What white people like

Pete Zicato • Sep 8, 2010 2:54 pm
What is it that makes a culture unique? How are whites, blacks, Asians, or whoever different from everybody else? What tastes, interests, and concepts define an ethnic group?

The folks at okcupid analyzed the text in 526,000 users profiles and sorted by their self-stated race and gender. Here's their take:

http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-real-stuff-white-people-like/
glatt • Sep 8, 2010 3:00 pm
interesting
Cloud • Sep 8, 2010 3:02 pm
Tom Clancy, Van Halen, and golfing?

uh . . . .
Spexxvet • Sep 8, 2010 3:07 pm
Very interesting
Pete Zicato • Sep 8, 2010 3:16 pm
Cloud;681264 wrote:
Tom Clancy, Van Halen, and golfing?

uh . . . .

Well that's for white guys. Click on the woman symbol to see what white women like.
classicman • Sep 8, 2010 3:43 pm
I wonder if thats stuff that people think the people of the opposite sex will be attracted to moreso than what they actually like
gvidas • Sep 9, 2010 2:40 am
It is very interesting. But it's slightly wrong to look at that and say, "that's a list of what (white/black/brown) people like."

We then took all these people's profile essays (280 million words in total!) and isolated the words and phrases that made each racial group's essays statistically distinct from the others'.


My take on that description of methodology is: they're not looking at the most commonly-liked things of an ethnic group, so much as the things which that ethnic group mentions, but no other ethnic group does. As in:

For instance, it turns out that all kinds of people list sushi as one of their favorite foods. But Asians are the only group who also list sashimi; it's a racial outlier.


The other side of this is that none of the word-clouds include sushi. They're pinpointing the essay differences by race, which is fine, so long as you don't confuse "stuff that only white men express any interest in" for "stuff white people like."

If they made it just lists of the most common phrases by ethnic group, without a specific emphasis on the differences, you would find a much, much, much more boring list, tied much more deeply to pop culture.
DanaC • Sep 9, 2010 5:58 am
classicman;681274 wrote:
I wonder if thats stuff that people think the people of the opposite sex will be attracted to moreso than what they actually like


This ^
Clodfobble • Sep 9, 2010 9:02 am
I like how white chicks are the only ones who say "I'm blond." I'm shocked!
monster • Sep 9, 2010 9:13 am
Image

Interesting.
Lamplighter • Sep 9, 2010 9:21 am
So lavender makes you smarter ?
xoxoxoBruce • Sep 9, 2010 9:22 am
No, just better at bullshitin'