The 2008 Zeitgeist

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THE 2008 ZEITGEIST….According to Google, here are the search terms that increased the most since 2007. Pretty weird group, isn’t it?

Obama and Palin? No surprise there. David Cook? He’s the latest American Idol winner, so no surprise there either.

Beijing 2008, Facebook, and iPhone? I wouldn’t have guessed them, but OK. Makes sense.

But Fox News? YouTube? Those seem like they would have been massively popular well before 2008. What happened?

And ATT? Huh? I assume this is a search for AT&T, the telecommunications giant. Why on earth did they suddenly get trainloads of Google fu?

And finally, there’s Surf The Channel, clearly a Zeitgeist choice designed solely to make me feel old. I’ve never heard of it. Googling it, I find that it’s a “website for TV enthusiasts. We go out into the internet, find the shows we love on other sites and then list them here on our paqes.” And it is the tenth fastest growing Google search in the United States. We are all doomed.