What People Search For

I was curious today to know what people are looking for on line. Apart form the usual porno that so many seek out... So I clicked on a link in my browser that said "Top 20 Searches" for the week and I found why it is people want to view. The results do not surprise me, as they are mostly sites that are trivial and anti intellectual, the kind of common things a culture puts creates to amuse rather than educate it's members. Here is the list of top 20.
1. Dancing with the stars- season premiere
2. Britney Spears- gives birth to another baby
3. Martha Stewart- trashes Donald Trump
4. 9/11/2006- five years after the attack
5. Starbucks- woman sues Starbucks
6. Big Brother- Boogie wins! (what is that about?????)
7. Joe Francis- pleads guilty to exploitation
8. Rockstar Supernova- winner named tonight 9. Christina Aguilera- reveals European tour
10. John Mayer- releases continuum
11. Greys Anatomy- new season begins
12. Stingray- 10 have been killed in Australia
13. Brooke Burke- hosts final season of Rockstar
14. Larry Birkhead- father of Anna Nicole's baby
15. nipt/tuck- season 4 heats up
16. Alyssa Milano- designs MLB gear
17. Wentworth Miller- catch him on Prison Break
18. Willa Ford- competes on Dancing With the Stars.
19. American Idol- final audition in Seattle
20. Shanna Moakler- Dancing With the Stars debut
Well, I can't say I am completely surprised by the vacuous selections, the simplistic and mind numbing searches. Everyone of them is something transient or silly, mostly inane TV shows. I wonder if anyone who uses a search engine actually looks for something a bit deeper than that mess. Why nothing from the news? There are grave things happening in the world that affect us all far more than crazy TV shows like Dancing With the Stars.
I wonder if most people are as shallow as those search results indicate they may be. Are there lives consumed with the pabulum of the culture and do we ignore events that are important to us in favor of that? Maybe the modern culture bombards us with so much foolishness about Britney's baby and Idol shows, we have surrendered to the trash and lost interest in the important. Being well informed is the responsibility of everyone. How can we make intelligent decisions about our government, our present and future, our personal fulfillment if we are consumed by the lowest level of the culture?
Can a culture exists solely on being amused by mind numbing activities? Does the loss of intellectual curiosity in the common cultures threaten to make us less than we were before? What do you think about this subject?
Now that I have ranted about mindless amusements, it's time for my mindless, weird item of the day. Hehe This one is about ape dating. It seems that zookeeppers at Apenheul ape park in Apeldoon, Netherlands are arranging with other apes in a Borneo zoo, a live internet video dating connection between rare orangutans.
The idea is to entice the apes into a fondness for each other that could result in ape lust. Zoo officials said they will bring together any apes who are going ape for an orgy, and unite them for a love fest that they hope will produce new orangutans.