The Idol becomes the Master

Traffic report

The Idol becomes the Master

By Igordebraga, Milowent, Ollieisanerd and Capsulecap

This traffic report is adapted from the Top 25 Report, prepared with commentary by Igordebraga, Milowent, Ollieisanerd and Capsulecap.

I'm tryna put you in the worst mood, ah (June 25 to July 1)

Rank	Article	Views	Notes/about
1	The Idol (TV series)	5,907,348	A critic this writer here follows wrote "The Idol is the worst show in the history of television. And yes, that's saying something in the medium that brought us Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, Inhumans and The Flying Nun." This should be a great indicative of the reputation of this HBO show that just ended its 5-episode run, with the brunt of criticism leveled at co-creators Abel Tesfaye aka The Weeknd, who decided to also act and led to a heavily mocked performance as a self-help guru who takes an aspiring pop singer played by Lily-Rose Depp (pictured) into a sleazy cult, and Sam Levinson, who made a creative overhaul once director Amy Seimetz was driven away as she tried to class up the joint. Reportedly, Seimetz attempted to tell the story of a woman "falling victim to a predatory industry figure and fighting to reclaim her own agency", and instead the end result became "sexual torture porn" that fails at being arousing. Audiences haven't responded that better, with regular television views that fell very short of Levinson's better known show Euphoria, and while the HBO Max numbers were higher and the Wikipedia ones reflect a fair amount of interest (only 14 articles got 5 million views in back-to-back weeks!), the overall discourse is as negative as that of reviewers.
2	Wagner Group	1,503,767	The Russian paramilitary group has been described as "Putin's private army", but its recent Wagner Group rebellion against the Russian regime is the cause of its recent focus in the news.
3	Julian Sands	1,414,881	Veteran English actor who went missing in January whilst hiking in the San Gabriel Mountains near Los Angeles. His body was discovered on June 24 by some hikers in the area where he went missing.
4	Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny	1,260,109	Indiana Jones was once planned to star in 5 movies, and it eventually became true even without Steven Spielberg and George Lucas for the latest one - just don't expect a sixth with Harrison Ford being 80, no matter if the opening sequence of this movie has a fairly convincing de-aged Indy. James Mangold directs this installment set in 1969, where Indy fights Nazis trying to recover a MacGuffin based on the Antikythera mechanism. Still with the same humor and setpieces of the other movies, along with heaps of nostalgia and some plot developments certain to displease those who complained about the aliens in the last one, Dial of Destiny got a somewhat positive response and is expected to have a great opening weekend (it's unclear if it can sustain its success and allow Disney to recoup the enormous budget estimated in the $300 million mark).
5	Titanic	1,093,946	The most famous shipwreck in history, and somehow there were people who thought James Cameron invented it for the 1997 blockbuster. Over 1500 people died in the sinking, and unfortunately it has now caused a few more indirect deaths when a submersible collapsed on the way to the wreck (#9).
6	Deaths in 2023	988,763	Deaths added to this article during the week included British journalist Dame Ann Leslie (June 25), Kazakh weightlifter Vladimir Sedov (June 26), Spanish actress Carmen Sevilla (June 27), German protestor Dietrich Wagner (June 28), American actor Alan Arkin (June 29) (#8 this week), Indian politician Bir Devinder Singh (June 30), and Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina (July 1).
7	Elton John	980,844	After a successful career that was even celebrated with a biopic, Sir Elton is set to retire with the conclusion of the Farewell Yellow Brick Road (which became the highest-grossing tour of all time!) later this month, and his last concert in his native England was closing the 2023 edition of Glastonbury Festival.
8	Alan Arkin	946,724	An actor who died at the age of 89, leaving behind a body of work that went all the way back to the 1960s and included Little Miss Sunshine, for which he won the Academy Award, and Best Picture winner Argo, where he originates an hilariously NSFW line. Arkin's last two roles were Spenser Confidential and Minions: The Rise of Gru, and the thriller The Smack will become a posthumous release.
9	Titan submersible implosion	926,931	Down from #2 last week. Debris from the destroyed vessel was discovered on June 22, and news coverage has continued to uncover just how unsafe this craft was. The hubris of its company founder Stockton Rush may be one of the reasons that a disaster like this has captured far more attention than the 2023 Messenia migrant boat disaster, where over 500 likely have died.
10	Yevgeny Prigozhin	884,111	The leader of #2. Prigozhin's training to be a mercenary group leader included nine years in prison in his teens and twenties.

