We Answered the UK’s Most Googled Questions of 2016

2016 has been a year of questions. Why do bad things keep happening? When will they stop? Will the hell ever end, or will it only intensify? At what precise moment did we stop treating the portmanteau "Brexit" with the contempt the word deserves and wholesale embrace it into our everyday language? Where can I move to where it won't ever be so bad? When are we all setting up splinter cities on Mars and the Moon? Will space fill the void that's tearing ever open inside of me with the cold, cold vacuum of oblivion?

So we have a lot of questions. Thankfully, Google has been collecting every question we – The Fine and Upstanding British People, God Bless the Queen – have been asking it this year. On one hand, when Google inevitably does go Full Evil, we are fucked: they are collecting this data on us all for a reason, and it's either a widespread blackmail campaign (everyone in the UK gets a letter on the same day saying "we will leak your search history unless you give us £10,000 right now", that sort of thing, which I personally will gladly pay just to keep the information of just how many words I, ostensibly a writer, Google to double-check the meaning of each day [I just did it then! With ostensibly!]), or they are somehow putting all our human questions into some big machine that is contributing to some large and evil AI that will Skynet an army of killer robots at us while nuking us in our playgrounds?

I've gone off topic: the point is it's the end of the year and Google put out a list of the most popular search terms of 2016 and I'm going to go through it with you and answer the questions you asked. Jesus fucking Christ. We got there eventually.

Anyway:

Oh you basically have to just look after it. Trim split ends, conditioner over daily shampoo, weekly hair treatments, bang a supplement now and then if you really want. Cosmo reckons you need to fuck about with towels and pillowcases, too. The point, I suppose though, is: where did all of Britain's hair go? Did we tear it out in frustration? Did we lose it through the stress? Did we, collectively, like that one boy in my Systems & Control class in Year 8, ask for a number three all over but the hairdresser accidentally started with a number one, and then he stopped her and asked again for the number three, bafflingly, so for about a month he had this weird hyper-bald patch in the front of his head, a puddle of baldness in an otherwise normal haircut? Did we all do that? I remember that. That was really funny. Why wouldn't you just push on and accept the number one.

This is the third-most asked cooking question in the UK this year. The third-most asked. Cooking question. In the UK. This year. How to make mashed potatoes.

Cunts: you boil a potato then fucking mash it.

We're an idiot nation, a nation of raving morons. We're a joke country. Our island is a sham. Add milk and butter to smooth it out. A spoonful of French mustard for a savoury kick. You can add a splash of chicken stock or something if you really want some flavour. Mash it with a roasted garlic bulb. Just such, such idiots. How can we be proud of ourselves? How can we stand and face the light and say: "I am proud to be British?" Grated cheese really elevates things but that's about it. Honestly. Honestly. Being British – having that heady mix of entitlement and hard-done-byism coded deep into my bones, liking tea, secretly having a warm nostalgic soft spot for drizzle – makes me sick. Having "GBR" printed on my passport makes me want to shoot myself dead, single bullet to the base of the skull. Slump my decaying body off the white cliffs and into the cold embrace of the sea.

This is just insane because it just reminds me of that time in July when Australia had Pokémon Go and we didn't, and people were positively alight with the idea of downloading this illicit Pokémon app, and everything became about obtaining Pokémon Go and then playing Pokémon Go and talking about Pokémon Go, and this went on for about three weeks, the Pokémon Go euphoria, and I mean people were rampaging around parks, weird insular fat-lads were losing weight walking around catching Dratini, shy nerds were making friends with each other in real life doing little meet-ups, adults were going just fuck-mental for Charizards, and then… oh, you know. Other stuff happened. I mean, you're not going to delete the app, but you're not going out of your way to open it, are you? You know you can catch a Pikachu with a santa hat on it, right now, because it's Christmas? Did you even know that? Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Pokémon Go.

