot fully explain why some states have so many more openly gay men, the closet must be playing a big role. Which brings us back to Google, with which so many people have proved willing to share so much.

Countrywide, I estimate using data from Google searches and Google AdWords that about 5% of male porn searches are for gay-male porn. Overall, there are more gay porn searches in tolerant states compared with intolerant states. In Mississippi, I estimate that 4.8% of male porn searches are for gay porn, far higher than the numbers suggested by either surveys or Facebook and reasonably close to the 5.2% of pornography searches that are for gay porn in Rhode Island.

So how many American men are gay? This measure of pornography searches by men roughly 5% are same-sex seems a reasonable estimate of the true size of the gay population in the United States. Five per cent of American men being gay is an estimate, of course. Some men are bisexual; some especially when young are not sure what they are. Obviously, you cant count this as precisely as you might the number of people who vote or attend a movie. But one consequence of my estimate is clear: an awful lot of men in the United States, particularly in intolerant states, are still in the closet. They dont reveal their sexual preferences on Facebook. They dont admit it on surveys. And, in many cases, they may even be married to women.

It turns out that wives suspect their husbands of being gay rather frequently. They demonstrate that suspicion in the surprisingly common search: Is my husband gay? The word gay is 10% more likely to complete searches that begin Is my husband… than the second-place word, cheating. It is eight times more common than an alcoholic and 10 times more common than depressed.

Most tellingly perhaps, searches questioning a husbands sexuality are far more prevalent in the least tolerant regions. The states with the highest percentage of women asking this question are South Carolina and Louisiana. In fact, in 21 of the 25 states where this question is most frequently asked, support for gay marriage is lower than the national average.

What do our searches reveal about us? Photograph: Michael Gottschalk/Photothek via Getty Images

Closets are not just repositories of fantasies. When it comes to sex, people keep many secrets about how much they are having, for example. Americans report using far more condoms than are sold every year. You might therefore think this means they are just saying they use condoms more often during sex than they actually do. The evidence suggests they also exaggerate how frequently they are having sex to begin with. About 11% of women between the ages of 15 and 44 say they are sexually active, not currently pregnant, and not using contraception. Even with relatively conservative assumptions about how many times they are having sex, scientists would expect 10% of them to become pregnant every month. But this would already be more than the total number of pregnancies in the United States (which is one in 113 women of childbearing age).

In our sex-obsessed culture it can be hard to admit that you are just not having that much. But if youre looking for understanding or advice, you have, once again, an incentive to tell Google. On Google, there are 16 times more complaints about a spouse not wanting sex than about a married partner not being willing to talk. There are five-and-a-half times more complaints about an unmarried partner not wanting sex than an unmarried partner refusing to text back.

And Google searches suggest a surprising culprit for many of these sexless relationships. There are twice as many complaints that a boyfriend wont have sex than that a girlfriend wont have sex. By far, the number one search complaint about a boyfriend is My boyfriend wont have sex with me. (Google searches are not broken down by gender, but since the previous analysis said that 95% of men are straight, we can guess that not many boyfriend searches are coming from men.)

How should we interpret this? Does this really imply that boyfriends withhold sex more than girlfriends? Not necessarily. As mentioned earlier, Google searches can be biased in favour of stuff people are uptight talking about. Men may feel more comfortable telling their friends about their girlfriends lack of sexual interest than women are telling their friends about their boyfriends. Still, even if the Google data does not imply that boyfriends are really twice as likely to avoid sex as girlfriends, it does suggest that boyfriends avoiding sex is more common than people let on.

Google data also suggests a reason people may be avoiding sex so frequently: enormous anxiety, with much of it misplaced. Start with mens anxieties. It isnt news that men worry about how well endowed they are, but the degree of this worry is rather profound. Men Google more questions about their sexual organ than any other body part: more than about their lungs, liver, feet, ears, nose, throat, and brain combined. Men conduct more searches for how to make their penises bigger than how to tune a guitar, make an omelette, or change a tyre. Mens top Googled concern about steroids isnt whether they may damage their health but whether taking them might diminish the size of their penis. Mens top Googled question related to how their body or mind would change as they aged was whether their penis would get smaller.

