Subs of
What makes an Android user tick? What’s the difference between a San Franciscan and a Portlander? What do weed smokers love, apart from weed? Look no further than where they post on Reddit.
Story By ceros originals Design by tri vo
Subs of a Feather
The actual ingredients may pair well, but their users could hardly be cut from more different cloth. Beer drinkers are baseball fans before they’re anything else, while stoners are druggies first and foremost. With full marijuana legalization on our horizon, we look forward to the day when people can drink and smoke in the open, together, while watching the Marlins.
r/Portland
r/MLS
r/WorldofTanks
r/uberdrivers
r/gundeals
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Companies shell out millions on market research firms to draw composite images of their customers, luring handfuls of them into two-way mirrored rooms for focus groups, and deploying next-gen digital analytics to track everything from website visits to facial movements. That’s complex and expensive—so what’s the beginner chemistry kit for hobbyist demographers who want to try to uncover the drives and desire of the average iPhone user? Well, it exists: it’s big and popular and arguably steered the entire critical discourse around the last season of Game of Thrones. It’s Reddit, and using its API, we looked at the users of eight different subreddits to find out where else they posted in the Reddit multiverse in an effort to triangulate, say, how a committed weed smoker compares to his avid beer-drinking counterpart or how an iPhone user compares with an Android, or what a San Fransiscan has in common with a Portlander.
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Tap on each pairing to see how they match up:
r/Weed v. r/Beer
r/iPhone v. r/Android
r/NewYork v. r/Philadelphia
r/SanFrancisco v. r/Portland
What can you tell about which subreddits a Redditor frequrents? Plenty. We scraped some common subreddits to reveal the secret affinity (of all things) between Phish, Tesla, Philadelphia and a Chapo’s Trap House.
Story By ANDREW THOMPSON Design by TRI VO
Companies shell out millions on market research firms to draw composite images of their customers, luring handfuls of them into two-way mirrored rooms for focus groups, and deploying next-gen digital analytics to track everything from website visits to facial movements. That’s both complex and expensive, so what’s the beginner chemistry kit for hobbyist demographers who want to try to uncover the drives and desire of the average iPhone user? Here’s a hint: it’s big and popular and arguably steered the entire critical discourse around the last season of Game of Thrones. It’s Reddit, and using its API, we looked at the users of eight different subreddits to find out where else they posted in the Reddit multiverse in an effort to triangulate, say, how a committed weed smoker compares to his avid beer-drinking counterpart or how an iPhone user compares with an Android, or what a San Fransiscan has in common with a Portlander.
Click on each pairing to see how they match up:
Weed v. Beer
r/Beer
iPhone v. Android
r/Android
New York v. Philly
r/Philadelphia
San Francisco v. Portland
r/Weed
r/iPhone
r/NewYork
r/SanFrancisco
How this works
We only looked at those users who posted at least 20 times in the subreddit in question. After we counted up all their posts, we look at where else the posters spent their Reddit time and came up with an “affininity index”—which counted the number of posts those users made on other subreddits so we can see just much love there is between, say, San Francisco and Burning Man (a lot, it turns out). We counted only subreddits with at least 10,000 subscribers and then we filtered out those subs that were too synonymous with the sub under study (the fact that people who post in r/Philadelphia are crazy about the Eagles is hardly surprising) or that felt too par for the course—yes, people interested in iPhones are also interested in cell phone carriers. They’ve been omitted, although some—like CanadianMOMs, which popped up in the r/Weed—only after great deliberation.
r/beer
r/weed
They certainly pair well, but their users could hardly be cut from more different cloth. Beer drinkers are baseball fans before they’re anything else, while stoners are druggies first and foremost. With full marijuana legalization on the horizon, we look forward to the day when people can drink and smoke in the open, together, at a Marlins game. And while we can’t fully explain Phish’s affinity to beer over weed (gasp!) the band formed during Reagan’s first term the White House.
r/Drugs
65.50%
r/LSD
63.24%
r/lean
62.73%
r/benzodiazepines
62.09%
r/Vaping
62.08%
r/Tribes
61.83%
r/shrooms
59.82%
r/DrugStashes
59.37%
r/Truckers
59.00%
r/dxm
57.87%
r/cocaine
57.66%
r/kratom
57.53%
r/opiates
57.30%
r/MDMA
56.81%
r/AskReddit
55.73%
r/Stims
55.33%
r/DMT
55.00%
r/Coachella
54.87%
r/CompetitiveForHonor
54.68%
r/ColoradoSprings
54.63%
Each subreddit's affinity to the subreddit r/beer:
Each subreddit's affinity to the subreddit r/weed:
r/angelsbaseball
75.84%
r/Reds
74.62%
r/AskAnAmerican
74.19%
r/phish
72.47%
r/CFB
72.13%
r/Braves
72.01%
r/phillies
70.91%
r/Brewers
70.76%
r/Huskers
70.67%
70.48%
r/ColoradoRockies
70.34%
r/fantasybaseball
69.67%
r/rva
69.58%
r/hockey
69.57%
r/fantasyfootball
69.33%
r/BostonBruins
69.17%
r/Cardinals
68.84%
r/AskNYC
68.12%
r/Earwolf
67.72%
r/politics
67.48%
back
Weed vs Beer
We only looked at those users who posted at least 20 times in the subreddit in question. After we counted up all their posts, we look at where else the posters spent their Reddit time and came up with an “affininity index”—which counted the number of posts those users made on other subreddits so we can see just much love there is between, say, San Francisco and Burning Man (a lot, it turns out). We counted only subreddits with at least 10,000 subscribers and then we filtered out those subs that were too synonymous with the sub under study (the fact that people who post in r/Philadelphia are crazy about the Eagles is hardly surprising) or subs felt too par for the course—yes, people interested in iPhones are also interested in cell phone carriers and Apple itself. They’ve been omitted, although some—like CanadianMOMs, which popped up in the r/Weed—only after great deliberation.
