Wikipedia:Top 25 Report/January 10 to 16, 2021

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.



Don't forget to read the 2020 annual top 50 report

Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (January 10 to 16, 2021)

Prepared with commentary by Mcrsftdog, Benmite, Kingsif, and Igordebraga

⭠ Last week's report

Same old, same old. The world is still shaken from the siege of the United States Capitol by Trump supporters, Netflix reigns supreme in the realm of streaming shows, and nobody took Elon Musk's spot as the richest man in the week since he earned it.

There's just one teensy-weensy difference in this week's list: For the first time in all of American history, the President has been impeached for a second time. NBD, right? Oh, yeah, and that guy who played the Winklevoss twins in The Social Network might be a cannibal.

I mean, we're two weeks into 2021 and it already feels like a year. Is it too early to say let's try again in 2022?

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes/about
1 Donald Trump 2,227,710 The Biggest Loser of American Politics is unsurprisingly perched atop this list once again, hopefully for one of the last times as his reign of terror slowly ends.

For those who were, like Trump, sequestered, but, unlike Trump, not watching the madness unfold on television, here's a recap: As the Commander-in-Chief was meant to be readying himself to step out of Chief, he was instead inciting riots on government property among his many delusional supporters that led to several deaths and a whole lot of anger, fear, and just all-around bad vibeage. You can read more about that in the seventh article on this list if you so choose.

Ergo, the House of Representatives impeached the Donald for a historic second time, which you surely wouldn't be able to tell from the three other articles on this list related to it. DJT's first time being put in a peach was as a result of his pressuring Ukraine to dig up nonexistent dirt on the guy who's about to take his place by withholding military aid to them. Something about a quidditch ball queef or something. The second time around, 10 Republicans even sacrificed their loyalty for Trump and voted for him to be impeached, because when their own precious hides are on the line, that's crossing the line. He may not have got two terms, but he got two impeachments, and that's the important thing.

2 QAnon 1,566,387 The article on this downright begins with "QAnon is a disproven and discredited far-right conspiracy theory", though go tell this to the ignorant right who is even willing to break into the Capitol.
3 Richard Ramirez 1,541,629 The world's hunger for true crime was satiated once again this week, as this soulless Satanist serial killer who broke into homes across Los Angeles in the '80s to violently murder people and was aptly dubbed the "Night Stalker" is the subject of a Netflix docuseries also called Night Stalker. If there's one thing that this list continues to show us, it's that if you want a surefire way to earn yourself a streaming special, get into the murder business. It tends to be less cutthroat than the acting business, even if there are some cut throats along the way. Sorry...
4 WandaVision 1,504,824
The Marvel Cinematic Universe hasn't had new releases since July 2019 given the pandemic delayed everything. Until their first Disney+ show, where Wanda Maximoff and the android Vision are a couple in a send-off of old sitcoms which is clearly some sort of illusion yet to be revealed, as after the first two episodes the show will have weekly chapters. Basically, expect to see it on the list for weeks to come.
5 Bridgerton 1,341,927
When I heard about this show before it arrived, I wasn't expecting much. There's been so many quaint period drama duplicates that are inherently boring. I still haven't seen this one, but without being cynical, perhaps it's the time distance since Downton Abbey, the quality of The Crown, and the general lack of other new media that's made it popular enough to keep landing on this list.
6 Elon Musk 1,309,789 The Tesla, Inc., SpaceX, et. al founder became the world's richest man.
7 2021 storming of the United States Capitol 1,126,789 Why does Antifa wear masks? For the most part, it's so that police can't identify them. If you wanted to commit a crime - such as rioting in the United States Capitol - you probably shouldn't pose for photos, get caught on a livestream, or identify yourself to the media afterwards.
8 Parler 1,123,889 A Twitter clone for Trump supporters was nuked by Big Tech last week; apparently, some of the Capitol rioters organized, and Parler's "moderation team" turned a blind eye. Prior to servers being taken down, hacktivists breached the servers, downloading 7 TB of data (including state I.D.s that were used for the site's verification system) and uploading it onto the Internet Archive.
9 Nancy Pelosi 974,465
The Speaker of the House and the President haven't been on good terms for a while now, but their fight has seen itself coming to a close in the past few months as the reality of Trump's loss sinks in for everyone except him, and it became even clearer who the winner of this battle is when Pelosi succeeded in rapidly getting Trump impeached for a second time this week.