Rebel rebel, party party, sex sex sex, and don't forget the violence (July 2 to 8)

Rank	Article	Views	Notes/about
1	The Idol (TV series)	1,999,681	At least here on Wikipedia, The Idol matched Squid Game in two things, getting 5 million weekly views (twice!) and being the most viewed article of the week for a month straight. And that's where the comparisons stop, the Korean Netflix show might've had some incredibly violent things but at least viewers were liking it, whereas the HBO show with Lily-Rose Depp as an aspiring singer joining a sleazy cult earned negative responses to being raunchy, cruel and creatively questionable. Plus, Squid Game is returning for a second season, while The Idol was a limited deal of five episodes and will leave creators Sam Levinson and The Weeknd to return to Euphoria and a music career which people actually prefer.
2	Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny	1,521,123	Hollywood is making this year feel like 1989 (a year both this writer and Taylor Swift hold dear), with The Little Mermaid, Michael Keaton as Batman, and a new Indiana Jones - not to mention there's still Ghostbusters to come. Unlike the polarizing fourth chapter that only made less money than The Dark Knight in 2008, things aren't so lucky for the fifth installment that along with not winning everyone over is struggling in a crowded marketplace (it topped the box office in its opening weekend, but by the following one was being beaten by Insidious: The Red Door and is certain to lose ground to Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One in the third) and still hasn't made back its massive budget. Still, for those who want more from the archeologist named after George Lucas' dog beside 5 movies, there is a TV series, some games, comics and novels.
3	Coco Lee	1,487,499	A Hong Kong singer and actress who took her own life on July 2nd. She had been struggling with depression relating to problems with her left leg.
4	Instagram	1,068,567	Ever since Elon Musk acquired Twitter, a bevy of bad decisions have soured the userbase, like hiding good features behind a paywall, removing the verified checkmarks from those who didn't want to pay, and ultimately restricting the amount of tweets a profile can see per day. So Mark Zuckerberg and Meta Platforms took the opportunity to attach one of their social networks, Instagram, to a microblogging platform of their own, Threads, that in less than 48 hours had 80 million users. Time will tell if it remains successful, or if Twitter responds to cover back the lost ground.
5	Deaths in 2023	955,666	As the music dies, something in your eyes Calls to mind a silver screen And all its sad goodbyes...
6	Michael G. Rubin	855,081	The CEO of sportswear company Fanatics, Inc., which has a fairly divisive reputation, used #8 to throw a massive party, which in spite of being on July 4 had everyone in white as if it was New Year's Eve.
7	Facebook	848,061	The Social Network that unfortunately lost much of its reputation (a recent episode of Ted Lasso even had the quote "Jack thought you could post it across your socials. But maybe not Facebook, 'cause that's just for, um, grandparents and racists now, isn't it?"). Yet with sister site #4 responding to Twitter dissenters going "Don't Tread on Me !" with "Go Thread With Me!", it went back into the limelight.
8	Independence Day (United States)	834,388	This event, which happens on July 4th, triggers especially patriotic fervor for Americans in all 50 states.
9	ChatGPT	792,198	Coming back up two places from last week, this chatbot just never seems to fall out of the public eye.
10	Sound of Freedom (film)	660,520	#8 had this come out in theaters and even try to bring up the holiday release as part of the promotion ("Happy 4th of July people, let's talk about a sex trafficking movie with Jim Caviezel!").

Exclusions

These lists exclude 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 Top 25 Report talk page if you wish.

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