Do women care about penis size? Rarely, according to Google searches. For every search women make about a partners phallus, men make roughly 170 searches about their own. True, on the rare occasions women do express concerns about a partners penis, it is frequently about its size, but not necessarily that its small. More than 40% of complaints about a partners penis size say that its too big. Pain is the most Googled word used in searches with the phrase ___ during sex. Yet only 1% of mens searches looking to change their penis size are seeking information on how to make it smaller.

Mens second most common sex question is how to make their sexual encounters longer. Once again, the insecurities of men do not appear to match the concerns of women. There are roughly the same number of searches asking how to make a boyfriend climax more quickly as climax more slowly. In fact, the most common concern women have related to a boyfriends orgasm isnt about when it happened but why it isnt happening at all.

We dont often talk about body image issues when it comes to men. And while its true that overall interest in personal appearance skews female, its not as lopsided as stereotypes would suggest. According to my analysis of Google AdWords, which measures the websites people visit, interest in beauty and fitness is 42% male, weight loss is 33% male, and cosmetic surgery is 39% male. Among all searches with how to related to breasts, about 20% ask how to get rid of man breasts.

The Truth About Hate and Prejudice

Sex and romance are hardly the only topics cloaked in shame and, therefore, not the only topics about which people keep secrets. Many people are, for good reason, inclined to keep their prejudices to themselves. I suppose you could call it progress that many people today feel they will be judged if they admit they judge other people based on their ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religion. But many Americans still do. You can see this on Google, where users sometimes ask questions such as Why are black people rude? or Why are Jews evil?

A few patterns among these stereotypes stand out. For example, African Americans are the only group that faces a rude stereotype. Nearly every group is a victim of a stupid stereotype; the only two that are not: Jews and Muslims. The evil stereotype is applied to Jews, Muslims, and gay people but not black people, Mexicans, Asians, and Christians. Muslims are the only group stereotyped as terrorists. When a Muslim American plays into this stereotype, the response can be instantaneous and vicious. Google search data can give us a minute-by-minute peek into such eruptions of hate-fuelled rage.

Consider what happened shortly after the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, on 2 December, 2015. That morning, Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik entered a meeting of Farooks co-workers armed with semi-automatic pistols and semi-automatic rifles and murdered 14 people. That evening, minutes after the media first reported one of the shooters Muslim-sounding names, a disturbing number of Californians decided what they wanted to do with Muslims: kill them. The top Google search in California with the word Muslims in it at the time was kill Muslims. And overall, Americans searched for the phrase kill Muslims with about the same frequency that they searched for martini recipe and migraine symptoms.

In the days following the San Bernardino attack, for every American concerned with Islamophobia, another was searching for kill Muslims. While hate searches were approximately 20% of all searches about Muslims before the attack, more than half of all search volume about Muslims became hateful in the hours that followed it. And this minute-by-minute search data can tell us how difficult it can be to calm this rage.

Four days after the shooting, President Obama gave a prime-time address to the country. He wanted to reassure Americans that the government could both stop terrorism and, perhaps more importantly, quiet this dangerous Islamophobia. Obama appealed to our better angels, speaking of the importance of inclusion and tolerance. The rhetoric was powerful and moving. The Los Angeles Times praised Obama for [warning] against allowing fear to cloud our judgment. The New York Times called the speech both tough and calming. The website ThinkProgress praised it as a necessary tool of good governance, geared towards saving the lives of Muslim Americans. Obamas speech, in other words, was judged a major success. But was it?

Google search data suggests otherwise. Together with Evan Soltas, then at Princeton, I examined the data. In his speech, the president said: It is the responsibility of all Americans of every faith to reject discrimination. But searches calling Muslims terrorists, bad, violent, and evil doubled during and shortly after the speech. President Obama also said: It is our responsibility to reject religious tests on who we admit into this country. But negative searches about Syrian refugees, a mostly Muslim group then desperately looking for a safe haven, rose 60%, while searches asking how to help Syrian refugees dropped 35%. Obama asked Americans to not forget that freedom is more powerful than fear. Yet searches for kill Muslims tripled during his speech. In fact, just about every negative search we could think to test regarding Muslims shot up during and after Obamas speech, and just about every positive search we could think to test declined.

