The report compiles the moments, people, topics, events and places that captured your attention this year, ranging from international stories to hundreds of top 10 lists, from pop culture, lifestyle, sports and music to news from almost 70 countries.
What was clear was that, the pandemic notwithstanding, the love affair South Africans have with sport, celebrities and politics remained unchanged.“We are obsessively interested in sport and current affairs. We have a hunger and thirst for knowledge that reveals who we are as a society, and we prefer to look forwards as evidenced by research into new technologies, new skills and holidays.”
One of the early versions of the theory maintained it was no coincidence that 5G technology was trialled in Wuhan, where the coronavirus originated. Others claimed the crisis was deliberately created to keep people at home while 5G engineers installed the technology, and that 5G radiation weakened people’s immune systems.
First TikTok had everyone going crazy over vanilla and where it comes from, then its memes had people frantically looking up why chainsaws were invented, which is information you really can’t unsee, and then it had people wondering why cornflakes were invented. It’s not because John Harvey Kellogg believed it was the best, high-fibre breakfast cereal available. Rather, cornflakes were developed as an antidote to sexual desire. Given the taste, it’s perhaps not hard to believe.
As always, politicians also featured. However, notably absent from the top searches in this field were Donald Trump and Cyril Ramaphosa. Instead, South Africans were more interested in Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, Kim Jong-un and Boris Johnson.