One of the most dangerous things you can ask a person is this:  “What are you thinking?” You’ll either get an honest answer you may or may not like or you’ll get fed a reply the person thinks you want to hear.  If you really want to know what’s on America’s mindless minds, just point your web browser over to the new “Google Hot Trends” website and get an eyeful of the mush that is satiating our middling mindsets.  Here’s what “Hot” this morning:  Sports, Lotteries, Entertaining Abusers, Holidays and Dead Actresses.

Here are the other Hot Trends over the last few days.

Yesterday:

  1. Matt Cain’s Perfect Game
  2. “Dallas” Television Show Returns
  3. Disneyland Earthquake
  4. Lance Armstrong
  5. Kim Kardashian

Are you seeing a Trend developing?

Here are the Hot Trends from two days ago:

  1. Mobster Henry Hill is Dead
  2. Kevin Durant Wins Basketball Game

Three days ago:

  1. Apple Retina Displays
  2. Robin Roberts Cancer
  3. The LA Kings

I think these are a shameful lists. Are we better off knowing the Google Hot Trends? Or is it better to pretend we’re thinking about, and searching for, important things like the economy, bank fraud, and education and the presidential election?

Google Hot Trends records the Worst Of Us for all time. We are shown to be sycophantic, shallow, and without a lot on our minds. We appear to prefer mindlessness when it comes to doing Google searches. Are we escaping reality with these Hot Trends, or are these Hot Trends telling us precisely what is filling our minds in unguarded moments?

We can’t blame Google for publicly reporting this disgusting mess of us.  It isn’t their fault we have nothing much on our minds except to find ways to drown out the violent, overwrought, and poor lives most of us online lead in real life.  We clearly don’t search for ourselves online — it seems we know that reality all too well — so we instead look for escape and satiety in the barren virtual landscape, hoping against the hardness of our known truth that we’ll one day be as carefree, and fêted, as those idiots we idolize from afar in disheartening Hot Trends.

12 Comments

  1. I’m quite disappointed that more people don’t care a lick about the election. It’s what will be changing their lives for the better — or worse! — for the years after the vote.

    1. David Boles – New York City – David Boles was born in Nebraska and holds an MFA from the Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theatre Studies at Columbia University in the City of New York. He is an author, dramatist, editor, publisher, and teacher who writes across the live stage, print, radio, television, film, and the web. With more than 50 books in print, David continues to write 2MM words a year and has authored over 25K articles. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Authors Guild, and PEN America, and founded The United Stage advocacy platform on the principle that playwrights have a duty to direct their own work. Read the Prairie Voice Archive at Boles.com | Buy his books at David Boles Books Writing & Publishing at BolesBooks.com | Study with Script Professor at ScriptProfessor.com | Touch American Sign Language mastery at Hardcore ASL at HardcoreASL.com | Explore the Human Meme podcast at HumanMeme.com | Train with Boles Bells at BolesBells.com.
      David W. Boles says:

      Google Hot Trends says a lot about what we value… and what we do not.

    1. David Boles – New York City – David Boles was born in Nebraska and holds an MFA from the Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theatre Studies at Columbia University in the City of New York. He is an author, dramatist, editor, publisher, and teacher who writes across the live stage, print, radio, television, film, and the web. With more than 50 books in print, David continues to write 2MM words a year and has authored over 25K articles. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Authors Guild, and PEN America, and founded The United Stage advocacy platform on the principle that playwrights have a duty to direct their own work. Read the Prairie Voice Archive at Boles.com | Buy his books at David Boles Books Writing & Publishing at BolesBooks.com | Study with Script Professor at ScriptProfessor.com | Touch American Sign Language mastery at Hardcore ASL at HardcoreASL.com | Explore the Human Meme podcast at HumanMeme.com | Train with Boles Bells at BolesBells.com.
      David W. Boles says:

      The results are incredibly disturbing.

  3. I’ve always wondered if it’s really TRUE – given the mindless, thoughtless searches/thoughts displayed.
    People can be like lemmings, you know.
    If the ‘media’ says “This is HOT!” the lemmings go, “Oh, really? I didn’t know that. What am I missing?”
    THEN the unsuspecting lemming is led to a website full of advertisements, which leads to purchases (sometimes, but www ads are a long shot anyway. “They can’t BUY/CLICK if they don’t SEE!!”) In the legendary words of somebody 🙂 : SHOW ME THE MONEY!
    I’ve always TRIED to see the more intelligent side of the universe, but Hot Trends doesn’t lend much to THAT, does it?

