No, Michigan, Mr. T Is Not Dead and Other Google Search Questions

You asked, we’ll answer:

Mr. T is alive. The internet killed him on Facebook, but that turned out to be a hoax. Chillax, Mr. T is not dead.

We bring this up not because he’s the celebrity de jour, but because he isn’t — and yet whether Mr. T is still walking among us was one of the questions that has vexed Michiganders most over the past decade or so, according to an analysis of Google search trends by The Estately Blog.

It showed that along with a few other questions, “Is Mr. T dead?” was queried more often over the past 12 years in Michigan than in the rest of the country, which didn’t seem to care much about Mr. T at all.

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Michiganders also turned to the internet for help answering political questions, such as, “Is Donald Trump presidential?” — we’re not going there — and “Who is Ron Paul?”

We will tell you who Ron Paul is. He’s Rand’s dad, and when he ran for president in 2012, just writing “Ron Paul 2012” in a headline was guaranteed to push online reporters past their stretch goals and into the stratosphere of page views, plus stimulate colorful engagement, always a plus.

We don’t get this one at all: “Where is Canada?” Seriously? You can see it right there from your back yard, Sarah Palin.

This is good: “How to be a good girlfriend?” Don’t be a jerk. Some goes on the flipside, “how to be a good boyfriend?” — which technically wasn’t Googled enough to make the list, but we’ll just leave it here anyway. If you’re looking for something more specific, email Carolyn Hax or Ask Amy.

Michiganders also Googled these questions:

• “What’s the weather today?”
• “What causes depression?”
• “How much caffeine is too much?”
• “Who is Muhammad?”
• “When is Lent?”

It’s a fun analysis, full of facepalm moments and things that will make you go "hmmm."

You have to chuckle at this question from Florida, of all places: “Why are Americans so stupid?” And this one from Iowa: “Do penguins have knees?”

“Am I psycho?” Missourians want to know.

In Kansas— that place where scary Fred Phelps, who unlike Mr. T is dead, and that whole Westboro Baptist Church gang of his are from — they’re googling for meth recipes. We’re not accusing anyone of anything or inferring any parallels, just saying that Kansas is nothing if not a state of extremes. Oxymorons, too. There’s a town there called Liberal.

Mississippians searched for “Who is Harriet Tubman?” We’ll just leave that right here, too.

There seems to be some spiritual curiosity, confliction and flat-out doubt in some Bible Belt states. North Carolina, in particular, is either utterly confused or more religiously diverse than we imagined. People there not only Googled “Who is the antichrist?”, but also “Is Donald Trump the antichrist?”

They wondered “What is Buddhism?”, “What is Hinduism?”, and “What is religion?”

And Alabamians want to know who Jesus is, Georgians want to know if Jesus real, and Arkansans asked if God is real.

Of course, in Arkansas, they’re still wondering why the chicken crossed the road, and Georgians asked multiple questions indicating a shocking lack of understanding of where babies come from, so maybe it doesn’t mean anything at all.

Methodology

Using Google Autocomplete, The Estately Blog compiled hundreds of the most common questions Americans type into the Google search bar, then ran those searches through Google Trends to determine which state queried each of these selected searches the most over the past 12 years.

The results don’t represent what each state Googles the most, but rather the searches each state Googles more more than the rest of the country.