This all feeds into my wider theory that 2016 is some sort of temporal anomaly, either a year-long shared hallucination or some mad Aztec thing where three years worth of shit got pushed into one year-long shit sandwich. I know this sounds like a weak Doctor Who plot, but, like: okay. "Damn, Daniel", right? Damn Daniel was only ten months ago. That's not right, is it? That doesn't add up. But Damn, Daniel was only ten months ago. All that Marina Joyce stuff was five months ago. The album The Life of Pablo came out this year. That album, which is full of so many bops, is less than a year old. So much has happened. Everything has happened so much. And there's still, like, 20 more days of this shit to get through. Nah. Thinking about Pokémon Go again just makes me remember all this – all this bullshit with the time – and I'm not doing that again. If it turns out that I'm secretly living through some sort of Marvel film bullshit subplot I am going to be so mad.

Your boy MC Big "n" Bouncy Fun-Sized Portion, AKA me, dropped two stone this year, so heed this actual advice I got for you: download MyFitnessPal, drink lots of water, endure Joe Wicks' Instagram page, drink less beer, eat fewer simple carbs and get bang into eggs. I also found weighing my fat ass every day was good motivation, but your mileage might vary. Don't bother buying a blender, you never end up using a blender as much as you think. Here's a much, much, much better link if you actually want to drop some $$$$$poundage$$$$$.

The two most Googled women in the UK this year were Meghan Markle, the US actress who has shot to British significance because she's dating Prince Harry; Stephanie Davis, a pregnant former Hollyoaks actress who has turned the unerring misery and drama of her life into magazine deals in a way that is akin to high performance art; and Honey G, that one off X Factor who, and I don't care how hard you are, could fucking deck you in a tops off fistfight. So what I am saying is: if you are a female human and you're looking to get famous next year, there are three very different ways into it.

The most Googled men – Conor McGregor, Sam Reece, Paul Pogba, Wayne Bridge and Kimbo Slice – are just sportsmen and one really bright-teethed male model from Sheffield. Men are so dull, aren't they? Just hammering "Conor McGregor" into Google and watching sizzle reels of him being rude in press conferences then doing a big punch. All the infinite wisdom and bounty of the world, trapped in this system of knots and wires and WiFi. And we just sit and Google Wayne Bridge.

Ah, I see Google has published my search results! Ahhhhhhhh! So embarrassing!

A coup, it says here, is "a sudden, violent and illegal seizure of power from a government", which is brilliant, isn't it? Man: I am so bang up for a coup in 2k17. Really would make 2k16 worth it, all this, if we do a big season finale coup on it right at the end. Sadly, I don't think people Googling "what is a coup" are exactly planning a coup, you know? It's like that time I learned that you can make a sourdough starter really easily at home, so I read a couple of articles and did a bit of clicking about on the subject but I was never really going to do it, was I? No. Now imagine that, but with a violent and bloody coup. You'd order all the coup equipment off Amazon and just never get round to doing it. "I'll do that coup on Sunday, I've got Sunday morning to mysel—" no. Stop kidding yourself that you're going to do a coup.

Well you know it's sad that so many people are Googling this, you know, being as it is the tenth-most asked "how" question in the UK this year. "How Do I Accept Myself For Who I Am?" comes from a place of deep discomfort, unsettlement, a blanket-like feeling of discontent, a fracture that runs between You and The Idea of You, an imbalance between the two sides of your head. How can you – the very you, that little nub in the centre of your head, that bundle of nerves and synapses that experiences everything as it does, that is reading this now, that is dictating the voice inside your head: how does that You, so central to who You are, not accept You? It's fucked up, man. All the way fucked up.

Google says you should start at this Psych Central article and slowly commit acts of acceptance and self-care upon yourself: think yourself out of the fug, process out loud and on paper, set goals and achieve them, forgive yourself and forgive other people. I'm not in that horrible grey no man's land of not accepting myself – hey! I'm great! – but it's a good list: maybe, in two-kay seveny-sevvy, we could all do with going through it a little, making a few notes, adjusting the fine machinery that makes us who we are; maybe, if we all do a little self-searching, an analysis, we can all become better people next year, and not have quite so much mad shit happening to us all the time. Or we could do that coup! Either/or, I'm easy.

@joelgolby

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