Wikipedia:Top 25 Report/September 25 to October 1, 2022


Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (September 25 to October 1, 2022)

Prepared with commentary by Igordebraga, YttriumShrew and SSSB

⭠ Last week's reportNext week's report →

If you thought last week's numbers for Jeffrey Dahmer were big, check out these ones! Due to the Netflix series about him (#10), his article received over 17 million views this week, a total only beaten in our archives by Kobe Bryant after his death, and surpassing for second place the total set by Her Erstwhile Majesty (#13) just three weeks ago. September's been weird here.

RankArticleClassViewsImageNotes/about
1Jeffrey Dahmer 17,531,816 You know Netflix has too much of a pull on people when a show on a serial killer manages to bring more views than the death of Queen Elizabeth (thankfully Kobe Bryant is still the most viewed...). The Ryan Murphy-produced Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story has Evan Peters playing the "Milwaukee Cannibal" who killed seventeen men, indulging in cannibalism and necrophilia with the bodies afterwards, before getting arrested in 1991, and three years later was beaten to death in prison by fellow inmate Christopher Scarver (played in the miniseries by Furly Mac).
2Christopher Scarver 3,878,592
3Coolio 2,321,416 Rapper Artis Leon Ivey Jr., who got gangsta rap to the top of the charts with "Gangsta's Paradise", passed away at the age of 59. Among the celebrities who mourned Coolio's death was "Weird Al" Yankovic, who famously parodied that song with "Amish Paradise".
4Marilyn Monroe 2,053,648 Back to Netflix, Blonde (#17) chronicled the life of the quintessential sex symbol in the 60th anniversary of her death, with Ana de Armas as Norma Jeane Masterton.
5Ponniyin Selvan: I 1,622,210 Indian cinema notches up a new entry now, with a Tamil adaptation of a beloved book of the same name. Set in the adolescent Chola empire and extremely complex (as you can tell from this terrifying character chart, left), the film has been received well and opened strongly at the box office.
6Evan Peters 1,323,957 The best cinematic Quicksilver plays #1 (see above).
7John Wayne Gacy 1,306,735 The previous serial killer to have been showcased on Netflix has a brief appearance in #1's show, played by Dominic Burgess.
8House of the Dragon 1,137,206 #5 has been compared to Game of Thrones due to its complex and dramatic plot and medieval setting. How fitting that the Game of Thrones prequel is still here.
9Giorgia Meloni 1,085,149 Following #18, this woman is likely to be the new Italian prime minister. A conservative right-wing nationalist and populist, who is sometimes described as far-right, as well as a homophobe, racist and conspiracy theorist, something I would agree with after reading the political positions listed on her article.
10Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story 1,048,481 Ryan Murphy already chronicled real life murders in American Crime Story, so now he has expanded to a miniseries on the reprehensible human being at #1. Whose death in prison was partially racially motivated, as nine of Dahmer's victims were Black, and the perpetrator (#2) went on to also bludgeon to death Jesse Anderson (played in the show by Jeff Harms), who killed his wife and tried to frame two African Americans for it.
11Jesse Anderson 1,043,682
12Don't Worry Darling 956,370 Now for less horrifying scandals, this thriller is here less for its cinematic merits (it's certainly well-made and acted, but the script clearly needed some polish between plot holes and predictability) than a turbulent production where director Olivia Wilde clashed with star Florence Pugh (pictured) and hooked up with fellow cast member Harry Styles.
13Elizabeth II 954,181 After the media's incessant discussion of the Queen's death, views are cooling down. But just wait until The Crown returns next month.
14Deaths in 2022 888,156 Let's quote #3:
Death ain't nothin' but a heartbeat away
I'm livin' life, do or die, what can I say?
152022 Russian invasion of Ukraine 800,498 After last week's mobilisation, Vladimir Putin "annexed" the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson Oblasts after obviously rigged referendums, a move with major implications as Russia now regards part of Ukraine as theirs, some of which Ukraine still controls. If Ukraine counterattacks, Russia would regard it as an attack on Russia, meaning they could use nuclear weapons. Weirdly, they did this right after a highly successful Ukrainian counteroffensive. It's almost like they were trying to discourage further counteroffensives by threatening to nuke people.
16Aaron Judge 765,460 Taking a brief detour to American sport, where this Major League Baseball player has been whacking balls so hard he scored 61 home runs in a season, which I presume is a lot because it's a joint record... In all seriousness, congrats to him.
17Blonde (2022 film) 760,793 In 2000, Joyce Carol Oates wrote Blonde, a novel offering a fictionalized take on #4's life. Already adapted into a 2001 miniseries, now it earned a movie on Netflix. Criticisms were raised toward having so much heavy content that it borders on exploitation (this here writer also objected to the director stretching scenes in a way reminiscent of some dull Western he directed once), but nonetheless Ana de Armas under extensive make-up made a perfect fit for Marilyn.
182022 Italian general election 737,151 The election was won by the centre-right coalition. Brothers of Italy won the most seats, with gains of as many as 20 percentage points, meaning their leader, (#9), becomes prime minister.
19Necrophilia 694,968 ...you can guess why this is here.
20Smile (2022 film) 678,655 The big theatrical release of the week is this frightening horror movie where Sosie Bacon (daughter of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick) is haunted by an entity that manifests through hallucinations with creepy smiles. There was even some viral marketing trying to find overlap in the horror and baseball audiences by having actors with those uncanny valley grins sitting behind the home plate at MLB games.
21The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power 660,270 Two media properties that have been here for weeks, courtesy of Amazon and the Astraverse...
22Brahmāstra: Part One – Shiva 604,913
23Charles III 602,083 With Queen Elizabeth's (#13) death fading out of the media, the torrent of clickthroughs has subsided, and only the new king is still here.
24Kwasi Kwarteng 591,100 Less than a month after his appointment, many in Britain already want the Chancellor of the Exchequer to resign after his "mini-budget" in which he made significantly cut taxes (largely for rich people), without any replacement for that revenue, leading to the pound dropping, a rise in interest rates and emergency intervention from the Bank of England. Evidently he didn't learn from the Kansas mistake.
25John Balcerzak 590,648And rounding off the list is more Dahmer stuff, with the rather disturbing story of the Milwaukee cop who completely bungled a chance to arrest him, instead giving his victim back to him and then making homophobic jokes about it. (Scott Michael Morgan plays him on #10)


Exclusions

  • This list excludes the Wikipedia main page, non-article pages (such as redlinks), and anomalous entries (such as DDoS attacks or likely automated views). Since mobile view data became available to the Report in October 2014, we exclude articles that have almost no mobile views (5–6% or less) or almost all mobile views (94–95% or more) because they are very likely to be automated views based on our experience and research of the issue. Please feel free to discuss any removal on the talk page if you wish.