Wikipedia:Top 25 Report/January 3 to 9, 2021

The Top 25 Report

This page contains material that is kept because it is considered humorous.
Such material is not meant to be taken seriously.

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

Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (January 3 to 9, 2021) edit

Prepared with commentary by Mcrsftdog, Benmite, Igordebraga, Kingsif

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In the immortal words of @dril, "Politic's is back baby. It's good again. Awoouu (wolf Howl.)"

Rank	Article	Views	Notes/about
1	Tanya Roberts	1,987,464	Whether you remember her as a Bond girl, a Charlie's Angel, or maybe the funniest character on That '70s Show, Roberts is probably an actress you liked. There was little fanfare when she was taken to a hospital for breathing problems on December 24. There was much more to talk about when she was reported dead. Then alive. On a cycle for three days. A miscommunication between her partner and her manager had the media reporting her death on January 3, which was soon retracted, but she passed away the following evening. Possibly the first scandal of 2021, it was quickly overshadowed by, well, the entire rest of the week (except on this list, obviously, where politics only starts at #3.)
2	Bridgerton	1,800,417	So how about them Netflix period dramas, huh? Real entertaining.
3	Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution	1,745,381	Following the Capitol storming, there was talk of removing Trump from power in his last 2 weeks of office. Impeachment needs a House majority and conviction requires a Senate supermajority, but would prevent the President from ever taking office again. The 25th Amendment requires support from the Vice President and a majority of Cabinet officials, but only forces a temporary abdication. Every politician worth his salt is calling for at least one of these, except Biden (in public), who has to be the dutiful mature leader of the sort-of free world already (in public)... We can only assume CNN said "25th Amendment" and everyone realized they don't really know which one that is. Well, as soon as you get to the 20s it's hard to remember it all: I know one of them ended Prohibition, and (now) that there's a clause in the 25th that allows the Cabinet to declare the President unfit - a clause that has never been invoked.
4	Jon Ossoff	1,680,347	Biden won in Georgia - a solid red state - last November, and Democrats Ossoff and Warnock were able to force runoff elections for their Senate seats. The runoff elections were held Tuesday, and both Democrats narrowly won. The Democratic Party now has the slimmest majority on the Senate - news announced on Wednesday, when a different transfer of power was taking place.
5	2021 storming of the United States Capitol	1,589,558	The final procedure of a United States presidential election is the certification of Electoral College votes by Congress. This is a ceremonial procedure, and elections are rarely decided at this stage. President Trump held a rally outside of Congress on January 6, the day of the certification. Trump left in the morning; at 2:15 p.m., barricades around the Capitol building were breached by protestors, and Congresspeople were evacuated to a bunker soon after. Protestors were mostly interested in taking photos for social media, and were removed soon after. While only 13 were arrested on the day of the storming, several have been arrested after the fact; this includes a W.V. state delegate that livestreamed the breach, the guy that stole Nancy Pelosi's lectern, and the "QAnon" shaman.
6	Elon Musk	1,476,902	This week, Bill Gates shed a single tear after being reminded that it’s been a very long time since he was the wealthiest man on the planet. After being bumped out of his spot by another straight white man, that straight white man who took the first straight white man’s spot has now been displaced by yet another straight white man. It's like a game of Sorry! where all of the pieces are pasty, aging capitalists. That’s right, folks: Musk, founder of SpaceX, PayPal, and (huge asterisk) Tesla, after years of launching random shit into orbit and manufacturing cars that can self-drive right into oncoming traffic has finally gone on to be named the richest man in the world this week. Which is crazy, since not too long ago he was at risk of losing it all after lighting up with Grimes and tweeting out that he was privatizing Tesla at $420. To think, all he had to do was coerce his employees into not unionizing, ignore COVID-19 restrictions on his facilities, and criminally underpay foreign workers! It was all so simple!
7	Donald Trump	1,356,356	It's happened to the best of us. You get a little too heated in an argument, end up saying the wrong thing, incite a riot, and get banned from Twitter. On Thursday, Trump met what will probably be the greatest consequence of his life - a ban from basically every social media platform. Time can only tell what his next outlet to complain about Graydon Carter will be.
8	Kelly Loeffler	1,338,022	Loeffler was appointed to Georgia's Senate seat in January 2020; within a month, she was allegedly doing insider trading over information about the COVID-19 pandemic. On Tuesday, she was defeated by this guy.
9	QAnon	1,277,283	We might've thought we had seen the last of this kooky conspiracy theory, born on 4chan like all of the most thought-provoking advancements in political theory to arise in the 21st century, about an international cult of Satanist pedophiles raging an endless (and imaginary) war against Donald Trump when we capped off our Top 50 Report...which reminds me, hey, have you read our Top 50 Report? But as news of #5 was unfolding, the public learned that one of the mobilizing forces behind the riots was none other than good 'ole QAnon. The two most prominent discoveries relating to the theory were that one of the more colorful characters of Wednesday, Jake Angeli -- the shirtless man with the spear, horned beaver hat, American flag face paint, and Valknut tattoo who was photographed at the podium of the Senate chamber and was arrested on federal charges for his involvement in them -- called himself the "QAnon Shaman" and is a crazy person, which I never would have guessed; and that Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran from California who was involved in the attack and was shot and killed while trying to smash in a window pane, was also a QAnon ride-or-die who chose the latter option this week. The two were obviously far from the only staunch allies of the nonsensical theory present at the riots: How else do you justify breaking into a government building to "Save America" from a decision made by its own people? In other QAnon news this week, Twitter banned two of its biggest looney tunes from the site (Michael Flynn and Sidney Powell) in an attempt to purge supporters of the theory, undoubtedly in response to the raid. Plenty of Q adherents attended the riot, and it can be expected that more will show up for January 20.
