{"id":712,"date":"2026-09-28T20:41:46","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T20:41:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/?p=712"},"modified":"2026-09-28T20:57:36","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T20:57:36","slug":"when-did-google-get-so-fucking-weird-sancho-panzas-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/when-did-google-get-so-fucking-weird-sancho-panzas-thoughts\/","title":{"rendered":"When did Google get so fucking weird? (Sancho Panza\u2019s Thoughts)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What I wanted was some links, but that&#8217;s not what Google does in 2026.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sancho.bearblog.dev\/google-weird\/\">Oh man, this. All this.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This has been mildly freaking me out for about a week now. I\u2019m not sure precisely when Google shifted the GenAI summary into Fully Uncomfortable mode (partly because I try and avoid googling anything these days because I\u2019m just so tired of all this kind of bullshit) but I found myself googling the text of a garbage post that someone had made on Blue Sky last week. Because I\u2019d already blocked whoever it was, Blue Sky\u2019s search wasn\u2019t really much use so I thought \u201csod it\u201d. After all, I\u2019m just going to get some terrible links and some additional trauma in return, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I cannot stress enough what a garbage post it was. Borderline nonsense that had set a bunch of people in my feed off with how absurdly, intensely clownshoes it was. Proper nob stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Anyway, so instead of giving me any useful results or indication of where the post originated, the AI summary congratulated me on my incisive observation and listed all the ways I was being a very good, and very smart, boy. Embarrassing stuff because it was about as incisive as making honking sounds but also, that *is* a weird thing for a search engine to be doing, right? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mentioning this earlier over on Masto, I found myself grumbling about how I\u2019m not friends with computer, it\u2019s just sand getting above its station. I don\u2019t entirely understand how the faux emotions and text dump that looks like flattery hoodwinks people, I really genuinely don\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Being a nob and never knowing when I\u2019m losing enough, I had the bright idea to google \u201cit\u2019s just sand getting above its station\u201d to see what happens, EVEN THOUGH I KNOW BETTER, and\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201dThat is&nbsp;<mark>one of the most brilliant and poetic ways to describe a&nbsp;<strong>computer chip<\/strong>&nbsp;or modern silicon technology<\/mark>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Fuck this<\/em>. This isn\u2019t right. It\u2019s a joke as old as silicon chips. I don\u2019t know what\u2019s even going on anymore but I don\u2019t like it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What I wanted was some links, but that&#8217;s not what Google does in 2026. Oh man, this. All this. This has been mildly freaking me out for about a week now. I\u2019m not sure precisely when Google shifted the GenAI summary into Fully Uncomfortable mode (partly because I try and avoid googling anything these days [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[21,108],"tags":[106,153],"class_list":["post-712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links","category-rob","tag-ai-bad-kind","tag-google-is-shit"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=712"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":716,"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712\/revisions\/716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}