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Comment by morsch | Hacker News Reader

Among those three, I think there's no competition, Zuckerberg is easily the most well-known.

I could believe that a lot of people under 20 would not know who Zuckerberg is at all, but definitely know who Messi is, if we are talking outside of the USA. Cristiano Ronaldo would be another.

You have no idea how out of touch with the real world you are if you actually believe that.

Google trends would disagree with you:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now%201-d&geo=...

As expected, Biden and Trump as presidential candidates and former POTUS are better known. Messi has way better recognition than Lebron worldwide owing to soccer's broader appeal and popularity.

Search interest obviously isn't a direct correlation to name recognition - you can have recognition and no one is interested in you - but I'd say it's far more likely that people know who Lionel Messi is considering he won the World Cup in a spectacular fashion and 1.5B people watched the world cup live & I'm sure more than that many people heard about it.

> Search interest obviously isn't a direct correlation to name recognition

No, it is not, but I'm willing to admit that my antipathy towards spectator sports may have led me astray here.

I know who Lionel Messi is, and I read the article that he walks better than other people run (he walks to the right place, while they run to the wrong place). But, what do you mean he won the World Cup in a spectacular fashion? Link to a video of that?

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