Fact: You Can Learn A Lot About People From the Internets

It is a fact. The vast expanse we know as "the internet" contains a wealth of information that only those privileged enough to own a computer with an internet connection can take advantage of.

Conceptually, the "internet" is not far from the universe, in and of itself quite abstract yet unlike the universe, far better connected. The designers of the internet know how it is put together and the ability to share this information has contributed to its growth. Perhaps the Earth's solar system is actually just one link in a vast organic computer. This analogy has become much to ridiculous for me to continue. This is why, when I am staring off into the distance and someone snaps me back to reality and asks what I was thinking, I usually go with, "nothing."


As the proverbial internet cup of knowledge overfloweth with FACT, Google has given us the unique opportunity to look into the minds of the worlds computer-literate populous to see what people are most interested in.

Shocking? Not really. The list is divided up by "search term" or "word" and each country is ranked first, second or third in frequency of times searched. Shockingly, the U.S. did not score high on the number of "sex" searches. That honor belonged to India, Egypt, and Turkey. How does it work? I'm not going to tell you. But go to THIS website, type in a search term, and find out which country, city, language searches that word the most. For instance, I arbitrarily typed "duck" and England had the top spot. Boston on the other hand had the most for cities, but London was a close second.

The report also stated that Chile searched the most for "gay". Not to say that Chileans are necessarily gay, but the population isn't that large right? Germany was top dog for Hitler, which has to make you wonder. That would be like Britney Spears doing a Google search for Kevin Federline. At one point the relationship looked like it worked, but in the end, everyone lost.

Here's the rest of the list compiled by Reuters:
"Jihad" - Morocco, Indonesia, Pakistan
"Terrorism" - Pakistan, Philippines, Australia
"Hangover" - Ireland, United Kingdom, United States (no one's surprised about this one)
"Burrito" - United States, Argentina, Canada
"Iraq" - United States, Australia, Canada
"Taliban" - Pakistan, Australia, Canada
"Tom Cruise" - Canada, United States, Australia (I bet if you searched Tom Cruise - nutjob the US would be first).
"Britney Spears" - Mexico, Venezuela, Canada (I think this search was tainted, the data was skewed because most Americans searched "absolute disaster" instead of her name).
"Homosexual" - Philippines, Chile, Venezuela - strange that Chile, Mexico and Columbia were tops when searching "Gay". Clearly there's a more scientific approach being taken here.
"Love" - Philippines, Australia, United States
"Botox" - Australia, United States, United Kingdom
"Viagra" - Italy, United Kingdom, Germany
"David Beckham" - Venezuela, United Kingdom, Mexico
"Kate Moss" - Ireland, United Kingdom, Sweden
"Dolly Buster" - Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia - What's a dolly buster?
"Car bomb" - Australia, United States, Canada
"Marijuana" - Canada, United States, Australia
"IAEA" - Austria, Pakistan, Iran

Ok some of this wasn't as insightful as I would have hoped. The Irish look for hangover cures, Australians are looking for car bombs, Pakistan loves terrorism and Canada can't get enough of Tom Cruise.

Come to think of it, we here at AoF keep a careful tally of how many times we touch on a particular subject. We do this not for our own records but for the ease of our readers. Clearly the top 10 list does not accurately represent our main interests:
douchebags (23)
displays of manhood (9)
Monkeys (7)
Yankees (7)
Mets (6)
Moustachio Bashio (6)
Zombies (6)
24 (5)
Basketball (5)
Jesus (5)
Man v. Wild (5)
Red Sox (5)
Satire (5)
patriots (5)

Some of that is close but we're missing booze, whores, and Dolly Busters. Bear Grylls, Big Papi's recipe for mango salsa, gays, and double cheeseburgers are also absent from the list.

The saying goes that a picture is worth a thousand words. Well blogger won't let me post any pictures so I wrote about a thousand words.

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