As America enters its third week of the war against terrorism, the extraordinary wave of change that hit the Lycos 50 last week has not abated. If anything, the changes grew more extraordinary as Lycos users sought out facts about our new enemies and information on a growing amount of September 11-related Internet folklore.
Nostradamus received only one-third the searches he did last week, but he still finishes #1, with World Trade Center just behind at #2. Searches for the American flag (#3) nearly doubled. General trends saw queries about the terrorists increase -- including Islam (#15) and Taliban (#9) -- while searches for the locations of the attacks generally dropped, such as New York (#10) and The Pentagon (#51).
WINGDING DONG: The Nostradamus hoax was the first urban legend of the terrorist attacks to be distributed on the Internet, but it is not the last. You may have received an email going around the Internet that describes a conspiracy hidden within the popular Microsoft Word software: the Q33NY (#25) hoax.
Typing Q33NY into the Wingdings font on Microsoft Word produces pictures of an airplane, two images that sort of look like buildings, a skull and crossbones, and then the Star of David. This has led to rumors that Q33 was one of the flight numbers for the hijacked airplanes (it wasn't), or that it is a verse of the Koran that orders jihad (it isn't). Q33 is a bus routeManhattan, but that seems to be random coincidence.
Microsoft has actually been denying allegations of this sort since it was first revealed in 1992 that NYC in Wingdings comes out to be a skull, a Star of David, and a thumbs-up. Yes, these letters do translate into these characters in Wingdings, but for the record Microsoft says it's not on purpose and it sends no message.
FAMOUS FACES: The Q33NY hoax is not the only pop culture phenomenon spawned by the terrorist attacks. Many Lycos users spent the week looking for the Face in the Smoke (#18), a series of photographs that seem to show a face in the smoke rising from the World Trade Center attacks. Many of these searches asked for Satan or The Devil, such as the face of Satan or World Trade Center devil.
Other Lycos users were looking for a popular poster with a picture of Osama Bin Laden and the announcement Bin Laden: Wanted Dead or Alive. That's enough to make the poster #20 on the Lycos 50. We also got numerous searches for Kill Bin Laden T-shirts.
GAS MASKS: My comment in September 11's special report that after the terrorist attacks "we are all Israelis now" received both positive and negative feedback from Lycos 50 readers. But it seems to have been prescient in one specific case: many Lycos users feel like Israelis now when it comes to headgear.
That's because fear of a biological or chemical attack by terrorists has led to searches for gas masks (#14) increasing by more than 5000 percent over the last two weeks. Five percent of current gas mask searches actually specify Israeli gas masks; no other country is specified in such a fashion. And what will we use those gas masks for? To protect ourselves from biological weapons including, perhaps, anthrax (#50). Anthrax now gets 14 times as many searches as it did two weeks ago.
Speaking of gas masks, masked metal band Slipknot (#47) returns to the Lycos 50 this week.
NATIONAL ANTHEMS: It won't surprise anyone who has watched a sporting event in the last week that a number of patriotic songs have marched up the search charts since September 11. The most popular is God Bless America (#44), followed closely by The Star Spangled Banner (#48). Both songs get more than double as many requests as baseball's choice for the seventh inning stretch, America the Beautiful.
Click here for page two of today's report.
