[How do you teach your toddler that “bad guys” is a category error?]

I initially asked this question of ChatGPT and it gave a simple and somewhat useful response. Then I tried it on Google. I’ve been trying to get myself to check traditional search tools even for search prompts that I might not have previously attempted. I see this as a sort of humble hypecert practice.

The top result on Google for the query [ How do you teach your toddler that “bad guys” is a category error? ] is a nine-year-old Reddit post (& comments) in r/parenting: Teaching your little ones how to fight ( protect themselves ). The title and snippet suggested to me something wildly out of touch with what I was looking for. I was very struck by many of the comments though (which clearly engaged with my query), and found it very engaging. I was even a bit emotional by the whole experience.

This sort of situation, where the search suggestions or display of the search results suggests a search failure (perhaps irrelevance, inaccuracy, or bias) came up several times in my class last spring. I tasked my students with finding a search failure. In several cases students identified the search suggestions as problematic when following on to the search itself revealed a SERP (search engine results page) entirely oriented around countering the searched-for-claim.