Much of the internet’s click-counting relies on tickling a bit of prurient interest as well. True to form, the Science and technology section brought you a hard look at new approaches and materials in the condom industry, a topic that brought in enough readers to win the ninth spot.
Then there are the vagaries of the medium itself, as the final two entries on the top-ten list bear out. The seventh most-clicked story of 2014, for example, was published in 2013. But its topic is something that evidently has perennial, or at the very least biennial, appeal: whether Facebook is in some way bad for you.
And so it is that we arrive at the end of the year, and the end of the list. At a lithe 147 words, it is not even a story proper, but rather a longish picture caption, about water on one of Saturn’s moons. But the tale’s sails caught the fickle winds of the internet’s interest and racked up nearly three times as many views as the second most popular story.