Very high and very low hits
For the week of July 22 to 28, 2018, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia were:
| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Demi Lovato | 
|
2,433,262 | .jpg)
|
What's up with all these singers on drugs? More proof that being a top Twitter luminary doesn't buy happiness or mental stability. Sad! |
| 2 | July 2018 lunar eclipse | 
|
1,382,648 | _(43696968392)_(cropped).jpg)
|
The Moon turned bloody, and dancing zombies took over the world. Sad! |
| 3 | Imran Khan | 
|
783,758 | .jpg)
|
Twitter strikes again. Oops, neither this Khan, nor that one. Imran merely won an election (#8). Sad! |
| 4 | Deaths in 2018 | 
|
759,269 | 
|
Obituaries are still the most popular article each and every year. Sad! |
| 5 | Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again! |
|
738,092 | 
|
Sad!!! Exclamation mark! |
| 6 | Mission: Impossible – Fallout |
|
618,233 | 
|
A boring, tired franchise. Very Sad! Forget Tom Cruise, worship 1970s precursors Martin Landau and Barbara Bain in the original Mission: Impossible series. |
| 7 | 6ix9ine |
|
611,674 | 
|
Some rich thug on drugs got beaten up by some poor thugs on drugs. Or for drugs. Or both. Color me surprised. Sad! |
| 8 | Pakistani general election, 2018 |
|
585,838 | 
|
In Pakistan, a Khan (#3) became the khan. Sad! |
| 9 | Rowan Atkinson |
|
524,722 | 
|
Rumors of his death were temporarily exaggerated. Same for us all, really. Sad! |
| 10 | Shazam! (film) |
|
515,579 | 
|
Captain Marvel, a.k.a. Shazam! (born 1939, #10 on Wikipedia) is older than Donald Trump, a.k.a. Big Rocket Man (born 1946, #18 on Twitter). Sad! |
A week of film and suicide: Wikipedia loves movies. And this list makes that very clear, with 9 out of 25 articles being cinema-related and a 10th of TV. That's 40% of the whole thing. An unusual percentage.
In other news, this was a surprisingly non-scandalous week. Only two (and a half?) deaths, and Demi Lovato made it through the week. Reddit and Google are here. And the World Cup lingers, almost a month after its final. Perhaps France is still basking in its glory.
For the week of July 29 to August 4, 2018, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia were:
| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mission: Impossible – Fallout |
|
991,997 |  |
The sixth movie in the franchise (occupying the #3 spot here) was released last Friday, when it didn't have enough time to get that many views and occupied, appropriately, the sixth slot on last week's list. This week, however, even without the initial rush of opening-night views, film fans managed to push it up to the top. |
| 2 | Deaths in 2018 |
|
753,212 |  |
What, dead people? I never would've guessed!
(/s) Predictably, this makes its appearance yet again. Not as expected, it rose two spots while dropping 6,000 views, probably due to the fact that no article this week has more than a million views. |
| 3 | Mission: Impossible (film series) |
|
711,052 |  |
Soon to join the ranks of Fast and Furious, and having already surpassed Indiana Jones. Eventually to feature the likes of Jaws 19. |
| 4 | Tom Cruise | 
|
670,756 |  |
The star of #1. |
| 5 | Gerda Taro |
|
640,351 |  |
Google Doodle here, this time proclaiming the 108th birthday of this photojournalist who died while covering the Spanish Civil War after a tank crashed into her vehicle. |
| 6 | Demi Lovato |
|
601,492 | .jpg) |
Switched spots with Mission: Impossible - Fallout from last week's list.
I just never expected Princess Anna to nearly die from an opioid overdose. Did you? |
| 7 | Rick Genest |
|
579,248 |  |
Also known as Zombie Boy. But to get to the point, last week he was alive. Now he's not. The police say it was a suicide, but his family says there's too many inconsistencies. They may have a point, but then again, they all say that. |
| 8 | Avengers: Infinity War |
|
575,746 | .jpg) |
The movie inspiring this subreddit and its great ban (spoilers for the movie) has now been released to digital. |
| 9 | Meena Kumari |
|
504,102 | Google is back! Another birthday, this time of an Indian actress that lived a bit longer than Kurt Cobain, but not that much. 11 years longer, to be precise. | |
| 10 | Bruce Willis |
|
492,869 |  |
So apparently he will be helping to cast the next Die Hard movie. He was also roasted. I didn't watch it, but it seems it wouldn't have been prudent to show it to my 6-year-old cousin. |
Apparently not all too much happened this week. The lowest entry on this list had 273,062 views. The last time an article with less than 300,000 views made it into the top 25 was in 2015, and even that was higher than this. This is the lowest entry point since 2014.
In other news, surprisingly, there's no Reddit this week. There are two Google Doodles, though, and 4 out of the top 5 articles are death-related. Fairly normal.
