A Worrying Turn of Events
This morning I was looking at Lycos’s top 100 search terms for 2004, and I didn’t recognize three names in the top twenty-five: Nick Berg (#5), Michelle Vieth (#9) and Catherine Bosley (#23).
A quick search determined that Berg was the unfortunate freelance contractor who was beheaded by Iraqi insurgents. Catherine Bosley was a new anchor who famously joined in a wet t-shirt contest while on vacation. Vieth, as it turns out, is a D-level actor and the latest distributor of her own amateur sex tape (Paris Hilton, in all her lime-green glory, held on to the #2 spot). I clearly need to read the newspaper more thoroughly.
It’s no surprise, but still slightly demoralizing that the top twenty-five searches include 9 celebrities, 3 diets and the WWE. Is this really how we want to spend our time?
The most surprising entries? IRS (#27), Green Tea & Weight Loss (#30), Apollo 11 (#41) and, most oddly, Abraham Lincoln (#52). Lycos is clearly at the back of the pack in terms of search engines, but I’ve always enjoyed the analysis they do as part of the Lycos Top 50.
Andrea