Will something CRAZY happen in October?
23
Ṁ1275
Oct 31
32%
chance

This market resolves YES if, during October, there is a Google search term which spikes like crazy. This is determined based on the following method:

  • On Google Trends, pick "Worldwide" and "Web Search".

  • Pick a search term that you want to check for craziness.

  • Pick "google" as the search term to compare to.

  • Look at the end-of-day scores for "google" and [term]. The [term] : google ratio is the craziness score (C).

  • If on one of the days, C(term, day) > 0.5, and there exists a day in the previous 30 days such that C(term, day) / C(term, past_day) > 5, then this term is indeed CRAZY, and the market resolves YES.

Important exception: scheduled events which are fully expected to trend ahead of time do not count as crazy, even if they meet the craziness criteria. This includes things like:

  • Olympics

  • World Cup

  • Big movie releases

  • U.S. presidential elections

Some events in recent years which did meet the craziness criteria are:

  • Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

  • Death of Kobe Bryant

  • COVID-19 pandemic

  • January 6 capitol riots

  • Russian invasion of Ukraine

  • Will Smith slapping Chris Rock

  • Death of Queen Elizabeth II

  • Israel-Gaza war

  • Trump assassination attempt

  • Biden dropping out of election

  • Iran-Israel war

  • Charlie Kirk assassination

Due to the partially subjective criteria, I am not betting in this market.

  • Update 2025-10-12 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): The factor of 5 increase is measured against the previous 30 days from any given day in October, not necessarily just days within October itself. For example, if a term is popular on October 15, the comparison starts from September 15.

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In the last bullet point of your method, it states, C(term, day) / C(term, past_day) > 5. Do you mean .5 instead of 5?

@dfish no it's supposed to be 5. The point is that the search term becomes at least 5 times more popular within a month. That way a search term which is constantly high, like "facebook" or "AI" doesn't count as crazy.

@ItsMe, OK. I understand now: the ratio increases by a factor of 5 or more at some point during October, but the larger ratio must be greater than .5 so that trivial fluctuations are excluded. I like the use of these criteria.

@dfish yes but to clarify, the factor of 5 is measured by the previous 30 days, not necessarily October. So if a term is popular on October 15, we measure starting from September 15

Inspired by @Marnix's markets

@ItsMe I like this riff a lot - good criteria!