Of course, since Pelosi is a woman, people were quick to make note of the fact that she wore the same outfit during the proceedings this week that she did during his prior impeachment. Whether this dress choice was intentional or not, is it not a little strange how laser-focused the media is on what female politicians wear? I guess Cecily Strong's pledge for the media during the White House Correspondents' Dinner was forgotten: "I solemnly swear not to talk about Hillary's [or any female politician's] appearance because that is not journalism."

9 Signal (software) 880,835 After users of the popular Facebook-owned messaging app WhatsApp discovered that a new update forced them to either fork over their data to the Zucc or leave the app (a policy which was, let's face it, probably already being enforced unbeknownst to them -- do we not remember Cambridge Analytica?) millions found themselves migrating to other, more secure platforms such as this one which places emphasis on its end-to-end encryption and found fans in Musk (#3) and whistleblower Edward Snowden. Its sudden boom in popularity caused it to skyrocket to the top of the app store charts and led to a day-long outage due to an unprecedented influx of users.
10 Insurrection Act of 1807 856,739 Alexa, define "insurrection"
11 Deaths in 2021 816,326 Some will die in hot pursuit
In firey auto crashes
Some will die in hot pursuit
While siftin' through my ashes
12 Murder of Bobbie Jo Stinnett 809,353 The federal government has executed 11 people since July of 2020; before that, the last federal execution was in 2003. On January 13, Lisa Marie Montgomery was executed; she was convicted of the 2004 murder of Stinnett. Montgomery was the first woman to be executed by the federal government since Bonnie Heady in 1953.
13 Armie Hammer 780,916 Oliver might have been interested in eating Elio's peach in the movie, but in real life, it seems as though he might have had a greater desire for his flesh, as cannibalism turns out to be one of his fetishes in some leaked Instagram direct messages.
14 Regé-Jean Page 769,379 The British star of #5.
15 Taylor Heinicke 768,906 Heinicke, quarterback for the that Football Team in Washington, was the starting QB for the January 9 Wild Card game against Tampa Bay. While Washington lost the game, Heinicke won plenty of attention.
16 Fran Lebowitz 753,787 The funny lady and author of Social Studies was the co-star of a Netflix docuseries alongside Martin Scorcese titled Pretend It's a City which premiered last week, in which the two shoot the shit about Noo Yawk, Noo Yawk. Makes sense, seeing as the two are practically New York City incarnate.
17 Impeachment in the United States 726,249 This is the fourth impeachment of a president (previous ones: Johnson, Clinton, Trump.) None of these resulted in the removal of the president, which requires a supermajority in the Senate. This one probably won't either.
18 Liz Cheney 715,231 10 House Republicans voted to impeach Trump on Wednesday, including the daughter of one of the major architects of the Iraq war.
19 Executive Order 13959 712,574 Signed by Trump last November but only going into effect Monday, this Executive Order prohibits investment in "Communist Chinese military companies." There are 35 such companies, a list including Huawei.
20 John Cooper (serial killer) 666,984 The subject of ITV's miniseries The Pembrokeshire Murders. Unlike #3, this is a dramatization, with Cooper being played by Keith Allen.
21 Master (2021 film) 663,068 Like Tenet in Hollywood, Kollywood has a movie that its makers insisted on putting in the big screen, namely this action-thriller released prior to the Pongal festival
22 Impeachment 610,220 Two more articles related to the Congress finding Trump unfit to continue in office, including the former title of First impeachment of Donald Trump, moved mid-week (now in its place is a disambiguation page).
23 Impeachment of Donald Trump 608,171
24 Elizabeth II 570,035 The Queen's Gambit left a while ago, yet the actual Queen who is the subject of The Crown stuck around longer.
25 Lauren Boebert 566,395 Last June, Boebert (proprietor of a restaurant where waitresses open-carry rifles) successfully primaried a 5-term House Republican. Boebert has been open about wanting to bring her gun into the Capitol; when the Capitol installed metal detectors post-storming, she set it off and refused to be searched.


Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (January 10 to 16, 2021)
Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (January 10 to 16, 2021)

Exclusions

  • This list excludes the Wikipedia main page, non-article pages (such as redlinks), and anomalous entries (such as DDoS attacks or likely automated views). Since mobile view data became available to the Report in October 2014, we exclude articles that have almost no mobile views (5–6% or less) or almost all mobile views (94–95% or more) because they are very likely to be automated views based on our experience and research of the issue. Please feel free to discuss any removal on the talk page if you wish.