For the week of August 5 to 11, 2018, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia were:
| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | M. Karunanidhi |
|
1,428,209 |  |
After a hospitalization last week, this former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu passed away on 7 August after having been ill with age-related issues since October 2016. |
| 2 | Deaths in 2018 |
|
749,368 | |
Still in the same position from last week. Wikipedians can be morbid (me included), and with the two-and-a-half-year (and counting) string of celebrity deaths that began with Lemmy in December 2015, a lot of us want to make sure no one else has kicked it since the last time we looked. The biggest peaks of views in the yearly death article occurred in 2016 with the passings of Prince and a cluster in December 2016 spanning several generations, but the views have still been, on average, climbing since 2015. A typical week of views from Deaths in 2018 (this week is pretty normal) is far above a typical week in 2015, and several spots higher in the list. |
| 3 | Chuckle Brothers |
|
606,524 |  |
The older of the two brothers comprising this British children's comedy duo, Barry Elliott, died on Sunday at the age of 73 after having been ill for a while. |
| 4 | Mission: Impossible - Fallout |
|
556,684 | |
Down from #1 last week. The sixth movie in this iconic franchise was released on July 27. I would make some snarky comment about it, but all I know is the theme, and that's really only because I had to know it. Other than that, I'm not as familiar with the movies as some individuals may be. |
| 5 | Karunanidhi family |
|
522,336 | |
The death of a prominent individual (in this case, #1 on this list) often pushes articles related to their famous family members into the list. I think the record is 10 articles for a single (celebrity-dense) family, but that may not count as there were two family members. |
| 6 | Mary G. Ross |
|
481,054 |  |
The first known female Native American engineer, she was honored by a Google Doodle celebrating what would have been her 110th birthday. |
| 7 | Avengers: Infinity War |
|
477,651 | |
Up a spot from last week despite being down nearly 100,000 views, and as far as I know, still here for the same reason, namely, that the movie is now out on digital release. Infinity War is also the most viewed article of 2018 so far, with 28 million views. |
| 8 | The Meg |
|
464,653 |  |
This science fiction/horror movie about Jason Statham (pictured) fighting a giant shark (#24) was released on Friday. It has a 49% score on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics describing it as a solid B-movie. It probably won't stay on the list for too long, but you never know. |
| 9 | UFC 227 |
|
417,058 |  |
Wikipedians continue to love mixed martial arts. I'm not really into it, personally, but then again, my favorite sport is curling, so I'm probably not from the sports demographic that reads these articles. |
| 10 | Kepa Arrizabalaga |
|
415,724 | .jpg) |
This footballer was just signed to play for Chelsea, and he is now the world's most expensive goalkeeper, at €80 million. I don't know too much about British money, but that certainly sounds like a lot. |
When a famous musician dies, it's to be expected that the commotion will be enough for its Wikipedia article to be the most seen of the week. And when it's someone with a storied career like Aretha Franklin, numbers will be huge (narrowly missing the 5 million mark!). And our #2, former Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, shows two of the week's most present topics, death (which includes the ever-present yearly list) and India (in the top 10, there's Priyanka Chopra's fiancée, and the multi-game tournament they're taking a part in). Hollywood has a few movies (#9, #10), Google brings one article, and otherwise things are scattered, including golf champions (#4) and Trump's former friends worsening his reputation (#5).
For the week of August 12 to 18, 2018, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia were:
| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | About |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Aretha Franklin |
|
4,997,992 |  |
The "Queen of Soul", responsible for immortal songs such as "Respect", "Chain of Fools", and "(You Make Me Feel Like) a Natural Woman", died at 76 of a pancreatic cancer that had prevented her from public concerts since November. And to think now all the "musical guests" out of The Blues Brothers (where Aretha has a memorable performance singing "Think") are no longer with us. |
| 2 | Atal Bihari Vajpayee |
|
3,371,692 |  |
Atal Bihari Vajpayee, three-time Prime Minister of India from 1996 to 2004, passed away on 16 August (the same day as Franklin) at the elder age of 93. A chief leader in Asia, Vajpayee was responsible for making India a major nuclear power with the Pokhran-II tests, and eased tensions in South Asia after arranging peace talks with Pakistan. (Does it count that these talks happened to be held right after fighting a war with them?) |
| 3 | Omarosa Manigault Newman |
|
901,876[1] | .jpg) |
After the controversial release of her novel Unhinged (2018), Omarosa, former political aide to Godfather Drumpf, released four secret tapes, the first of which was recorded in the Situation Room, resulting in a major security breach. She also claimed, among others, that the Big Boss would deport his trouble and strife if she dare breach their relationship. Seems like those are enough reasons to justify her appearance on this report. |
| 4 | Brooks Koepka |
|
873,589 |  |
Koepka won the 2018 PGA Championship, which combined with the U.S. Open back in June makes him the first golfer to win this double since Tiger Woods. |
| 5 | Ebenezer Cobb Morley |
|
827,500 |  |
Ebenezer Cobb Morley was an English |
| 6 | Deaths in 2018 |
|
782,780 | |
Views raised, as a few prominent figures (#1, #2, #13, #14) died. Yet the page fell from #2, as this time people had more things to look for than just deaths. |
| 7 | 2018 Asian Games |
|
763,073 |  |
The Asian Games, which are held once in four years, opened in Jakarta and Palembang, Indonesia on August 18. This year's event, which was earlier supposed to be held in Vietnam (Sad!), marks the first time the Games are hosted by more than one city. To add to that, eSports are possibly on its way to be recognised as an official sport next time, as the competition, along with canoe polo, is being contested as a demonstration sport. (Hmm... Seems like I could try a hand.) Which country are you rooting for? |
| 8 | Nick Jonas |
|
709,154 |  |
The youngest of the Jonas Brothers publicly announced his engagement to our #12. |
| 9 | Crazy Rich Asians (film) |
|
618,889 |  |
Representativity is good for business: after what Black Panther did for African Americans, it's time for Asian Americans in this novel adaptation where Constance Wu (pictured) plays a woman who travels to meet her boyfriend's family, only to find them to be among the richest in Singapore. Crazy Rich Asians got glowing reviews and also opened atop the box office, beating our next entry. |
| 10 | The Meg |
|
611,490 |  |
Jason Statham vs. giant shark, now that's a high-concept. Don't know if it's any good (shark movies aside from Jaws usually aren't, and reviews are mixed to bad), but it has made some money, opening atop the US box office (before our #9 pushed it down to second) and having so far grossed $300 million worldwide. |
Khalil Gibran once claimed that "only love and death will change all things"considered, and the report this week seems to lend credence to this sentiment, dominated as it is by those most domineering of human traits – love and loss. Between engagements and a multitude of prominent deaths, we have a microcosm of humanity in this week's iteration.