In other words, Obama seemed to say all the right things. But new data from the internet, offering digital truth serum, suggested that the speech actually backfired in its main goal. Instead of calming the angry mob, as everybody thought he was doing, the internet data tells us that Obama actually inflamed it. Sometimes we need internet data to correct our instinct to pat ourselves on the back.

So what should Obama have said to quell this particular form of hatred currently so virulent in America? Well circle back to that later. First were going to take a look at an age-old vein of prejudice in the United States, the form of hate that in fact stands out above the rest, the one that has been the most destructive and the topic of the research that began this book. In my work with Google search data, the single most telling fact I have found regarding hate on the internet is the popularity of the word nigger.

Either singular or in its plural form, the word is included in 7m American searches every year. (Again, the word used in rap songs is almost always nigga, not nigger, so theres no significant impact from hip-hop lyrics to account for.) Searches for nigger jokes are 17 times more common than searches for kike jokes, gook jokes, spic jokes, chink jokes, and fag jokes combined. When are these searches most common? Whenever African Americans are in the news. Among the periods when such searches were highest was the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when television and newspapers showed images of desperate black people in New Orleans struggling for their survival. They also shot up during Obamas first election. And searches rose on average about 30% on Martin Luther King Jr Day.

The frightening ubiquity of this racial slur throws into doubt some current understandings of racism. Any theory of racism has to explain a big puzzle in America. On the one hand, the overwhelming majority of black Americans think they suffer from prejudice and they have ample evidence of discrimination in police stops, job interviews, and jury decisions. On the other hand, very few white Americans will admit to being racist. The dominant explanation among political scientists recently has been that this is due, in large part, to widespread implicit prejudice. White Americans may mean well, this theory goes, but they have a subconscious bias, which influences their treatment of black Americans.

Academics invented an ingenious way to test for such a bias. It is called the implicit association test. The tests have consistently shown that it takes most people milliseconds longer to associate black faces with positive words, such as good, than with negative words, such as awful. For white faces, the pattern is reversed. The extra time it takes is evidence of someones implicit prejudice a prejudice the person may not even be aware of.

There is, though, an alternative explanation for the discrimination that African Americans feel and whites deny: hidden explicit racism. Suppose there is a reasonably widespread conscious racism of which people are very much aware but to which they wont confess certainly not in a survey. Thats what the search data seems to be saying. There is nothing implicit about searching for nigger jokes. And its hard to imagine that Americans are Googling the word nigger with the same frequency as migraine and economist without explicit racism having a major impact on African Americans. Prior to the Google data, we didnt have a convincing measure of this virulent animus. Now we do. We are, therefore, in a position to see what it explains. It explains why Obamas vote totals in 2008 and 2012 were depressed in many regions. It also correlates with the black-white wage gap, as a team of economists recently reported. The areas that I had found make the most racist searches underpay black people.

And then there is the phenomenon of Donald Trumps candidacy. When Nate Silver, the polling guru, looked for the geographic variable that correlated most strongly with support in the 2016 Republican primary for Trump, he found it in the map of racism I had developed. To be provocative and to encourage more research in this area, let me put forth the following conjecture, ready to be tested by scholars across a range of fields. The primary explanation for discrimination against African Americans today is not the fact that the people who agree to participate in lab experiments make subconscious associations between negative words and black people; it is the fact that millions of white Americans continue to do things like search for nigger jokes.

The Truth About Girls

The discrimination black people regularly experience in the United States appears to be fuelled more widely by explicit, if hidden, hostility. But, for other groups, subconscious prejudice may have a more fundamental impact. For example, I was able to use Google searches to find evidence of implicit prejudice against another segment of the population: young girls. And who, might you ask, would be harbouring bias against girls? Their parents.