      1. David Boles – New York City – David Boles was born in Nebraska and holds an MFA from the Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theatre Studies at Columbia University in the City of New York. He is an author, dramatist, editor, publisher, and teacher who writes across the live stage, print, radio, television, film, and the web. With more than 50 books in print, David continues to write 2MM words a year and has authored over 25K articles. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Authors Guild, and PEN America, and founded The United Stage advocacy platform on the principle that playwrights have a duty to direct their own work. Read the Prairie Voice Archive at Boles.com | Buy his books at David Boles Books Writing & Publishing at BolesBooks.com | Study with Script Professor at ScriptProfessor.com | Touch American Sign Language mastery at Hardcore ASL at HardcoreASL.com | Explore the Human Meme podcast at HumanMeme.com | Train with Boles Bells at BolesBells.com.
        David W. Boles says:

        We live in a sad and tenuous time and instead of acting, we are allowing ourselves to be led along and acted upon.

    2. David Boles – New York City – David Boles was born in Nebraska and holds an MFA from the Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theatre Studies at Columbia University in the City of New York. He is an author, dramatist, editor, publisher, and teacher who writes across the live stage, print, radio, television, film, and the web. With more than 50 books in print, David continues to write 2MM words a year and has authored over 25K articles. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Authors Guild, and PEN America, and founded The United Stage advocacy platform on the principle that playwrights have a duty to direct their own work. Read the Prairie Voice Archive at Boles.com | Buy his books at David Boles Books Writing & Publishing at BolesBooks.com | Study with Script Professor at ScriptProfessor.com | Touch American Sign Language mastery at Hardcore ASL at HardcoreASL.com | Explore the Human Meme podcast at HumanMeme.com | Train with Boles Bells at BolesBells.com.
      David W. Boles says:

      Hi Lillian!

      I agree the web tends to encourage following and not original thought, and Google is certainly about selling advertising.

      I just think that if more people were truly interested in policy and incarceration and war and famine in the world — it would do us all a world of good to “follow” and click on those topics to get them trending. We need a mindful reset in this country — unfortunately the policy makers likely love what’s Hot Trending on Google because it confirms the worst of what they really think of us: Stupid and easy to control and influence.

        1. David Boles – New York City – David Boles was born in Nebraska and holds an MFA from the Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theatre Studies at Columbia University in the City of New York. He is an author, dramatist, editor, publisher, and teacher who writes across the live stage, print, radio, television, film, and the web. With more than 50 books in print, David continues to write 2MM words a year and has authored over 25K articles. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Authors Guild, and PEN America, and founded The United Stage advocacy platform on the principle that playwrights have a duty to direct their own work. Read the Prairie Voice Archive at Boles.com | Buy his books at David Boles Books Writing & Publishing at BolesBooks.com | Study with Script Professor at ScriptProfessor.com | Touch American Sign Language mastery at Hardcore ASL at HardcoreASL.com | Explore the Human Meme podcast at HumanMeme.com | Train with Boles Bells at BolesBells.com.
          David W. Boles says:

          Right! Right now we stand for Kardashians and Kanye West. It sickens me these know-nothings have taken over our spendable mindsets. We have nothing of value to entertain us but those buffoons?

          1. “Spendable Mindset” What a descriptive and accurate term!
            Our minds are just as expendable as the cash we bring in. Where you use it, or where you put it makes all the difference in the world.
            Thank you. That will be another concept that the word police in me will appreciate!

          2. David Boles – New York City – David Boles was born in Nebraska and holds an MFA from the Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theatre Studies at Columbia University in the City of New York. He is an author, dramatist, editor, publisher, and teacher who writes across the live stage, print, radio, television, film, and the web. With more than 50 books in print, David continues to write 2MM words a year and has authored over 25K articles. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Authors Guild, and PEN America, and founded The United Stage advocacy platform on the principle that playwrights have a duty to direct their own work. Read the Prairie Voice Archive at Boles.com | Buy his books at David Boles Books Writing & Publishing at BolesBooks.com | Study with Script Professor at ScriptProfessor.com | Touch American Sign Language mastery at Hardcore ASL at HardcoreASL.com | Explore the Human Meme podcast at HumanMeme.com | Train with Boles Bells at BolesBells.com.
            David W. Boles says:

            Right! We must not only vote with our pocketbooks, but with our eyes and our fingers as well — for what we decide to click on and read on the web has tremendous power and value. We are all being watched and tallied, and knowing that gives us tremendous influence if we spend that human time in the right niches that then become places and then causes and then results!

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