Decoding India’s Most Chronically Online Moments This Year

You can tell a lot from a person’s Google and YouTube search history, and boy, did 2025 show that we’re not just chronically online as a nation, but may be just a little unhinged in our internet consumption, too. 

From the “Saiyaara Virus” sweeping the nation to the collective euphoria over the women’s cricket team lifting the World Cup, 2025 had us oscillating between peak-wholesome and peak-chaotic moments across pop culture, entertainment, sports, celebrity drama, and more.

While Indian gaming creators were busy localizing Italian brainrot AI slop through snackable gaming streams, YouTube stalwart Mr. Beast optimized his content for pan-Indian audiences by creating subbed versions of his content in seven Indian languages, landing him 47 million Indian subscribers this year. 

All of this paints a fascinating picture of India’s online obsessions, but the numbers tell an even better story. Strap in to see how you’ve contributed to these insane metrics, as Rolling Stone India spotlights some of the most unexpected, intriguing, and absurd search trends from 2025.

Dating Lingo

Another year, another bizarre dating buzzword. “Floodlighting” emerged as the #1 dating search trend, according to Google. Characterized as a manipulative tactic, it involves doing just the right amount of oversharing and trauma-dumping to create a false sense of shared intimacy. So the next time a 6 ft, matcha-hoarding, Clairo-listening man talks about how he has mommy issues, please swipe right. 

Meme Mania

Drum Roll for this one: Arjun Kapoor winning something was not on our 2025 bingo card. Beating the likes of the infamous Gen Alpha brainrot meme  “67,” which came in second place, the Bollywood actor emerged victorious in the great Indian meme conclave. Who knew that all that criticism of his soulless acting would result in him giving the performance of a lifetime, leaving behind a pop culture relic as a by-product? Following it up was the iconic “Vishal Mega Mart Security Guard” meme. From people creating fake reaction videos to listing the position as their dream job, the retail chain’s extensive campaign for security personnel transformed into a humorous testament to Gen Z’s unemployment crisis this year.

The ‘Saiyaara Virus’ Reigns Supreme

A moment of silence for the theater staff that had to witness the shirt-ripping and spontaneous proposals that erupted during Saiyaara screenings. Starring debutants Ahaan Pandey and Aneet Padda, the film triumphantly bagged #1 in the movie search category. 

It even showed up in the ranks for  “near me” searches, ranking at a respectable #9, edged out by people searching for “Chavva Movie near me.” And though Ahaan Panday seemed to dominate our screens and streaming charts, he was beaten by Saif Ali Khan, who claimed the top spot as the most-searched actor. And speaking of edgers, while Ranveer Allahabadia didn’t come first, he did rank #3 following the India’s Got Latent backlash. 

Pickleball Mania Continues

Apart from worrying about the worsening AQI, we were also immensely concerned for, wait for it, “Pickleball near me.” Ranking at #6 in the “near me” search category, it even narrowly beat out “Garba Night near me,” which ranked at #7.

Bigg (Final) Boss Fandom

Like the cockroach that perseveres through nuclear wars, Indian reality TV show Bigg Boss managed to survive the waves of relevancy and surpass the Aryan Khan directorial Bads of Bollywood and even the acclaimed K-drama, When Life Gives You Tangerines, emerging as #3 in the TV show search category. Turns out our love for shock-value inducing reality TV shows remains resolute, even with the barrage of multicultural media that came out this year. 

Trending Search Questions

In classic scroll-and-search fashion, 2025 had us googling everything from the meaning of “mock drills” (#2) to “pookie” (#3). Meanwhile, the controversy that gripped the nation by a chokehold led to the term “Latent” ranking #9. Lastly,  “Incel” and “Nonce” stood at #8 and #10, respectively, probably as a result of the viral success of the Netflix TV series Adolescence.

The AI Algorithm

In the era of “is this real or AI,” all of the top trending searches this year were, in one way or another, AI-related — from the Gemini trend, where people kept recreating their childhood photos, emerging as the top winner, to the viral craze of turning themselves into action figures at #5. One trend that truly ignited debates was the infamous “Ghibli trend” (#2), which had people generating visuals in the distinct art style of Hayao Miyazaki, almost like a gateway into the AI-slop ecosystem we now live in.