The Gaming Den

Is the Robin Hood myth dead? I googled it, and I shit you not, the first result was literally a stock trading website.

I guess my real question is whether Robin Hood is viewed as a hero or not anymore, and why or why not. I've always thought Robin Hood was a fantastic hero because he operated outside of the law while clearly bringing justice to people, unlike modern heroes who mostly beat up desperate people (like random thugs) and serve a vague notion of justice that seems...broken? Am I just really disillusioned or is the Robin Hood myth, as far as a person who wants justice via taking shit from rich dickheads and giving it to poor folks, dead and buried?

The stock trading site presumably uses bots or some other exploit of the google code to come in first, because I got the same result. But the second result is the character's wikipedia entry, and the third is the 2010 Ridley Scott movie about the character.

No, the Robin Hood myth isn't dead. He's just usually less popular when the economy is doing well, and the economy is still doing pretty well, especially compared to the very recent great recession.

angelfromanotherpin wrote:The stock trading site presumably uses bots or some other exploit of the google code to come in first, because I got the same result. But the second result is the character's wikipedia entry, and the third is the 2010 Ridley Scott movie about the character.

No, the Robin Hood myth isn't dead. He's just usually less popular when the economy is doing well, and the economy is still doing pretty well, especially compared to the very recent great recession.

Is that really how it goes, that when the economy is good Robin Hood does badly? That is...fuck. That made me sad for reasons I don't quite understand.

I just wouldn't read so deeply into search engine results.

erik wrote:I just wouldn't read so deeply into search engine results.

That's my angle as well, at least when it comes to conclusions about the human condition. Search results aren't organized by what comes to mind first when you think of a word, it's based on what serves user intent. robinhood.com is a site with a a good link profile and plenty of branding traffic. It seems to be a popular app and it stands to reason that people search for it by typing "robin hood". Similar search terms for "robin hood" include explicit references to the app, which indicates that people searching for "robin hood" at least partially overlap with those searching for "robin hood".

Also, it's not like the story of robin hood isn't prominent in the search results, and a fair amount of searches are locked up in other queries: "robin hood prince of thieves", "robin hood men in tights", "robin hood movie", "little john", and "richard the lionheart" all show up as related terms. This indicates that when people look up Robin Hood, they're usually interested in learning about some specific part of history or bit of entertainment.

Long-term, I really don't recommend using Google search results as your method of gaining insight into society. But if you're interested, there has been a slight downturn in general search-engine interest for terms like "robin hood story" and "story of robin hood" over time, but the data is pretty drastic given the low overall volume.

I phrased this 50 shades of wrong. I meant to ask about a general sense of society moving away from robbing the rich to give to the poor being a good thing (my childhood, which included Robin hood [furry porn] + Aladdin) vs all modern media(?).

Note: A lot of what I do comes down to web metrics, so I did measure in that sense in the first place. I was trying to figure out if this was a general societal trend though.

I live in the greater Nottingham area and everything is still named after Robin Hood.

-Username17