by Mike Oakland
Wikipedia released its annual “Most Viewed” list, which tallies traffic for each Wikipedia entry over the last year in many of the languages featured on the page.
“Facebook” topped English-language searches at around 32.5 million hits in 2012 and ranked in the top ten of several other languages, possibly indicating that a lot of people are mistaking Wikipedia for a search engine.
The weirdly meta search criteria “Wiki” ranked number two in English language searches and held a top spot in many other languages. Surprisingly, the unfailingly objective Wikipedia actually explains the concept in great detail. People seem to resist the urge to search for “Wikipedia” itself, perhaps out of fear that it would result in a paradoxical, hard-drive destroying endless mirror effect.
DOES NOT COMPUTE
Surprisingly, or unsurprisingly based on how much faith you hold in humanity, Da Vinci’s biography, the origin of man and any other even remotely educational searches were supplanted in nearly all languages by searches for popular movies, boy bands and drama series.
Japan just might take the cake for most plebian of the top ten search lists, however.
Ranking at number one in Japanese is “List of Porn Actresses” at 18.5 million hits. Keep in mind this is Wikipedia, not Google, so the topic’s presence on the list seems to indicate a disturbing degree of interest in not just viewing porn, but also learning as much as possible about details of each actresses’ life.
PHD in Neurobiology
On a side note, based on cursory TokyoDesu research, the only other language where porn searches actually make an appearance in the top ten is Chinese, in which “AV” (Adult Video) appears in not one, but two search criteria.
Coming in at number two is searches for the wildly popular all-girl pop group AKB48 at a little over 7 million hits. Come on, we know this doesn’t surprise you.
After that are various pop groups and manga and then, a shocking diamond in the rough, “Taira no Kiyomori”, an important figure in Japanese history and a once-powerful Samurai leader.
It turns out Taira no Kiyomori was the central character in this year’s NHK Taiga drama series – an annual series focusing on some aspect of Japanese history – so it looks like a lot of viewers’ first reaction was, “Taira no who?!”
Kiyomori is a frequent presence in Japanese historical fiction, so there may also be some kind of porn angle here. Our research team is hard at work.
The TokyoDesu research team
More manga rounds out the Japan list, culminating in “JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure” at number 10, a long-running manga series and media franchise with a devoted following. The manga version of the series was voted by Japanese readers as the second best manga of all time.
Looking beyond Japanese searches to global searches on the whole, in conclusion, the Wikipedia Most Viewed lists, despite good intentions, serve mostly as a depressing reminder that for the first time a powerful tool archives nearly all of humanity’s knowledge and puts it at our fingertips and we primarily use it to learn more about porn and boy bands.
Here at TokyoDesu, we can relate: most searches that bring you, our dear readers, to the site can’t be mentioned in polite company.
Pictured: Top Google searches leading to TokyoDesu
