Today’s Dominion Post carries an insufferably smug article headlined “The lonely misery of living in Auckland“. Like all good journalism these days, this story is based almost entirely upon Google: in this case, the news that a Google Trends search for the word “misery” shows that Aucklanders search Google for this word more often than inhabitants of any other city.

While I agree that living in a sprawling, disconnected agglomeration of suburbs in search of a city would do anyone’s head in after a while, I tend towards another explanation. Perhaps it has something to do with a certain highly popular artist and designer who has a boutique in Auckland? Of the top ten Google results for a search on “misery” and “Auckland”, eight of them refer to the artist, thus confirming my theory. On the other hand, the remaining two refer to the National Party’s policy for Auckland traffic, so perhaps the DomPost has a point. And unless there’s a hip new boutique in K Rd called “Lonely“, the popularity of that particular word among Aucklanders is harder to explain.

By the way, it looks like the Misery will be spreading to Wellington soon, too. This week’s Artsville doco mentioned in passing that a Wellington Misery boutique is on the way, which will be exciting news for devotees of hipster pop-culture dispensaries Popup and Eyeball Kicks (you know who you are).