Spotify has redefined yearly recaps with "Spotify Wrapped," and various other brands and outlets are attempting their own version.
In order to showcase what the world was searching in 2023, Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization that manages the world famous information website Wikipedia, released its own version of "Spotify Wrapped" which listed the site's most popular English pages of 2023.
The Wikimedia Foundation said English Wikipedia had received over 84 billion views within the year, and it published the 25 Wikipedia pages which garnered the most page views. These encompassed an array of topics like technology, film and television, celebrities, and sports.
While some of the entries on the list will probably be a surprise to no one — like Taylor Swift and Elon Musk! — the order of the terms on the list may be a reminder that the world is a lot larger than what the internet feeds into our individual algorithms. As the Wikimedia Foundation's post points out, this is an indication of the knowledge sought out by "you and society."
Below are the top five most viewed pages. Before you scroll down, try to guess who or what the top five might be!
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5. Oppenheimer (film) - 28.3 million pageviews
The "Oppenheimer" and "Barbie" movies took over the world in the summer. The two films were released at the same time in late July, but had polar opposite topics: "Oppenheimer" was the grim biopic of the creator of the atomic bomb that was used for mass bombings, and "Barbie" was a feel-good film about an iconic fictional doll.
The two were tied together so much so that fans plastered the "Barbenheimer" branding onto the two films and the idea of watching both consecutively in one day was a trend that ran across the world.
"Barbie," the shorter and much more light-hearted film, won at the box office, garnering an whopping $1.4 billion worldwide to the still impressive over $900 million that "Oppenheimer" made. But "Oppenheimer" received more Wikipedia page views — 28.3 million to Barbie's 18.1 million, which placed it at 13th on the list.
4. Indian Premier League - 32 million pageviews
Soccer is the most popular sport in the world, football is the most popular sport in America, but cricket was by far the most searched sport on Wikipedia in 2023. The sport is one of the most popular in the world despite not making massive headway in American soil, and the Indian Premier League is considered the top professional league in the world.
If it's not clear just how popular the sport is worldwide: there were four cricket-related pages that were in the top 10 of Wikipedia's pageviews. (Spoiler: There's one more in the top 3!)
It also partly indicated the volume of searches in India, which also had two Bollywood films ("Jawan" and "Pathaan") in the top 10 most searched stories, behind Oppenheimer, but ahead of other Hollywood films like "Barbie" and "Avatar: The Way of Water."
3. 2023 Cricket World Cup - 38.2 million pageviews
The only thing cricket-related more popular than the most prestigious league is the most prestigious tournament. The tournament ran from Oct. 5 to Nov. 19 and was the first tournament where all the games were played in India.
But while India's Virat Kohli won the Player of the Tournament on home soil, the hosts were unable to secure the all-important trophy as Australia defeated India in the final.
The Wikimedia Foundation said that the 2023 Cricket World Cup saw 304% more interest than the topic's last iteration, which was in 2019.
Cricket's dominance of Wikipedia's list is new, but it also carries over the popularity of sports across the world. The same third place slot that the 2023 Cricket World Cup had this year was owned by the 2022 FIFA World Cup last year, while soccer stars Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi were both in the top 15 for the last two years.
2. Deaths in 2023 - 42.7 million pageviews
The Wikimedia Foundation said that the list of deaths is always a popular page on the Wikipedia, and it ranked fourth in the 2022 with 46.5 million pageviews. The company does indicate that the lists are split into month-by-month lists in order to keep its length down.
Matthew Perry, who played Chandler Bing on the world famous 1990s sitcom Friends, was one of the most famous figures who passed away this year after his death was announced in October. His own Wikipedia page ranked 17th on the list with 16.5 million pageviews.
1. ChatGPT - 49.5 million pageviews
Artificial Intelligence has taken over. Okay, it hasn't taken over the world (yet!), but it's one of the most discussed topics across technology and society, and the most popular platform for the everyday consumer to access the power of technology is ChatGPT.
According to the Wikimedia Foundation, ChatGPT, which launched in November 2022, saw around 100,000 to 400,000 pageviews nearly everyday of the first half of this year. And across all the languages that Wikipedia has, ChatGPT-related stories saw over 78 million pageviews.
Other notables on the list:
J. Robert Oppenheimer [7], "The Last of Us" (TV series) [11], Taylor Swift [12], Cristiano Ronaldo [14]. Lionel Messi [15], Elon Musk [19], Russian invasion of Ukraine [24]
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