The Year (Really) In Review
This is the time to recap the year that was.
There are a number of ways to do it, all of which are interesting. You can look at a year in terms of notable deaths, viral events, political rises and falls...
But how do you really get a twelve-month snapshot of a culture’s zeitgeist?
I would argue for two words: “Google searches.”
I’m not saying that this will be what historians will mark in 10, much less 100 years…even less what is most significant. But I will say that it may be the clearest window into our current soul.
So here we go with a few peeks into our inner world, courtesy of Google itself:
Top 10 “What” questions from 2013:
What is twerking?
What is ricin?
What is DOMA?
What is Molly?
What is gluten?
What is sequestration?
What is Obamacare?
What is lupus?
What is Snapchat?
What is bitcoin?
Top trending searches in 2013 from around the world:
Nelson Mandela
Paul Walker
iPhone 5S
Cory Monteith
Harlem Shake
Boston Marathon
Royal baby
Samsung Galaxy S4
PlayStation 4
North Korea
Top “life advice” searches:
How to tie a tie
How to file
How to get a passport
How to blog
How to knit
How to kiss
How to flirt
How to whistle
How to un-jailbreak
How to Vader
And finally, the top people we were interested in:
Paul Walker
Cory Monteith
Nelson Mandela
Aaron Hernandez
Adrian Peterson
Miley Cyrus
James Gandolfini
Paula Deen
Mindy McCready
Trayvon Martin
Welcome to our world.
James Emery White
Sources
“What did the world search for in 2013?”, Google.com, read online.