Wikipedia traffic, which is documented daily, delivers a somewhat-distorted reflection of the world — the dreadful and the divine, the marvelous and the mundane.
You won’t be surprised that the traffic for “Rebecca Black” picks up on Fridays, or that the traffic for Jesus consistently increases on Easter and Christmas. “Leap year” traffic spikes at the end of February (expected) but was also popular during January and February of 2020, presumably because that year had its own leap day — and it’s no shock that when a public figure dies, their Wikipedia article explodes in popularity. The online encyclopedia, ever scrupulous, even has a page dedicated to historical traffic jump. Kobe Bryant’s page, for example, increased by nearly 100,000 percent on the day he died and “Twerking” shot up after the 2013 MTV Music Video Awards.