Its hardly surprising that parents of young children are often excited by the thought that their kids might be gifted. In fact, of all Google searches starting Is my two-year-old, the most common next word is gifted. But this question is not asked equally about boys and girls. Parents are two-and-a-half times more likely to ask Is my son gifted? than Is my daughter gifted? Parents show a similar bias when using other phrases related to intelligence that they may shy away from saying aloud, like Is my son a genius?

Are parents picking up on legitimate differences between young girls and boys? Perhaps young boys are more likely than young girls to use big words or show objective signs of giftedness? Nope. If anything, its the opposite. At young ages, girls have consistently been shown to have larger vocabularies and use more complex sentences. In American schools, girls are 9% more likely than boys to be in gifted programmes. Despite all this, parents looking around the dinner table appear to see more gifted boys than girls. In fact, on every search term related to intelligence I tested, including those indicating its absence, parents were more likely to be inquiring about their sons rather than their daughters. There are also more searches for is my son behind or stupid than comparable searches for daughters. But searches with negative words like behind and stupid are less specifically skewed toward sons than searches with positive words, such as gifted or genius.

What then are parents overriding concerns regarding their daughters? Primarily, anything related to appearance. Consider questions about a childs weight. Parents Google Is my daughter overweight? roughly twice as frequently as they Google Is my son overweight? Parents are about twice as likely to ask how to get their daughters to lose weight as they are to ask how to get their sons to do the same. Just as with giftedness, this gender bias is not grounded in reality. About 28% of girls are overweight, while 35% of boys are. Even though scales measure more overweight boys than girls, parents see or worry about overweight girls much more frequently than overweight boys. Parents are also one-and-a-half times more likely to ask whether their daughter is beautiful than whether their son is handsome.

Liberal readers may imagine that these biases are more common in conservative parts of the country, but I didnt find any evidence of that. In fact, I did not find a significant relationship between any of these biases and the political or cultural makeup of a state. It would seem this bias against girls is more widespread and deeply ingrained than wed care to believe.

Can We Handle the Truth?

I cant pretend there isnt a darkness in some of this data. It has revealed the continued existence of millions of closeted gay men; widespread animus against African Americans; and an outbreak of violent Islamophobic rage that only got worse when the president appealed for tolerance. Not exactly cheery stuff. If people consistently tell us what they think we want to hear, we will generally be told things that are more comforting than the truth. Digital truth serum, on average, will show us that the world is worse than we have thought.

But there are at least three ways this knowledge can improve our lives. First, there can be comfort in knowing you are not alone in your insecurities and embarrassing behaviour. Google searches can help show you are not alone. When you were young, a teacher may have told you that if you have a question you should raise your hand and ask it, because if youre confused, others are too. If you were anything like me, you ignored your teacher and sat there silently, afraid to open your mouth. Your questions were too dumb, you thought; everyone elses were more profound. The anonymous, aggregate Google data can tell us once and for all how right our teachers were. Plenty of basic, sub-profound questions lurk in other minds, too.

The second benefit of digital truth serum is that it alerts us to people who are suffering. The Human Rights Campaign has asked me to work with them in helping educate men in certain states about the possibility of coming out of the closet. They are looking to use the anonymous and aggregate Google search data to help them decide where best to target their resources.

The final and, I think, most powerful value in this data is its ability to lead us from problems to solutions. With more understanding, we might find ways to reduce the worlds supply of nasty attitudes. Lets return to Obamas speech about Islamophobia. Recall that every time he argued that people should respect Muslims more, the people he was trying to reach became more enraged. Google searches, however, reveal that there was one line that did trigger the type of response Obama might have wanted. He said: Muslim Americans are our friends and our neighbours, our co-workers, our sports heroes and, yes, they are our men and women in uniform, who are willing to die in defence of our country.

After this line, for the first time in more than a year, the top Googled noun after Muslim was not terrorists, extremists, or refugees. It was athletes, followed by soldiers. And, in fact, athletes kept the top spot for a full day afterwards. When we lecture angry people, the search data implies that their fury can grow. But subtly provoking peoples curiosity, giving new information, and offering new images of the group that is stoking their rage may turn their thoughts in different, more positive directions.

