What It's Like to Be Google's Poster Child for "Crying Liberal" or "Basic Bitch"

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society. "If you look up the word stupid in the dictionary, there's a picture of you," went the sickest burn on the elementary school playground, back before the dictionary was dishing out sick burns of its own. Now Google basically is the dictionary, and real people's pictures come up when you perform a Google Image search for stupid. My recent results included a man with a condom over his head, a teenage boy in a hospital after attempting to complete the Duct Tape Challenge, and--I'm pleased to report--many pictures of Trump. It's a well-acknowledged problem that Google's algorithm determines what images are associated with your name--it's decided, for example, that a still of Rachel Withers, Commuter looking distraught the morning after Election Day 2016 is the second-most important image of me to share (though this is my own fault, for attaching it to an article about being distraught).