Forum - View topicINTEREST: How Nerdy Is Your State? New Report Ranks America's Geekiest States
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John Thacker
Posts: 1009 |
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This is, honestly, basically a list of "how white is your state?" Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine are the three whitest states. It looks like it correlates better to that than to white plus Asian, as seen by California and Hawaii. I am not sure exactly how to interpret that, but it presumably means something about the metric used, or about geek culture as defined being exclusive.
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Lactobacillus yogurti
 Posts: 860 Location: Latin America |
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I'd say that rather than the whitest, it's which state is the most open-minded and progressive. Most of the states that ranked low in this survey also happen to be the most religious ones.
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#854626
Posts: 171 |
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I Can tell you that Illinois is high on the normie anime fan list. There's alot of people who know about Dragon ball z and pokemon, but if I were tell them I'm watching golden kamuy or megalo box this season, they'd probably scratch there heads and tell me they haven't watched any Chinese cartoons in 15 or so years. There aren't to many hardcore seasonal anime fans here, in my opinion.
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Kaori Makimura
 Posts: 152 Location: usa |
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Eh. I expected Arizona and California to be more geeky.
It's so hot there (esp AZ), indoor hobbies like video games or anime should've been higher. |
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John Thacker
Posts: 1009 |
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Well, there is somewhat of that correlation as well, driven by blacks and Hispanics being more religious on average - but Asians tend to be less religious, which didn't help other states. New York and California are progressive, but not in the top 20 here, and have low percentage of whites. Also, Utah and Idaho ranked very high and have a lot of (almost all white) religious Mormons. Montana, North Dakota, and Wyoming are all extremely white, and, even if not as religious, I wouldn't call progressive exactly. In short, while there may be some small correlation there, it is definitely much much smaller than the correlation with percentage white, which predicts almost the entire list. |
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animefan1238
 Posts: 303 Location: Ma |
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At my local convention there was a large number of non-white attendees. I noticed this for the past few years as it has been increasing. Back in 05 when I first attended it it was mostly white and Asian with a sprinkle of non white/Asian. But it has become more diverse. It has made it so much more fun and it is great to see with all political stuff that all of them share a love of anime, manga and Japanese culture and have a blast. |
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Nitsugalego
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Or MAYBE not everything is some racist conspiracy, hmmm? |
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Kruszer
 Posts: 7994 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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Not surprisingly, Minnesota is one of least geeky states.
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 10041 Location: Virginia |
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I think their "Geeky Interest Rank" uses flawed criteria. You don't usually Google information on subjects you are heavily into. You use Google to find out about things you are not sure of. That is an anime fan is not likely to have to Google "Anime" or "Cosplay". They are more likely to search for the names of specific shows or conventions. This would explain why there are so many searches from states with limited retailer support.
Also the presence or absence of high speed internet is says more about population concentrations in a state, the presence or absence of large college populations and commercial need than it does to who wants it for Geek purposes. No matter how firm a geek you are, if your community does not offer high speed internet you can't have it. I think the survey is too inaccurate to fight about what it corresponds to. |
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wastrel
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In addition, plenty of "geeks/nerds" don't use Google, to avoid their tracking of users. DuckDuckGo or other non-tracking search engines are used by savvier "nerds", thus skewing this supposed study even more. |
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crazieanimefan1
 Posts: 416 Location: Auburn, AL |
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My state seems right in the middle...Alabama.
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ANN_Lynzee
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 3055 Location: Email for assistance only |
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I think this is yes and no depending on the age demographic you're talking about. While ANN readers might skew older, anime fandom at least has a pretty large age demographic with a lot of new, young fans joining constantly. I'm also not positive the search metrics for anime might not include variations. For instance, if I'm a teen anime fan and want to figure out where to watch anime, I'd probably search "anime streaming sites." There's "anime" + a lot of additional terms that could be googled to find fandom-related news articles or topics, too. Same with cosplay, Game of Thrones, or Warhammer. My point is that I don't think everyone Googling "anime" in Alabama are people confused by what it is. |
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Roxas4ever
 Posts: 152 |
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How is that not surprising? *is also Minnesotan* I feel like there's a lot of geek culture around the Twin Cities. We don't have a ton going on event or retail-wise (mostly because companies tend to forget that the midwest exists outside of Chicago), but Anime Detour is the second biggest anime convention in the midwest, and we have a bunch of other anime and geek cons. [Edit]: Okay, not second biggest in the midwest. But the biggest outside of Illinois. |
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SilverTalon01
Posts: 2419 |
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There is also a lot of overlap with population density, and a lot of the lower population states are also much more white (specifically the more urban areas tend to be more diverse than the more rural). This could have made their two primary metrics bias towards states with low population density. As for your suggestion, one big reason that it might map better to whites versus whites and Asians is that most of the states with a higher percentage of Asians also have large percentages of black and Hispanic residents.
I'd be very careful claiming that insight. Where would you be doing this exactly? The one major city in Utah? Well, there is a pretty good chance that if you applied this same metric on a per county basis that you'd see the nerd ranking tank just like you see for the states that are major population centers. Some of Utah is almost certainly under served, but are people going to drive hours to go to your store instead of shopping online? |
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BodaciousSpacePirate
 Subscriber Posts: 3019 |
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Speak for yourself. I'm pretty much constantly google image searching Gundam model kits. 
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