The 30 Best-Looking Beer Cans in America (2019)
No surprises here, although it did produce an interesting confirmation: iPhone users—on average richer and more Western—frequent the sub of the Apple of electric cars, while Android users spend time discussing the most populated country on Earth that hasn’t banned Reddit, and where Android has more than a 90 percent market share.
Each subreddit's affinity to the subreddit r/iphone:
Each subreddit's affinity to the subreddit r/Android:
r/Bestbuy
66.68%
r/teslamotors
66.61%
r/NYYankees
66.49%
r/mazda3
66.40%
r/ukpolitics
66.11%
r/NintendoSwitch
66.07%
r/croatia
66.05%
r/Sneakers
65.89%
r/TeslaModel3
65.84%
r/howardstern
65.61%
r/SquaredCircle
65.07%
r/CreditCards
65.06%
r/HeadphoneAdvice
64.62%
r/Audi
64.15%
r/sonos
64.03%
r/marvelstudios
63.86%
r/de
63.84%
r/The_Donald
63.82%
r/dbrand
63.74%
r/GolfGTI
63.66%
r/India
r/Ukpolitics
74.57%
r/Neoliberal
73.85%
r/Cricket
73.44%
r/Teslamotors
70.42%
r/IndiaSpeaks
70.06%
69.84%
r/NRL
69.78%
r/Hammers
69.42%
r/NBA
69.37%
r/Pakistan
69.27%
r/UnitedKingdom
69.22%
r/Electricvehicles
69.05%
r/De
69.04%
r/Soccer
68.82%
r/Indonesia
68.78%
r/Politics
68.33%
r/Cars
68.06%
r/Formula1
67.70%
r/ChapoTrapHouse
67.56%
related story
No Jack City: Understanding the Apple iPhone Dongle
Each subreddit's affinity to the subreddit r/NewYork:
Each subreddit's affinity to the subreddit r/Philadelphia:
At the end of the day, Reddit is really just a giant battleground where the alt-right dukes it out with the emergent leftism represented by Chapo Trap House, sidelined by a politically ambiguous Howard Stern fan base. New York and Philly are no different. But Philly is sometimes less a city and more a giant arena for the world’s most virulent species of sports fan. Even after filtering out the city’s individual teams, sports finds its way onto the list.
78.16%
r/neoliberal
76.58%
76.25%
r/YangForPresidentHQ
76.02%
r/aznidentity
74.08%
r/Blackfellas
72.76%
r/Cumtown
72.62%
r/Judaism
72.53%
72.41%
r/BravoRealHousewives
r/barstoolsports
71.84%
71.35%
r/asianamerican
71.22%
70.02%
70.01%
68.94%
r/samharris
68.77%
r/90DayFiance
68.37%
r/Israel
68.28%
r/AskTrumpSupporters
68.24%
70.77%
70.19%
70.15%
69.23%
r/nfl
68.67%
68.51%
68.46%
r/TeenMomOGandTeenMom2
67.97%
67.87%
67.45%
67.39%
r/LawSchool
66.88%
r/blogsnark
66.77%
r/nba
66.18%
65.67%
r/tucker_carlson
65.00%
64.99%
64.85%
64.70%
Queer City, USA: America's most LGBTQ+ friendly towns
It’s almost parodic to see Burning Man take the City by the Bay’s number one spot, but there it is, just a few ranks above the equally befitting surfing. But other than a few distinctions, it’s difficult to see SF and Portland as highly distinct cities—a fact not lost on most Portlanders.
Each subreddit's affinity to the subreddit r/Portland:
Each subreddit's affinity to the subreddit r/SanFrancisco:
r/BurningMan
74.74%
74.12%
72.14%
r/CAguns
70.70%
r/lyftdrivers
70.13%
r/surfing
69.88%
69.38%
69.30%
r/stupidpol
67.93%
67.67%
r/boostedboards
67.50%
67.34%
66.17%
r/ElectricSkateboarding
65.95%
r/cscareerquestions
65.65%
r/slatestarcodex
r/AskThe_Donald
r/WayOfTheBern
64.76%
73.19%
69.63%
68.32%
r/GenderCritical
67.20%
66.50%
64.95%
64.91%
r/liberalgunowners
63.76%
63.61%
63.23%
r/moderatepolitics
62.72%
r/flyfishing
62.63%
62.20%
61.89%
61.80%
r/HVAC
61.77%
r/Ultralight
61.74%
61.71%
Each subreddit's affinity to the subreddit r/iPhone:
65.39%
