Last week I noticed that my friend Jam Kotenko was on Facebook Stories to breathlessly document … her closet. It was newly cleaned and decluttered; clearly she’d been KonMari-ing. But Kotenko has never read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, the 2014 Marie Kondo book that introduced the method of discarding possessions that fail to “spark joy.” She has also yet to watch the new Netflix show based on the book. Kotenko says she was motivated to make a go at KonMari after seeing friends document their own decluttering on social media.
Posts like the one above have become ubiquitous since January 1, when Netflix released Tidying Up With Marie Kondo, a charming, addictive series wherein the petite Japanese author enters pack rats’ homes and casts her magic over them. Maybe you’ve watched it already; if you haven’t, though, you’ve surely seen its influence. The world is simultaneously documenting its fanaticism for KonMari on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and beyond. (Surely, timing the show’s release to people’s New Year’s resolutions has helped.)
In October, Ringer staff writer Alison Herman wrote about the effect of Netflix’s “opening weekends,” a relatively new phenomenon for the streaming-service-cum-movie-studio. In many ways, Tidying Up is just like The Haunting of Hill House or Bird Box, or any other number of Netflix titles that went viral upon release. But those were totally original pieces of content, while KonMari was already a well-established concept, based on Kondo’s book. The first time around, it spawned think piece after think piece. Now, five years later and thanks to Netflix, Marie Kondo is eclipsing her former notoriety.
According to Google Trends, the search terms “konmari method,” “Marie Kondo,” and “konmari” spiked January 1, when the Netflix show launched. Compare that data with the release of Kondo’s book in 2014, when those same search terms took off and then more or less leveled off. This year the new numbers completely obliterated the original stats. The chart’s line is shooting nearly straight upward.
But Google Trends provides only one data point. Analytics company Chartbeat tracks engagement. Instead of compiling data for web searches, it calculates page views and time spent on a given topic. According to Chartbeat’s data, there was a major spark in interest around Marie Kondo on December 12 and 13, when the official Netflix trailer was released. Chartbeat’s analytics said that readers spent 536,215 minutes reading articles about Marie Kondo on December 12 and another 634,405 minutes doing the same the following day. Compare that with the 57,432 “engaged minutes” the same topic inspired December 11.
The trailer release and accompanying articles held the internet’s interest for only so long, and the buzz tapered off a bit until the release of the show. On December 31, the topic accumulated 178,708 engaged minutes and 192,167 page views and jumped to 440,205 and 444,406, respectively, on January 1. The numbers continue to skyrocket, says Chartbeat senior director of customer education Jill Nicholson. On January 9, the last day Chartbeat pulled data for me, Kondo acquired 704,514 engaged minutes and 771,345 page views.
The KonMari resurgence also inspired a proliferation of related social media hashtags. Analytics firm Hashtracking reveals that tweets with the hashtag #konmari began steadily climbing at the time of the show’s release and then jumped immediately. Some of Hashtracking’s data suggests that the show is very popular with Spanish speakers; one of the most popular hashtags included in the #konmari tweets was #navidad. (Other popular hashtags accompanying it were terms like #tidyingup, #mariekondo, and #sparkjoy.)
According to Hashtracking, Instagram is where people are posting the most KonMari content. Hashtracking even analyzed the shades of color used in Instagram posts with the #konmari hashtag. Perhaps unsurprisingly, based on Kondo’s own aesthetic, soft, neutral palettes are the most popular.
Kondo’s own personal fame rose considerably with the launch of her show. Analytics firm Socialbakers aggregated her follower data, showing a huge jump at the beginning of the year and through the following week. Socialbakers reports that Kondo added 84,700 new Instagram followers January 7 alone, bringing her to 1 million; the week after New Year’s, she also added 49,700 new followers on Facebook. A similar windfall followed the stars of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before after its release.
The explosion of Marie Kondo and the KonMari Method on the internet is certainly proof of the star’s capabilities and winning personality. But it is also evidence of Netflix’s ability to resurface a trend. Of course, plenty of the KonMari content floating about is negative. The backlash cycle is in full swing, with much of it specifically focused on Kondo’s suggestion to part with books (although she says to do this only if they don’t bring the owner joy). Still, it hit a nerve. But data about page views and hashtags isn’t concerned with whether or not the accompanying content is positive or negative, only that it exists. To that end, KonMari has never been more alive.