Captain Marvel is in the lead this week, bringing in its star (#4, #25) and related movies as well (#12, #14). Aside from another movie that hits theaters this week (#21), there are some streaming releases on Netflix (#17, #20), and the subject of a Hulu series (#23) and an HBO documentary (#22). While on that, Leaving Neverland has dropped below the top 25, the King of Pop (#10) who is the subject - and even once owed something to the other royal of the Report, the King of Queen (#8) - and the guy denouncing him (#18) are still here. There are some major news events making it into the top 25: the Christchurch mosque shootings (#11) which took place in New Zealand (#16), airplanes crashing (#2, #19), two actresses who seem to have bribed colleges to accept their children (#3, #5), a politician declaring his candidacy (#6), an upcoming election (#24), and an announced engagement (#13). A Google celebration of a major anniversary this week (#7), the regular death report (#9), and a professional wresting event (#15) complete the list.
For the week of March 10 to 16, 2019, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the
WP:5000 report were:
I'm not sure if it was intended, but it seems the controversy over this film (spearheaded by some fairly innoccuous comments made by star Brie Larson, which were then twisted out of all recognition by Internet trolls) has given it a massive boost in recognition, with this formerly obscure Marvel Comics character seeing her grosses approach the magic $1 billion number. I haven't seen it myself (the trailers didn't wow me) but from all accounts it seems like a fairly bog-standard Marvel origin story, which, had it not received the "attention" it had, likely would have been regarded as such. Sometimes the Streisand effect is the only antidote to Internet vileness.
The first of several articles on this list related to the 2019 college admissions bribery scandal, arrests having been made this week. (would be #79, if the list went that long). This actress and her husband were both arrested on suspicion of having sent $500,000 to the University of Southern California (disguised as a charity donation) so that the admissions committee would be led to believe that their two daughters would be joining the school's women's rowing team - they probably never touched an oar in their lives.
She's arguably just as guilty of bribery as her fellow TV star Felicity Huffman (#5), but got nearly double the views, no doubt due to the cringe-inducing tweets from Youtube star Olivia Jade, Laughlin's undeserving silver-spooned spawn whose entry into said college was enabled by the bribes. Li'l Liv doesn't seem to have appreciated her mother's efforts, describing her feelings toward the ultra-exclusive college thusly: "I HATE SCHOOL OH MY GODDDDDDD!"; "I'm too tired; my eyes hurt and I don't want to b at school", and the admirably succinct, "It's so hard to try in school when you don't care about anything you're learning". Thing is, Olivia is a Youtube and Instagram celebrity. She's already successful (for a given value of success) and likely didn't benefit at all from her time at college. So why did she need to go?
Like #3, another actress suspect in the 2019 college admissions bribery scandal (though a much more acclaimed one, holding an Emmy and an Oscar nom to her name), with the accusation being that she paid $15,000 for someone to take the SAT for her daughter.
A politician from the American Texas Democratic Party and former punk rocker, who announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in 2020, and raised $6.1 million in campaign funds in his first 24 hours in the race. Still, the fact that he lost his Texas Senate race to the distinctly un-charismatic Ted Cruz and said, when asked by Vanity Fair why he wanted to be President, "I want to be in it; man, I'm just born to be in it," has led to some backlash from the true opposition, late night comedians.
30 years ago this week, on March 12th, Sir Tim Berners-Lee wrote a proposal for "a large hypertext database with typed links", which became the World Wide Web. Without it, there would be no Wikipedia, nor Google, whose homepage Doodle tradition sent droves over to this article. This week, Sir Tim took the opportunity to lament how his dream of free information for all had been hijacked by anonymous trolls.
The King of Queen rocks the list once again this week, for reasons most likely well drilled into your head by now. But just in case they weren't: there was a movie last November. Then it won a few Oscars. Now people are reading the article about the person the film was about.
In a world rocked by seemingly constant #MeToo accusations, a documentary entitled Leaving Neverland (which has fallen off this list since its release, but its subject remains here) detailing the alleged sexual abuse of two boys by the King of Pop certainly struck a sensitive note, with many rallying behind the film as an accurate portrayal of the effects of sexual abuse, yet still accessible to the outsiders fortunate enough never to have suffered that way. This type of documentary is bound to produce controversy, though, and produce controversy this did: the directors have received death threats from a few overzealous fans, and critics are split between "this was a necessary movie to the #MeToo movement" and "this is far too biased to qualify as a documentary." The Jackson estate has issued an official release condemning the film, citing a lack of independent evidence and the boys' testimony under oath; a month later they sued HBO for a million dollars, citing a contract from 1992. This entire mess shows (to me) that humans are drawn to scandal and controversy, but what's new?
One thing to note about this mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand this week (aside from the fact that it wasn't a New Zealander who did it, which anyone who has ever met a New Zealander could have told you) is the sudden change of tone in the coverage. Usually, when a Muslim attacks a group of defenseless people, you can bet your bottom dollar that the word "terrorist" will be used liberally. But when a white Christian commits a mass shooting, as is the case here, you can expect to hear words like "lone wolf" or "mentally ill." Not now. Too many people have died; New Zealand is a small country, and 50 of its innocent citizens, men women and children, were mercilessly gunned down while praying at mosque. What else could you call it but a terrorist attack? One good thing that could come from this obscenity is that it may force us to see that anonymous, online radicalisation is a threat from all sides, not just dark-skinned ones.
The popularity of Captain Marvel (#1) has brought the next Marvel Cinematic Universe movie (#14), where the heroine will help the surviving Avengers undo all the death from the previous one - she's already in the latest trailer! Endgame hits theaters in April.
The country where the big-news terrorist attack (#11) took place. Seeing the chaos caused by something just as bad as a Muslim terrorist, namely an Islamophobe White Supremacist, led to promises of tighter gun laws.
Shortly after a limited theatrical release, Netflix made available for streaming this action thriller where Ben Affleck (pictured) is one of a group of ex-Special Ops soldiers who go to the Amazonian triple frontier to steal from a crime lord.
The documentary Leaving Neverland (which would be #30 on the list) is about the allegation that Michael Jackson (#10) abused him and another person with no Wikipedia page when they were kids.
This week, for the second time in under 6 months, a new aircraft from the Boeing 737 MAX series (#2) crashes on takeoff, killing everyone on board. The first incident is #34.
After winning an Oscar for Get Out, Jordan Peele (pictured) remains steady on his shift from comedy to horror with his second movie as writer-director, Us, which already got glowing reviews (the Rotten Tomatoes score is 97%!).
The murder of an abusive mother by her daughter and the daughter's boyfriend, he was recently convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Joey King (pictured) will portray said daughter in Hulu's show The Act, set to debut on the 20th.
We finish with the same subject that opened the list, namely its main character, who seems like "Just a Girl, all pretty and petite" but is one of the most powerful beings in the universe. Although unlike last year, where the hype for "Vers"\Ms. Marvel\Captain Marvel easily surpassed her portrayer (2.5+ million more views, and what would be the 88th most popular page of 2018!), this time the attention is coming to Brie Larson herself, if her position at #4 says anything.
Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (March 10 to 16, 2019)
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.
Kayden Boche: no reasonable explanation for this model's high views.
Note: If you came here from the Signpost article, please take any discussion of exclusions to this article's talk page.
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