This site is what happens when pastime becomes obsession.
A few prefatory remarks might be in order here. For those who might not know much about them, Pluggers and They'll Do It Every Time (TDIET) are nationally-syndicated comic strips that run in a number of newspapers nationwide, and they both operate on the same premise: folks from around the country send in their vignettes, observations, bons mots, words of wisdom of various sorts, and the comic artist (Gary Brookins in the case of Pluggers and Al Scaduto in the case of TDIET) works those ideas into a comic panel or two.
For some time (about a year now), I've been an active member in an on-line community focused on the superior blog, Comics Curmudgeon, maintained admirably by Joshua Fruhlinger, a comics addict from Baltimore. Every day hundreds of us converge at this site to discuss the goings-on in the nationally-syndicated comics. As you might suspect, attention is placed most squarely upon the lousiest of the comics, a few of which are showcased daily (or every-other-daily, depending on Josh's work schedule and general whimsy) in a new post on the blog. Frequent targets of derision include the often-antiquated Archie and Blondie, the politically neanderthal Mallard Fillmore, the trite and unrealistic soaps Mary Worth and Apartment 3-G, the poorly-drawn insanity that is Gil Thorp, and, perhaps most despised of all, the ham-fisted and maudlin For Better or For Worse.
Stuck in the middle somewhere are Pluggers and TDIET. These two strips are fascinating because they tend to show two fundamentally different Americas: while Pluggers generally offers a look at working- or lower-middle-class lifestyles, centered upon thrift, economy, simplicity, and down-to-earthiness, TDIET, while still purporting to speak for the average Joe and Jane, shows a different face, a more urban and urbane citified sophistication that its rustic cousin doesn't have. While Pluggers characters are often-outsized anthropomorphic dogs, bears, and chickens, Scaduto's TDIET characters are Eisenhower-era workaday schmoes in wide ties, double-breasted suits, and anachronistic hairstyles. Just as there are clear differences between the themes these strips treat, so too, I've always suspected, there are differences between the strips' submitters.
Some time ago I said to myself, "gee, I wonder what the demographics would look like if I were to keep track of Pluggers and TDIET submissions and break the numbers down?"
Well, I've been doing just that for awhile now. I've tabulated just over two months of submission data to both strips so far (June and July of 2007), keeping track only of geographic location (no personal information, when given). Having recorded the data (an act that takes only a few seconds each day, since I read the strips anyway), I take a couple of hours at the end of each month to take them apart and plot them along a few axes. The results can be obtained by following the links below. I have moved discussion of each cumulative monthly data set into an accompanying "abstract" for that set.
One more comment, then you can get on with it: the charts for the first data set were created using the professional mathematical package, Mathematica, which does not come equipped with handy tools for adding legends to charts and whatnot. Thus the absence of said legends. I have since moved all of my data over to MicroSoft Excel, a program that enables me to use more flexible chart-making utilities. Thus the July set is a little easier on the eyes in some ways. Note that I no longer charted the "frequency" categories, since those are not as meaningful as the percentage figures, anyway. Finally, for those who were wondering about the make-up of those census divisions, here they are.
By the way, I intend to keep this website current, updating it monthly. And yes, that's incredibly sad. But hey, everyone's gotta have a hobby, right? Right?! Oh yeah-h-h-h! All right, enough of my yammering! Enjoy!
All contents © 2007 Patrick Bahls, all rights reserved. So there.