Two months after that speech, Obama gave another televised speech on Islamophobia, this time at a mosque. Perhaps someone in the presidents office had read Soltass and my Times column, which discussed what had worked and what hadnt, for the content of this speech was noticeably different.

Obama spent little time insisting on the value of tolerance. Instead, he focused overwhelmingly on provoking peoples curiosity and changing their perceptions of Muslim Americans. Many of the slaves from Africa were Muslim, Obama told us; Thomas Jefferson and John Adams had their own copies of the Koran; a Muslim American designed skyscrapers in Chicago. Obama again spoke of Muslim athletes and armed service members, but also talked of Muslim police officers and firefighters, teachers and doctors. And my analysis of the Google searches suggests this speech was more successful than the previous one. Many of the hateful, rageful searches against Muslims dropped in the hours afterwards.

There are other potential ways to use search data to learn what causes, or reduces, hate. For example, we might look at how racist searches change after a black quarterback is drafted in a city, or how sexist searches change after a woman is elected to office. Learning of our subconscious prejudices can also be useful. We might all make an extra effort to delight in little girls minds and show less concern with their appearance. Google search data and other wellsprings of truth on the internet give us an unprecedented look into the darkest corners of the human psyche. This is at times, I admit, difficult to face. But it can also be empowering. We can use the data to fight the darkness. Collecting rich data on the worlds problems is the first step toward fixing them.

Extracted from: Everybody Lies: What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, published by Bloomsbury, 20. To order for 17 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846 Free UK p&p over 10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of 1.99.. Seth Stephens-Davidowitz will be speaking in London at the Royal Society of Arts on Tuesday and at Second Home on Wednesday

Q&A with Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

The degree to which people are self-absorbed is pretty shocking: Seth Stephens-Davidowitz. Photograph: Christopher Lane for the Observer

Whats your background? Id describe myself as a data scientist, but my PhD is in economics. When I was doing my PhD, in 2012, I found this tool called Google Trends that tells you what people are searching, and where, and I became obsessed with it. I know that when people first see Google data, they say Oh this is weird, this isnt perfect data, but I knew that perfect data didnt exist. The traditional data sets left a lot to be desired.

What would your search records reveal about you? They could definitely tell Im a hypochondriac because Im waking up in the middle of the night doing Google searches about my health. There are definitely things about me that you could figure out. When making claims about a topic, its better to do it on aggregate, but I think you can figure out a lot, if not everything, about an individual by what theyre searching on Google.

You worked at Google? For about a year and a half. I was on the economics team and also the quantitative marketing team. Some was analysis of advertising, which I got bored of, which is one of the reasons I stopped working there.

Did working there give you an understanding that helped this book? Yeah, I think it did. All this data Im talking about is public. But from meeting the people who know more about this data than anyone in the world, Im much more confident that it means what I think it means.

Does it change your view of human nature? Are we darker and stranger creatures than you realised? Yeah. I think I had a dark view of human nature to begin with, and I think now its gotten even darker. I think the degree to which people are self-absorbed is pretty shocking.

When Trump became president, all my friends said how anxious they were, they couldnt sleep because theyre so concerned about immigrants and the Muslim ban. But from the data you can see that in liberal parts of the country there wasnt a rise in anxiety when Trump was elected. When people were waking up at 3am in a cold sweat, their searches were about their job, their health, their relationship theyre not concerned about the Muslim ban or global warming.

Was the Google search data telling you that Trump was going to win? I did see that Trump was going to win. You saw clearly that African American turnout was going to be way down, because in cities with 95% black people there was a collapse in searches for voting information. That was a big reason Hillary Clinton did so much worse than the polls suggested.

Whats next? I want to keep on exploring this, whether in academia, journalism or more books. Its such an exciting area: what people are really like, how the world really works. I may just research sex for the next few months. One thing Ive learned from this book, people are more interested in sex than I thought they were.

Interview by Killian Fox