Who Had the Dumbest Users In 2011: Facebook, Twitter or Google?
Now that Facebook, Google and Twitter have all published their year-in-review lists, we can definitively answer the question of, Who was dumber in the year 2011: Facebook, Google or Twitter users? Hard to tell ('cause they were all pretty dumb.)
Each year, Google, Facebook and Twitter's year-end hot topic lists offer a reliably depressing look into the internet's soul. Let's compare them to see which group of users Googled, Twittered or Facebooked the stupidest bullshit last year:
According to the modestly-named 2011 Google Zeitgeist, the top fastest-rising Google searches were:
1) Rebecca Black
2) Google +
3) Ryan Dunn
4) Casey Anthony
5) Battlefield 3
So. Three meaningless celebrities and two meaningless technology products. The optimist would look at this list and think perhaps so many people Googled Rebecca Black and Ryan Dunn last year because they heard 12-year-olds talking about them at the grade schools they volunteer in, and wanted to be able to better relate. The pessimist would look at this list and jump off a nearby overpass.
Also, it is suspicious that Google's own social network was more interesting to Google users than almost every single other human event that happened last year. Pretty dumb, Googlers.
The top hashtags on Twitter in 2011 were:
1) #egypt
2) #tigerblood
3) #Threewordstoliveby
4) #idontunderstandwhy
5) #japan
It's not dumb that Egypt, one of the most historic and goddamn inspiring things to happen in this century, dominated Twitter's conversation. But it's pretty stupid the second thing Twitter users cared about most was Charlie Sheen's meltdown. I didn't see many news junkies tweeting about how the Egyptian protesters were #winning (nor, for that matter, did I see Charlie Sheen fans tweeting about the Muslim Brotherhood), so could be a highly-differentiated "dumb" and "not-dumb" population in Twitter's user base.
The most tweets per second occurred during the MTV Video music awards (8,868 tweets/second). Pretty dumb. But this was rivaled by less-dumb events like Troy Davis' execution (7,671 tweets/second) and Steve Jobs resigning from Apple (7,064 tweets/second).
The top five Facebook status updates for the U.S. were
1) lms (like my status)
2) tbh (To be honest)
3) Death of Osama bin Laden
4) Charlie Sheen
5) Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
Judging from these status updates, Facebook's user base is solely 14-year-old girls and 16-year-old boys. The only reason the death of Osama bin Laden made the list is probably because Facebookers thought it was a Call of Duty expansion pack. We already explained to you the atrocities of the popular "lms" and "tbh" status trends, which spread like electronic measles last year. All in all, a very poor showing for Facebook.
Conclusion
Facebook had the dumbest users in 2011. While Google and Twitter users displayed at least a modicum of interest in things that actually matter, the dominant topics on Facebook were cries for attention from other dumb Facebook users. Facebookers stumbled through the year in a haze of cheap endorphins flooding their brains with every "like." Clearly, normally intelligent adults revert to miserable high-schoolers when on Facebook.
Will 2012 be an even dumber year for Facebook? All signs point to yes.
