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Wikipedia:Top 25 Report/December 11 to 17, 2022

The Top 25 Report


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Prepared with commentary by Igordebraga, SSSB and a helpful IP

⭠ Last week's report Next week's report →

The World Cup is practically over... and so is the year, making for quite the reality check.

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes/about
1 2022 FIFA World Cup 2,943,571 During the week there were the semifinals, where dark horses Croatia and Morocco couldn't stop the more traditional Argentina and France. Given that the final happened as this Report was being written, let's say right away that Argentina won in a game of much suffering, opening 2-0, conceding the tie, opening 3-2 on extra time and conceding again, and finally coming through in the penalties.
2 Avatar: The Way of Water 2,612,572 James Cameron is such a damn perfectionist it took 13 years for him to finally release the sequel to the highest-grossing movie of all time, where the humans return to Pandora wanting to hunt Jake Sully, who is forced to run along with his Na'vi family and take refuge in a distant archipelago. Just about the whole cast returns, with Sigourney Weaver now playing the Na'vi daughter of her character (meaning it's a 73-year-old as a teenager!), and Stephen Lang's villain having been revived in one of those Avatar bodies. The Way of Water delivers more of the same spectacle, with a world that looks impressively real, lots of underwater scenes, and another extensive battle as the third act climax. But just like the movie could have taken less than 13 years to be released, it certainly did not need to be three hours long (many articles already came out discussing when it's better to have a bathroom break, and Cameron hopes people watch it a second time to see what they missed relieving themselves). Hope the next movies are back to the 2+1⁄2 hour mark, if not less - and that if The Way of Water ends up making all the money possible, that Disney throws Cameron a bone and allows him to make the Alita: Battle Angel sequel.
3 Stephen "tWitch" Boss 2,209,493 A dancer who broke out in So You Think You Can Dance and remained on the media in, among other things, The Ellen DeGeneres Show and the Step Up movies, took his own life at the age of 40.
4 FIFA World Cup 2,139,989 On his fifth attempt at football's greatest stage, Leo Messi managed to reach the final for a second time, and unlike in 2014 he was scoring Argentina's goals in the knockout rounds, including two in the final. Now he's certainly as big as Diego Maradona for having carried La albiceleste to the title.
5 Lionel Messi 1,937,840
6 Jenna Ortega 1,693,728 #10 brings this actress to the illustrious company of among others Lisa Loring, Christina Ricci, Krysta Rodriguez and Chloë Grace Moretz in having portrayed Wednesday Addams.
7 Kylian Mbappé 1,494,579 One went all the way to the finals of #1, and even if he lost (though he already has the 2018 gold medal) ended as the top scorer, 8 goals, including all three of France in the final. The other left in the quarterfinals, a game he started on the bench, and to make matters worse saw his rival #5 come through with the title he couldn't win for Portugal.
8 Cristiano Ronaldo 1,485,185
9 The White Lotus 1,237,422 An HBO anthology created by the same writer of School of Rock and set in a chain of resorts, which just wrapped its second season.
10 Wednesday (TV series) 1,219,711 This here writer only finished the first episode and keeps postponing in watching the rest, but already gives this show points given who it beat to become Netflix's second most popular series behind Stranger Things.
11 List of FIFA World Cup finals 1,182,088 After 2018 joined 2010 as the only occasions Argentina, Brazil, Germany or Italy were not in the decisive match for #4, #5's exploits made this tradition be restored. And #7's ensured to keep another, that every time a team wins its third title, it's because both teams in the final already won twice.
12 Avatar (2009 film) 1,157,023 In 2009, the name "Avatar" was hijacked from the Nickelodeon show about people who manipulate the elements by James Cameron's sci-fi epic combining Dances with Wolves, Pocahontas, FernGully and tall blue cat people, that by hyping technological innovations and how it should be seen in 3D (starting off a craze that took many years to slow down) overtook Cameron's own Titanic as the highest-grossing movie ever with a whopping $2.7 billion worldwide. It took a decade until that sum was matched by Avengers: Endgame, during which the movie fell out of favor, inspiring many thinkpieces on how a massive success left no cultural footprint. Well, if the last few years with things like a theme park area didn't bring Avatar back to the forefront, it finally got a sequel (#2). The live action film based on the Nickelodeon Avatar will not be getting a sequel.
13 Mike Leach (American football coach) 1,138,163 After three decades coaching in the NCAA, this coach died of a heart attack at 61.
14 Morocco 973,869 See #24 for why they're on this list.
15 Deaths in 2022 970,968 Life is white
And I am black
Jesus and his lawyer
Are coming back.
Oh my darling
Will you be here
Before I sputter out?
16 Streisand effect 943,922 Elon Musk banned Twitter accounts that were publishing information about flights on his private jet (which he compared to being doxxed) but by blocking these accounts and the accounts of journalists that repeated the information he drew even more attention to the issue. This has been highlighted as an example of the Streisand effect, named after an incident when Barbara Streisand tried to suppress photographs of her home, it drew vastly more attention to the information.
17 2018 FIFA World Cup 891,011 The last tournament - won by France, who also had a high-scoring game with Argentina like this year, beating them 4-3 in the round of 16.
18 Beauty Revealed 855,394 Thanks to Reddit (but not r/todayilearned, which would be a repeat) a views boost was given to a predecessor of the nude pictures, where a female painter made a watercolor of her breasts.
19 2026 FIFA World Cup 841,740 The next tournament. #5 and #8 won't be playing, but #7 (widely seen as their successor as the world's best) certainly will!
20 Brock Purdy 798,548 Back to the football played primarily with the hands and an oval ball, with the surprising tale of the last overall pick (the so-called Mr. Irrelevant) of the 2022 NFL draft whose success leading the San Francisco 49ers has now made him defeat gridiron's GOAT Tom Brady!
21 Allison Holker 796,440 The widow of #3, a fellow dancer and mother of his two children.
22 Argentina national football team 698,479 Mario Kempes, Diego Maradona and now #5 are the heroes that brought the #4 to Buenos Aires. And yet they're still two titles away from matching neighbor Brazil.
23 Mária Telkes 669,204 Google homaged this Hungarian-American biophysicist, a pioneer of solar energy.
24 Morocco national football team 624,341 The biggest surprise of #1? Almost certainly. Nobody thought they'd make it out of their group, let alone become the first African nation to make it to the semis. Unfortunately, it unraveled there. A 2-0 loss against eventual runners-up France meant they would be in the third place-off to play Croatia. They managed a goalless draw against them in the group stages - but lost 2-1 this time around and had to settle for fourth.
25 Sam Bankman-Fried 614,892 Keeping off the list #7's France national football team is the disgraced founder of FTX, who was arrested in the Bahamas and could be imprisoned for years if not decades.

Exclusions

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