More popular than Jesus!

The is a guest blog post written by a friend of the creator of Something Surprising.  I think you will like it.

The day that John Lennon said "We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first, rock 'n' roll or Christianity", he caused a bit of a stir. Many of our friends in the bible belt of America decided to burn records and publications having already paid good money for them.

Burning the Beatles albums!

This was in 1966, 4th March to be exact, and at this time there was little in the way of a benchmark by which to measure the validity of Mr Lennon's statement. But it has to be said that I doubt their careers suffered much as a consequence and it has largely been forgotten.

But how can we quantify how popular something is based upon a world wide audience?

Facebook!

Yes Facebook, the new evil in the world that has been responsible for more than it's fair share of misery for the masses.  One in six of the world's population has a Facebook account and one in three has access to someone who does have an account.   That is in excess of two billion people.  Wow!

So, are the Beatles more popular than Jesus?  Yes, and by more than a factor of two.  At time of writing 25,600,000 people "like" the Beatles and 11,500,000 "like" Jesus.  Even if we factor in his 'dad', God, with 4,700,000 "likes" the figure only hits 16,200,000.

Strangely enough the third member of the "band", the holy ghost, doesn't even have a page. [Should we create one?]

So, I think it is official, The Beatles are still more popular than Jesus.

Having said that, the most popular Facebook page is Texas Hold'em Poker, with in excess of 50,000,000 "likes" so those tempted by money seem to predominate!


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This is a guest post on Something Surprising, kindly provided by 'Tony'.