10	Cobra Kai	969,080	Netflix brought back the sequel series to The Karate Kid on New Year's Day, with the nostalgia trip going even further: Daniel LaRusso goes to Okinawa basically to show what happened to the characters of The Karate Kid Part II, and then Elisabeth Shue reappears as the love interest from the first movie.
11	Antifa (United States)	959,336	Some of Trump's biggest groupies, including lawyer L. Lin Wood, televangelist Mark Burns, and famed Tina Fey impersonator Sarah Palin, in a bogus attempt to try and rid themselves of any accountability (sound familiar?), claimed across social media and Fox News that the attack on the Capitol had been a false flag operation and that the people adorned with Trump flags and Trump merchandise who had all been attending a Trump rally minutes before the raid were not real Trump supporters. According to them, those were instead members of America's current leftist boogeyman, who had dressed up as known Trump supporters to ransack the Capitol. Just to clarify: no, Antifa didn't have a strong presence in Washington this week. Your eyes did not deceive you.
12	Josh Hawley	957,678	This week, we all learned who this Senator from Missouri is, and promptly wished we hadn't. Hawley saluted the Capitol ~~protesters~~ ~~rioters~~ Trump supporters on Wednesday morning and voted to throw out the votes of Arizona and Pennsylvania. His support for an attempted coup has caused controversy, leading to Simon & Schuster cancelling publication of Hawley's The Tyranny of Big Tech. According to Hawley, a private corporation not publishing a book from a literal U.S. Senator "could not be more Orwellian."
13	Deaths in 2021	935,351	New year, new list of the recently departed (including #1), bring back that skull picture!
14	Regé-Jean Page	912,622	Star of #2 as well as new streaming movie Sylvie's Love. Apparently, he's fairly handsome, but we don't have a picture for you.
15	Olivia Wilde	886,075	Well, it looks like British boy band crooner Harry Styles found yet another girl who just let him adore them. The director of Don't Worry Darling (which definitely sounds like something Harry Styles would say in a song) has been seen around town with star of the film Harry Styles, and rumours that the two were kissing in the kitchen like it was a dance floor abounded. However, heartthrobs like Harry hooking up with honeys like her has hearts breaking. More specifically, if the tabloid fodder is to be believed, Styles may have been the reason for the House star's breakup with former fiancé and SNL alum Jason Sudeikis, and now he's falling again. That last one was pretty bad, but the bottom line is that the star of possibly the goofiest movie to ever take itself seriously (that I watched when I was 10 and ran out of the theatre scared of) will most definitely be making a subtle appearance in the lyrics of a hit song some time soon, as Styles, like his former sweetheart Taylor Swift, has a penchant for infusing his personal relationships into his music.
16	Mitch McConnell	827,072	The first sea turtle-human hybrid and outgoing Senate Majority Leader seemed to break with Trump after a full four years of selling out to him, with the resignation of his wife from the Cabinet and a refusal to throw out Electoral College votes.
17	United States Capitol	821,192	The last time the "temple of democracy" was overrun was when the British burned Washington. In 1814. The last time I was in D.C. I was terrified of touching the barrier outside for fear of sniper, it's something kind of drilled into you about being near federal buildings: they who rule must be protected.
18	Raphael Warnock	766,734	The first Black man to represent Georgia in the Senate was elected on Tuesday.
19	Nancy Pelosi	733,424	She has more integrity than I, lemme tell ya. The Speaker of the House, her dais and office were denigrated, defaced, and defecated in by those people Trump loves. Then she got back to work. Presumably with a lot of hand sanitizer.
20	Elizabeth II	699,637	Her Majesty still coasts on The Crown, which has ended the Olivia Colman tenure and in the next two and final seasons will have Elizabeth played by Imelda Staunton.
21	Elaine Chao	686,100	The Transportation Secretary jumped ship and resigned following the Capitol storming. The first U.S. Cabinet member to resign, which might be politically motivated. Can we blame her? Even if it's just self-preservation, who wants to be in charge in the U.S. right now?
22	2020 United States presidential election	642,134	All the terrible things that happened in Washington (#5) were because the American voter made clear they did not want a Trump (#7) re-election, but he's a sore loser and his fans are a particularly explosive bunch.
23	Enrique Tarrio	628,040	The chairman of the Proud Boys was arrested by Washington, D.C. police for destruction of property, namely the burning of a Black Lives Matter banner in a rally by his neo-fascist group. After release, he has also been banned from the capital.
24	Charles Sobhraj	607,560	BBC One begun The Serpent, named after one of this French serial killer's sobriquets (along with The Bikini Killer and The Splitting Killer).
25	Joe Biden	592,298	#7 found this man's election to the seat that he currently holds due to #22 so unbelievable that it caused him to start #5. Biden also publicly denounced the storming and declared that those who participated in it were "domestic terrorists". Maybe 2021 will only start when this guy moves into the White House on the 20th?

Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (January 3 to 9, 2021)

Exclusions edit

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.