On the one hand, we all want to be socially active and connected to the world, but on the other hand, social interaction is hard, and you usually have to wear some form of oppressive pants. That's why Facebook "likes" are so great. With just one click, you can proudly express support for any person or idea you wish, all from the privacy of your own home. Well ... maybe "privacy" isn't the right word here because a joint Cambridge-Microsoft team has actually built a program that can use your Facebook "likes" to accurately extrapolate all sorts of personal information about you, including your IQ, sexual orientation, race, and personality traits.
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Even when you don't just type all that in your public "About me" box.
There's the obvious stuff: If a guy "likes" Wicked, the "No H8 Campaign," and "Mac Cosmetics," Facebook will think he's gay, and they're usually right. But many of the correlations were far less intuitive. For example, while fans of Stephen Colbert will probably smugly nod to themselves upon learning that "liking" the show is correlated with a high IQ, so is "liking" thunderstorms and curly fries. Only idiots like Jojos and fog, apparently.
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