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XKCD 369, "Dangers", mentions two results for 'died in a blogging accident':

comic that features a bar graph showing the number of results for various Google search queries. Each search query is a variation of "died in a _____ accident"; the phrase "died in a blogging accident" is indicated to have return two search results

But XKCD has messed up the Internet. Now there are a lot more results for 'died in a blogging accident' - 250k of them.

I tried a search using Google's fancy tools, to exclude results that contained 'xkcd' and searching before the comic came out, searching for the exact term "died in a blogging accident".

It... didn't work so well; no results were found. Without searching for the exact term, though, results in a bunch of irrelevant results.

So... what was Randall referring to here? What were his two results? Or did he just make the number up on the spot?

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  • Explain XKCD failed me :( Time to e-mail Randall Munroe.
    – Gallifreyan
    Jun 20, 2017 at 7:45
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    Wild guess: two times someone misspelled "logging accident".
    – andejons
    Jun 20, 2017 at 13:23
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    I think this question is off-topic and am perfectly happy to cast the fifth close vote. The image is a picture of a graph. The fact that the graph occurs in a xkdc cartoon is irrelevant. The question asks for the source of one of the data points of said graph. I fail to see any argument as to how such a question would be on-topic on a site about literature. It's not a literary analysis question, it's not a question that you can ask about a story, etc. I've been a proponent of a broad scope, but we have to draw the line somewhere.
    – user111
    Jun 21, 2017 at 3:20
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    Meta discussion about this question and its on/off-topicness.
    – Rand al'Thor ♦
    Jun 21, 2017 at 11:49
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    @Gallifreyan I don't think Hamlet means XKCD specifically out of all comics. My reading is that, for example, this wouldn't be on-topic if it came up in a TED presentation's powerpoint slide or on talk show radio, and the fact it came up in XKCD (even taking that as a form of literature) doesn't suddenly make it on topic either.
    – doppelgreener
    Jun 22, 2017 at 13:16

1 Answer 1

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Probably some MySpace blog page(s) which are no longer available.

This comic was published on 11 January 2008. Unfortunately the Wayback Machine doesn't seem to list results of Google searches. I went hunting around the internet and found a couple of leads:

  • according to this forum post, on 12 January 2008:

    I think I found the original 2 results of the search, when the number of results was still down at 12. Both results pointed to this blog: http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=59755147&blogID=106406778 [myspace.com]

    Unfortunately, that link is now dead, which may be why your advanced search (linked in the question) yielded no results.

  • according to comments on this blog,on 17 January 2008:

    The original 2 posts were about death by blogging, but didn't list anyone having died.

    MySpace deaths can probably be considered death by blogging.

    There's also a list of possible ways to die via blogging accident here.

    I'm not entirely sure how serious this is, and the link at the end is also dead, but it does mention MySpace - again. Too much for a coincidence?

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