Snap and Scribble

Listen to podcast of this post:   Download podcast

The other day i was looking at how frequently certain words are used as search terms on google. Two words i looked up were “happiness” and “depression”. The results were rather surprising…

Curiously, Australia is the country where most searches for both of those terms originate. Perhaps the place isn’t the paradise that everyone else in the world thinks it is!

More searches including the word “depression” are made by people in Melbourne than any other city in the world!

And the number one city for searches including the word “happiness” is Brisbane!

Now maybe i’m wrong, but i imagine that anyone searching for “happiness” probably doesn’t feel very happy themselves at that particular time. So i think it’s reasonable to assume that searches for both terms in some way reflect the levels of unhappiness in both places.

Maybe the difference between the two cities is that in Melbourne they love to wallow in their misery – and find out as much as they can about depression – but in Brisbane they want to actually do something about it and become happier! That would probably fit with my impressions of both places – after all, why would you live in Melbourne unless you wanted to be depressed?

Also interesting, but slightly more puzzling, is the fact that Australia comes joint top in the league of people searching for the word “happyness” – along with Romania and Canada! Sydney comes third place among global cities for searches including that word – after Los Angeles and Toronto.

So i guess that means that Australians are the unhappiest people in the world – or maybe they’re just the people who are most interested in doing something about their lack of happiness. And, within Australia, Melbourne people want to make the most of their depression, Brisbane people want to do something about it. And Sydneysiders aren’t quite as miserable as the others, but they’re more illiterate!

Tags: Life // 3 Comments »