“April is the cruelest month.” Yes, even in May.

Last Friday morning, the opening line of “The Waste Land,” T.S. Eliot’s most famous poem, became one of most explosively googled phrases in America. (Eliot spelled “cruellest” with two L’s, but I’m all in favor of editing poets for brevity.)

The line appeared on Google’s aptly named Hot Trends list, a utility offered by the company that offers a glimpse of what the online nation is most furiously searching for at any given moment. Hot Trends is Google’s answer to the “most viewed” pages that have become a fixture on so many news and entertainment websites. Popularity is the web’s basic unit of currency now, a dynamic that works about as well as it did in high school. Chances are you know the names of the head-turning, eye-candy types—and have been unable to avoid the loud-mouthed troublemakers. As for the rest of us, sorry guys, if you’re not in the in crowd, you’re just...in the crowd.