Melissa King, the now-former Miss Teen Delaware who resigned after a sex tape emerged featuring a woman who bears her resemblance, is (perhaps unknowingly) enjoying what may be one of the highest sustained search term lookup rates in history.
According to this blogger’s test using Google Trends, “Melissa King” as a search term out-performs Rand Paul, Miley Cyrus, and even Kate Middleton. Ms. King’s search intensity zoomed from 0 on February 24th, to 75 on February 27th, and then 77 on February 28th. And while her numbers haven’t hit the 100 mark, they have not dipped to below 20 as of this writing on March 8th.
Even Lindsay Lohan, who’s always in the news it seems, thanks to TMZ, is at just an 8 – though it’s a consistent number. And Paris Hilton? She hovers between 6 and 7.
And if you’re wondering who Melissa King is, this video will help:
The high search performance rate of “Melissa King” is sustained because of Worldwide search for online copies of her sex tape. Reportedly, a woman who looks like Melissa King, 18, agreed to make a porn tape of her having sex with an unidentified man (the video producers even blurred his face) for money. In the video, the woman who look like King admits that she participates in beauty contests – a sure-fire connection to Ms. King. When the sex tape surfaced on the blog Gawker, King said it wasn’t her, but resigned from being Miss Teen Delaware.
Melissa King Over Jessica Dorrell
Melissa King’s search numbers are also over that for Jessica Dorrell, the now-former University Of Arkansas student and employee who had an affair with then-Football Head Coach Bobby Petrino, but that’s according to Google’s new search evaluation system; the old one had Dorrell reaching a 100 level. Indeed, the new system reports numbers in the 70s for King, but when the search term time frame is expanded to the last 12 months, it’s rounded to 100, versus 50 for Dorrell.
(And now, when I re-ran the query, the numbers jumped to 98 and 100 for Melissa King, where they were 75 and 77 before – wild.)
What’s fueling King’s constant celebrity is the seemingly all-too-easy ability to look at the sex tape. I’ve never seen an environment that has allowed this kind of easy access – but no, I’ll not link to it.
Given that, and this is just a hypothesis, versions of King’s sex tape has been seen about 20 million times Worldwide. The evidence is clear, if you want to gain instant celebrity, make a sex tape. But, all kidding aside, that Melissa King was already a beauty queen and did that, just fueled the demand to see the video all the more.
Just what this says about our society is for discussion, but this blogger prediction made a few years ago that society was going to get tired of seeing this and the search numbers would decrease, has come to be totally wrong thus far.
Stay tuned.