I 
like to keep an eye on the Lycos 50 - a list of the top 50 search terms for a particular week on Lycos. I wish Google published the same kind of info, but I’m confident there is a very strong correlation between Lycos search frequency and Google search frequency. Here’s the list for the week ending July 29th. (You’ll have the opportunity to mock me later in the post):
- Pamela Anderson - NASCAR fans do a lot of searching apparently.
- Poker - I wonder how many simultaneous users all the various poker sites get in aggregate?
- Paris Hilton - Sigh. I would like to kick Paris Hilton down a flight of stairs.
- MySpace
- Spyware
- Runescape - I never fail to be blown away by Runescape’s incredible popularity.
- Pokemon
- Golf
- WWE - Mega sigh.
- Naruto - What the hell is this??
This is the mocking part. I have no idea what Naruto is, or rather, I didn’t until I google’d it. I’ve heard the term before, but as I am not an anime fan, I may have thought it was a smaller city in Japan. I’m not quite sure what I thought it was, actually, but I certainly did not know that it involves a loud, hyperactive, adolescent ninja who constantly searches for approval and recognition. I feel a little ashamed that such an apparently major cultural force is opaque to me, and so I invite you to mock me. (Though I’ll add that Nascar and WWE are opaque to me as well and are going to remain that way if I have anything to say about it.)
Mock away.
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August 3rd, 2006 at 1:36 pm
Kris L
I won’t mock you. But the poker search being so high up is probably because the World Series of Poker main event is going on right now.
August 3rd, 2006 at 2:44 pm
Pentharian
I was generally oblivious to much of it, other than noticing that a great deal of the top videos at YouTube were montages of clips from this anime. I checked out the wikipedia entry enough to read the first few lines and fine myself mostly uninterested.
August 3rd, 2006 at 3:52 pm
Chrissie
I’m thinking (hoping?) that if, like me, you are (to this day) largely oblivious to the intricacies of Dragon Ball Z, Pokémon, and whatever LSD-induced anime flavour du jour there might be (think catloaf), it’s okay to be ignorant about Naruto as well.
PS: Pirates own Ninjas.
August 4th, 2006 at 12:05 am
Mike Rozak
Random comment:
1) L. Ron Hubbard got his book on the bestsellers list buy buying copies from bookstores and putting them back in the wharehouse to be sold again. A program to bias the search-list would be pretty easy to write. (”Eternal earth” could be #1 next week.)
2) Something like “Word of warcraft” might not appear on the list because there are several ways to write it, namely “wow” or “word of warcraft”, or maybe even “world warcraft” or “blizzard”. (I doubt anyone searches for “Jagex”.)
3) Why is it that I haven’t heard anything about Runescape in the mass media, even though all the others (except Naruto and WWE) have been quite common?
August 4th, 2006 at 12:08 am
Matt
Mike Rozak wrote:
3) Why is it that I haven’t heard anything about Runescape in the mass media, even though all the others (except Naruto and WWE) have been quite common?
My theory is that the mass media is stupid and only pays attention to shiny things. Runescape is decidedly un-shiny.
–matt
August 11th, 2006 at 7:32 am
Mayapple
Ninpou kawaii no jutsu.
I find Japanese culture quite interesting. They practice the most distasteful forms of practical jokes. I would never live there, but I like to read the ethnographies and watch a specific few anime.