If you are in New York and type the words "why am" into Google's search bar, the first two suggestions offered by Google's Autocomplete function are "Why am I so tired?" and "Why am I always tired?"
“The Zeitgeist perfectly captured by Google,” HuffPost President and Editor-in-Chief Arianna Huffington wrote earlier this week, reflecting on an American workplace culture fueled by lack of sleep, where boasting about sleep-deprivation is widely -- and wrongly -- treated as a badge of honor.
To find out what questions people are asking beyond New York, we asked editors from each of HuffPost's international editions to share their own regional Autocomplete results. Those results show that people are asking questions that cover a range of issues, from well-being and the meaning of life to sexuality and social anxieties. And Americans are far from alone in feeling tired and wanting to know why.
Here are the top questions HuffPost editors in cities around the world found by googling "why am" (or the equivalent in their respective language), with their translations.
Toronto
Paris
Why am I gay?Why am I always tired?Why am I lonely?Why am I myself?
Tokyo
Why can't I get married?Why am I adopted?Why can't I be happy?Why am I disliked?Why am I alive?
Rome
Why was I born?Why am I always sad?Why am I antisocial?Why am always tired?
Seoul
Why am I working?Why am I finding it difficult to deal with people?Why am I living?Why am I pathetic like this?
Madrid
Why am I so tired?Why am I sad?Why am I lonely?Why am I here?
Tunis
Why am I an atheist?Why am I sad?Why am I unsuccessful?Why am I a Christian?
Berlin
Why am I so cheerful?Why am I so dumb?Why am I so tired?
London
São Paulo
Why am I sad?Why am I single?
In response to Huffington’s post, commenters from around the world shared results from their own countries. Readers in Ireland, the Netherlands and South Africa reported that their top search results were either “Why am I so tired” or “Why am I always tired?”
Google’s Autocomplete algorithm offers its predictions based on the frequency of user searches -– which is to say, these questions reflect the curiosity and concerns of a lot of people. There’s some value in taking the questions we ask of our search engines and bringing them out into the light.
CORRECTION: Due to a translation error, this article previously misstated two of the questions asked by Japanese users, regarding happiness and marriage.