1835

Here's what the Google Trends page for these things actually looks like since 2004 (limited to the US, since the worldwide trends looked even less like what the comic is supposed to be showing us):

You can try it yourself! One of the nice things about Google Trends is that it already shows things relative to their peak interest. The interest levels have remained broadly constant over the past 13 years, with "bacon" spiking every Thanksgiving and Christmas, and "pirates" spiking every fall (for that godawful Talk Like A Pirate Day) and spring (for those godawful Pirates of the Caribbean movies). At no point in the last 13 years has "robot monkey" been of noteworthy interest. I have already spent more time on this than Randall did.

1836

There are at least two levels of classical XKCD insufferability here. First is lazy "lulz internet comments sure are dumb amirite". Second, this is what the Okeanos Explorer live feed looks like:

This is what Randall would have you believe he likes to spend his time doing, because he is a Serious Scientist who worked for NASA, and not some kind of I Fucking Love Science-following pleb like the rest of you.