Outside of these lofty emotions, we also receive some entries from the entertainment industry, with Hollywood and Netflix jostling once more for the attention of viewers. A curiously diverse report, and a joy to compile.
For the week of August 19 to 25, 2018 the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia were:
| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | About |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nick Jonas |
|
1,255,884 |  |
The singer, who first came to my youthful attention as he mused about the various lexicographic uses of the word 'dude' alongside his fellow fraternal philosophers, has been in the news with some frequency of late owing to his relationship with Priyanka Chopra, whom a cohort of the internet seems infatuated with. The page views likely stem from confirmation of their engagement. |
| 2 | 2018 Asian Games |
|
1,195,981 |  |
The Asian Games are underway in Jakarta, Indonesia, and incredible Asian athletes are already accumulating vast amounts of gold, silver, and bronze medal for their nations. The games are evidently a big deal for purveyors of Wikipedia, but Western coverage, at least in my neck of the woods, hinges on the efforts of Son Heung-Min to claim gold for South Korea, allowing him to forgo military service. |
| 3 | SummerSlam (2018) |
|
1,125,084 | .jpg) |
Former UFC champion Ronda Rousey (pictured) went for the easiest way to get a championship belt: scripted fights! She won the WWE Raw Women's Championship in this event held at Brooklyn's Barclays Center. |
| 4 | Crazy Rich Asians (film) |
|
997,398 |  |
Like African Americans with Black Panther, Asian Americans are really happy to be fully represented in a hit film. The interesting title of this romantic comedy refers to Michelle Yeoh (pictured) and Ken Jeong (who has built a career out of playing crazy Asians), the rich and overbearing future in-laws of a college teacher. Crazy Rich Asians got glowing reviews and completed two weeks atop the US box office. |
| 5 | To All the Boys I've Loved Before (film) |
|
947,913 |  |
Netflix's attempt at teen movies seem to be their most successful, and while The Kissing Booth got terrible reviews, there has been critical praise for To All the Boys I've Loved Before (which Netflix only bought the distribution rights for), about a teenage girl whose secret love letters are exposed. And borrowing a title from Julio Iglesias is much better than his son Enrique, as we'll never see a YA adaptation named Tonight (I'm Fuckin' You). |
| 6 | Asia Argento |
|
931,348 |  |
Seeing boyfriend Anthony Bourdain hang himself would've already made 2018 a rough year for this Italian actress. But then she was accused of sexually abusing a minor (#18) and paying for his silence. Argento vehemently denies (after all, a part of the #MeToo movement doing a #HerToo sort of deal would be inadequate), saying the payment came from Bourdain to help the boy's family. |
| 7 | Priyanka Chopra | 
|
913,738 |  |
Bollywood superstar, former Miss World, and occasional singer Priyanka Chopra is now engaged to our #1. |
| 8 | Stefán Karl Stefánsson |
|
 |
The tragic end to a rare positive internet story here. From the plethora of jokes about Harambe to the altering of Pepe the Frog, memes have a tendency to be dark as well as dank. However, the internet rounded in support of the LazyTown actor (he portrayed Robbie Rotten, the villain), who died this week, and let him know that he truly was number one. May he rest in peace. | |
| 9 | Noah Centineo | 
|
853,559 |  |
Centineo is an actor, who appears as a love interest in the Netflix adaptation (#5) of Jenny Han's YA hit (#12). As ever, avid binge-watchers have trawled through a wide array of links related to their streaming drug of choice. In this case, they will have found that Centineo previously found fame doing a Cuban salsa alongside Camila Cabello. |
| 10 | 2018 Asian Games medal table |
|
817,175 | |
The best measurement of how the countries of #2 have been performing. Next year the continents where the this report's authors live will have similar tournaments. |
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