The Good (and Scary) of What People Search For

Google trends is a lot of fun, a bit comforting, and a lot scary.  According to today's hot trends, the #1 search is for Joplin, Mo., which makes good sense given the awful tornadoes that ripped through the town.  I feel comforted somehow, knowing people are searching for something so important and so devastating to others.

So what are the other hot searches?  Glad you asked.

1. Joplin, Mo. (mentioned above)
2. Memorial Day (makes sense)
3. Joseph Brooks (who?)
4. Bachelorette (sad)
5. Living social (huh?)
6. Tim Pawlenty (makes sense, GOP candidate)
7. npc (again, huh?)
8. ethanol (no idea why)
9. You light up my life (awful song)
10. weather forecast (sensical)
11. Kansas City Star (good paper, dunno why listed)
12. us map (weird)
13. Iceland volcano eruption (makes sense, in the news)
14. Sara Rue (who?)
15. Sammy Sosa (why?)
16. Justin Beiber and Selena Gomez (why?  why?)
17. Bryan Stow (who?)
18. Lance Armstrong (makes sense, given recent news)
19. Danica Patrick (not sure why, but okay)
20. Justin Timberlake SNL (I guess he was on the show?)

Many of the names above I've never heard of, so I actually looked them up.  Joseph Brooks was an Oscar winner who committed suicide.  Lots of backstory.  So I see why this is being searched for.  Sara Rue got married but I still don't know who the hell she is.  Bryan Stow I get now, after looking it up.

So there's a mix of the serious and the silly above (Beiber and Gomez?).  At least the serious is actually there, given the nature of the net.

Obama the Marxist?

Such thoughtful political pundits as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have been ripping Barack Obama as a Marxist.

Even my U.S. Representative, Paul Broun of Georgia, has called Obama not only a Marxist but also another potential Hitler (never mind how Hitler and the Communists never mixed and calling someone both at the same time makes you either historically challenged or intellectually dishonest).

I'm not here to get into this so much as to see whether this charge sticks. If this pounding continues, does it have an affect on what people know about Obama?

And thus, a Google trends image. I searched for "Obama" and "Marxist" and the result is below.



So take heart, Limbaugh/Hannity/Broun fans, if what people search for on Google is any indication (and it often is), you're having some kind of effect regardless of the intellectual inconsistencies involved.