September 25, 2008

Americans Search for Wizards, Cupcakes, and Sex Toys More Often Than “Financial Crisis”

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This is a fun game you can play at home. Go to Google Trends and see what Americans are searching for online more frequently than the term “financial crisis.” I have an example below, in which I set the time period to September 2008. Turns out “wizards,” “cupcakes,” and “sex toys” retain their popularity in times of national emergency.

financial_crisis_google_search.jpg

Several search terms dwarfed “financial crisis” so thoroughly that they made the chart unusable. They included:

“Bristol Palin”: searched for 17.5 times more often than “financial crisis” in September
“Puppies”: 24.4 times
“Vacation”: 28.6 times
“Fashion”: 44 times
“Fantasy Football”: 44 times
“Baseball”: 50.5 times
“Sex”: 292 times

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GREAT JOURNALISM, SLOW FUNDRAISING

Our team has been on fire lately—publishing sweeping, one-of-a-kind investigations, ambitious, groundbreaking projects, and even releasing “the holy shit documentary of the year.” And that’s on top of protecting free and fair elections and standing up to bullies and BS when others in the media don’t.

Yet, we just came up pretty short on our first big fundraising campaign since Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting joined forces.

So, two things:

1) If you value the journalism we do but haven’t pitched in over the last few months, please consider doing so now—we urgently need a lot of help to make up for lost ground.

2) If you’re not ready to donate but you’re interested enough in our work to be reading this, please consider signing up for our free Mother Jones Daily newsletter to get to know us and our reporting better. Maybe once you do, you’ll see it’s something worth supporting.

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