Let's get right to it: On Friday I asked you to name a mystery word that was popular in Google searches but nigh nonexistent in the pages of the New York Times. How did you do?
Mike Donohue — yes, he let me use his real name — dropped me an e-mail that was more a confession than anything else:
I suppose my guess is actually 3 words, but that chart looks suspiciously like the Google Trend for "Honey Boo Boo", and I can't imagine that particular topic ends up in the pages of the NYTimes especially frequently.(And yes, I am ashamed to say that I occasionally watch that show...)
.@_cingraham #NameThatData I know it’s not, but I really want the answer to be “sharknado” or “kimye.” — Joshua Hatch (@hatchjt) August 1, 2014
Katie Park dreamed of jeggings:
@_cingraham pretty bummed that the numbers for "jeggings" don't exactly line up with the numbers you give. BUT SO CLOSE #NameThatData — Katie Park (@katiepark) August 1, 2014
But despite my
, the answer was not denim-related. For a hint, check out this amazing map that tells you how many times you live:
Yes, as many of you correctly surmised, the right answer was "YOLO." The acronym for "You only live once" was popularized by the rapper Drake in his 2011 single "
."
chronicle the rise of the term:
On October 23rd, 2011, Drake posted a tweet using the word accompanied by a photo of himself standing on a balcony.The now defunct Twitter analytics site Trendistic reported that tweets with the keyword “yolo” rose significantly on October 24th, one day after Drake tweeted the photo from his balcony. In addition, Google Insights graph also indicates that search queries for the keyword “YOLO” began to rise drastically between October and November 2011.
Here's the live Google Trends chart comparing the interest in "yolo" and "Barack Obama" over time. What's most impressive to me is yolo's staying power after its early 2012 spike.
Lots of you got this one right, which is great because it meant people were tweeting "YOLO" at me all weekend. First one out the gate — like, literally within 5 minutes of me posting the thing — was Olenka Mitukiewicz of Washington, D.C.
@_cingraham #NameThatData YOLO — Olenka Mitukiewicz (@olenkamitu) August 1, 2014
Olenka, having YOLO on the mind paid off this week — you've earned yourself the
Early Bird Prize for Prompt and Expeditious Accuracy
. May you live *more* than once! But! One of you went above and beyond the call of data to correctly guess not only the word, but the artist and song from whence it came. That was
Jen Potvin
.
.@_cingraham YOLO!! #NameThatData #drake #themotto — Jen Potvin (@jkpotvin) August 2, 2014
Jen, I hereby proclaim you an official
Data Wizard/Ninja/Unicorn/Whatevs, YOLO edition
, and certify that on Friday, August 1, 2014, you were
Right on the Internet
. To everyone else, thanks for playing. And remember, as Drake sings in Nicki Minaj's Moment 4 Life (feat. Drake), "everybody dies - but not everybody lives."