Getting Wisdom From Neil Young Fans: Confessions of a Data Geek

Neil Young Fans Demographics
Male, Married, Middle Aged

OK. So we admit it.

We're just a data geek.

On occasion, folks will ask us "So Thrasher. What's the deal with you and this whole thing about Neil Young?"

Well, we've attempted to answer this over the years (see here, here, here, here, or here), but really as much as we love Neil and music, we love data almost as much.

And with data comes wisdom.

And here's some wisdom on Neil Young fans. These graphs and analysis are based on data compiled on Wisdom, which is a social intelligence application for Facebook.

So, here's some insights on Neil Young fans followed by some observations on the implications of how this data is compiled and used by corporations and government.

Neil Young Fans Favorite Music
Bob Dylan, Beatles, Johnny Cash


Neil Young Fans Favorite Albums
Grateful Dead, The Band, Dylan


Neil Young Fans Favorite Authors
Jack Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson, Noam Chomsky


Neil Young Fans Favorite Books
On The Road, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, Shakey


Neil Young Fans Favorite Movies
Big Lebowski, Pulp Fiction, The Godfather


Neil Young Fans Favorite Comedians
Lewis Black, Lenny Bruce, Kids in the Hall


OK, so what's point of all these random data points. Why does this matter?

Well, from a Neil Young fans perspective knowing that other Neil fans like Bob Dylan isn't exactly earth shattering news. Or that Neil fans tend to be Male, Married, and Middle Aged isn't too surprising.

Or Neil fans like authors Jack Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson, and Noam Chomsky?

Obviously from a marketing standpoint, these are highly important insights in order to target your audience in order to raise product awareness, maximize advertising campaigns effectiveness and generate revenue.

From our blog's perspective, these monetization goals are rather meaningless. It's kinda interesting and mainly just confirms a lot of suspicions over the years without hard data. The correlation between Neil Young and Bob Dylan fans has long been a firm belief but it's nice to finally confirm that the facts support our thesis.

Lastly -- and really this is the point here -- many folks are quite oblivious to the amount of information that is gathered about them constantly. Data that is crunched, analyzed, bought, sold and profited upon.

Would anyone have imagined that we would ever know what Neil Young fans religious preferences would ever be quantified?

Neil Young Fans Religion
Church of the SubGenius, Shamanism, Buddhism, Taoism



The concept of privacy know longer exists. Just a quaint little memory.

People's behavior and thinking has been reduced to discrete data points.

Who said numbers add up to nothing?

Finally, if The Powers That Be know everything about you -- what you buy, what you do, what you like -- then they know how you think.

And with these powerful demographic and psychographic insights into the population, future behavior can be predicted...

... and controlled.

And that, our friends, is just so Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Good night Winston.
Good morning Big Brother.
peace

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