The Search for Meaning in a Word
I’ve pretty much just been working. Monitoring Google’s US Trends from 9 AM to 5 PM, and then again from 7 PM to midnight. It’s a trivial background process, but today, a single, unexplained word appeared: “nieve.” It has no corresponding news story, no context. Just the word, and a number: “10,000+ searches.” The timestamp indicates it’s been trending for hours.
By 8 PM, I half imagine I’m eating a bowl of instant noodles from a brand that’s been nuked with MSG. I keep the same loop going until midnight, waiting for the search count to tick upward. A silent auction of mass curiosity where the object being bid on is unknown.