Does Stephen King Use MapQuest?

I used to print off MapQuest directions to go places. We still operated that way in the late 2000s. At my first job, someone suggested that I should have a binder of all the places I would go with printed-off MapQuest directions. I didn’t own a smartphone yet (this was 2011, I think) and the suggestion didn’t seem outlandish. To think about it today seems like dated science fiction.

I had not thought about MapQuest in a while until I read Stephen King’s recent novel Holly. I liked the book overall. I had only read one previous book featuring King’s Holly Gibney and I didn’t care for her character much in that one. But that was The Outsider and I didn’t like that book at all. I don’t remember much about it other than not liking it and a scene that made me suspect Stephen King doesn’t know much about the internet. (Although I don’t remember the specifics of that scene.)

There are various things I could say about Holly but I’m going to limit my takeaway to one key thing: Stephen King doesn’t seem to realize that MapQuest is not the default map app anymore. Not only that, but apparently no one who edited his book realizes this either. I say this because characters—including teenagers—use and reference MapQuest throughout the book, including one teenager printing off maps from MapQuest on a home printer.

The scene in question.

At one point, the MapQuest references and other various bizarre internet moments (including someone using Facebook and Twitter in ways that are very much not how Facebook or Twitter work) got me wondering if the book took place in the late 2000s—before I remembered the majority of the action takes place explicitly in 2021 (including all the MapQuest scenes.) The book is exhaustingly set in 2021, with Covid references on almost every page. But also, MapQuest?

Does MapQuest still exist?

Naturally, this led me to Google, where I searched “Does MapQuest still exist?” I was entirely prepared for the answer to be no. I even considered the possibility that King knew MapQuest went out of business at some point in the past but that he still has characters use it because in his parallel universe, it’s still around, similar to Tarantino using Red Apples as a cigarette brand in all his films.

The first article I discovered was a Washington Post article, appropriately titled ‘Does MapQuest still exist?’ Yes, it does, and it’s a profitable business.” Oh, but then I realized that article was from 2015. Which sent me back to Google, to see if a different article had come out more recently that could clarify it it exists.

I ended up on the Wikipedia page for MapQuest, which immediately confirmed (or suggested) that MapQuest exists, as the opening sentence is

MapQuest (stylized as mapquest) is an American free online web mapping service.

I took this to mean that it must exist, as if it didn’t exist anymore, it would be:

Mapquest was an American free online web mapping service.

Okay, so it exists. But I wasn’t satisfied yet, especially at its Wikipedia article doesn’t give much in the way of stats about who uses it. Or why they use it. Or if they know there are other options.

I then found articles from 2013 (Wired) and 2019 (Search Engine Land) that both had the same basic message as the WaPo article: yeah, it’s still around, believe it or not.

Ah, but then I found a New York Times article from 2022 that cites MapQuest as having 17 million users.

What? 17 million? Who are these people? Although in 2019, according to the earlier articles, that number was apparently 39 million users. Which means, what? Half of MapQuest’s users passed away between 2019 and 2022? Or finally discovered Google?

All of this is to say: I guess Stephen King is one of those 17 million. As are his editors and researchers and anyone else who contributes to him publishing a book in 2023 that has all the characters using MapQuest as their default mapping app.

Other than that detail, yeah, Holly is a pretty good book. But maybe someone should help Stephen King understand the internet and young people a little better if he’s going to continue writing about them.

Is there a lesson in this? I think there are two. First, writers and editors need to check their internet habits against reality if they’re going to publish books that mention the internet. Second lesson: Stephen King doesn’t know very much about the internet.

Which is a little sad, I guess, because it means he’ll probably never read this blog post.