RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPiTER

Search Awards on a Global Scale

I just discovered google search trends and I love it. While I’m not a sociologist, the assumed insights and questions raised by the raw data are incredibly valuable. But first, what is google search trends? It’s a graphical presentation of popular search terms, plotted over time. It throws in a couple other helpful bits of geographical information, but that’s about it.

After a few minutes of random searches, I decided to plod through trends in modern racism. Probably because of turning opinion about the Iraq war feeding into the need for conspiracy theories, there appeared to be a huge spike in anti-semitism in 2004. Look at the graphs for ‘jew’ and ‘protocols of the elders of zion’ during that time:

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But then again, look at the top 10 cities that searched for the word ‘jew’ in 2004:

1. New York, NY, USA
2. Petah Tiqwa, Israel
3. Philadelphia, PA, USA
4. Los Angeles, CA, USA
5. San Francisco, CA, USA
6. Miami, FL, USA
7. Chicago, IL, USA
8. Washington, DC, USA
9. Boston, MA, USA
10. Atlanta, GA, USA

In case you’re unfamiliar with the shaking out of the whole diaspora, almost all of those cities have very large Jewish populations. So is it Jewish people who are obsessed with these search terms? Although data for 2004 specifically isn’t available, you see the same general results with the ‘protocols’ search. The exception with that search result is a huge popularity of the protocols in Australia. With only 5% of the world’s Jewish population in that country, maybe there’s some real hate in that result. Or maybe not. Like I said, I’m not a sociologist.

In other news, “2 girls 1 cup” peaked and is in decline (thank god) while “Paris Hilton” - who hit her undeniable peak of internet buzz with the release of her 2004 sex tape - has struggled since then, and is beginning to taper off completely. Don’t believe me? Here’s the proof:

Or maybe I’m just reading the data optimistically.