Wii Users Smell Nice

It turns out I was wrong: most Wii-voters (51.5%) wear perfume or cologne. For women this rate is 64.4% and for men it is 46.6%. What this shows is that the vast majority of Wii-voters (≈72.5) are men[1] and a little under half of these men are emasculated dandies. Nice job proving the haters wrong, guys.

Honestly, I'm just bitter that I've guessed incorrectly on 5 of the last 7 polls. Apparently buses, doppelgängers, coffee shops (as places to read) and — global poll alert! — heat aren't nearly as popular as I thought. With the global poll, generally hot countries didn't like heat and cold countries didn't like the cold[3]. The grass is always greener...

As a check, I looked at the global Wiilectorate's sex ratio, and men are once again the vast majority (≈70.8%[2]). Learning this mitigates my prognosticatory pessimism, as does the hilariously low prediction success rate of my fellow amateur statisticians (40.3%).

The current crop of questions includes: "Have you weighed yourself in the last month?" and "Is there such a thing as a soul mate?" on which I am predicting "No" for the former and "Yes" for the latter. Presumably Wii-men are just romantic enough to believe in an ineffable and inimitable connection to another human being, but still don't care about their health because, after all, they're spending their time voting through Wiis. Although, considering their 2:1 preference for trees over coffee shops, maybe Wiivoters are both Romantic AND romantic[5] enough to head outdoors.

Let's not forget: Wii is its own workout. @ Brian: I feel your pain (literally[6]).

[1] If ♂% of all Wii-voters are men then .466♂+.644(1-♂)=.515 —> -.178♂+.644=.515 —> .129=.178♂ —> 72.5≈♂
[2] If ♂% of all global Wii-voters are men then .530♂+.465(1-♂)=.511 —> .065♂+.465=.511 —> .065♂=.046 —> 70.8≈♂
[3][4] See: The amazing desultory YouTube clip I've embedded, which is scored with a sped-up version of the 'Dynasty' theme for no real reason
[4] How badly did the out-of-order footnotes mess with your head?
[5] Who thought Vin Diesel and Wesley Snipes were "ugly" enough to get on that list‽ Preposterous. p_^
[6] In the past, at least; I'm in a deep enough MLB withdrawal to play the GCN 2k6 >_<

Contemplating a Fandom-Lead Critique of Canon

Thousand Year Door has been tough for me to get through because it seems designed to avoid/prevent grinding, and I'm very big on over-preparation.[1] I want to ditch it altogether and go onto Super Paper Mario, but I need to follow protocol. However, leaving the ol' blogspot lying fallow all week has left me feeling like an absentee landlord, so I provide two fillers:

1) Nearly three weeks ago I promised to report on a Wii-pole and, per my prediction, Wii-voters prefer comedy movies (62%) to action (38%) ones. More to the point, I wondered what this would say about the gendering of the Wiilectorate, as men would obviously be more likely to prefer action.[2] Indeed 42.2% of Wii-men prefer action to comedy, while only 25.5% of Wiiwomen do. The most interesting thing out of all this is that only 58.4% correctly predicted the preference, which means some good chunk of people who prefer comedy thought they were weird outliers. Come on people: try some statistical analysis of box office receipts, why don'cha[3]

Another current question asks if Wiivoters wear perfume and/or cologne, which will test the metrosexuality of Wii-men. I'm torn between the stereotypical wussyness of Wii-owners and the stereotypical poor hygiene of gamers, but I'm going with the latter. For the record, I'm 21 for 26 with predictions.[4]

2) Even though Comcast claimed to have the final Spider-Man 3 trailer last month, on Thursday "Trailer 4" popped up on Apple's Trailer site. It's pretty much the same thing as what's on the Comcast site, but they use different clips of the villain Venom. At first I decided to write an entire post about this, but then I was reminded of this XKCD comic.

With Spider-Man 3, Transformers, and — to a lesser extent — The Simpsons Movie and The Order of the Phoenix — young professionals are seeing their fandoms realized on the screen in a big way this summer. Although fandom has been allowed to take over the official before,[5] the fandoms I was part of haven't. Venom is coeval with my interest in comics and Transformers: The Movie has been my favorite video to watch for the past two decades years; I am fairly certain I know more about these characters than any of the screenwriters, but do I know more about it than the reviewers? The depth of niche knowledge that some reviewers have never ceases to amaze me.

So, I wonder, is there a professional reviewer out there who will invoke Todd McFarlane and Erik Larsen when describing the CGI in Spider-Man 3, or will debate picking Peter Cullen over Gary Chalk to voice Optimus Prime in Transformers?

[1] It's what makes me a such a great PokeMaster, but that's a story for Tuesday.
[2] One could quibble about the masculinity of Men-who-use-Wiis — or Women-who-play-video games for that matter — but I will only do so through apophasis.
[3] Based on Box Office Guru and IMDb data from July 1997 through November 2003. I had yet to discover the beauty that is BoxOfficeMojo.
[4] Who knew so many people owned furry fish?
[5] FTR, I don't claim to add anything to what people already know about the interplay between fandom and "canon."

Worldwide Wii Poll #f00: The Future

I'm prepping for the release of Super Paper Mario by giving its GCN predecessor a test-run. This requires firing up the not-so-ol' Wii, and I love checking out the Everybody Votes "channel." As a bit of a numbers n3rd, I'm always trying to uncover variations hidden by the macro yes/no numbers. DYK:

—Michigan and Kentucky really love basketball, but Vermont is non-plussed
—Puerto Ricans have weird teeth-brushing habits
—Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado residents are the only ones that prefer mountains to beaches.[1]
—Females are significantly more likely than males to think a woman will win 'American Idol'

I bring this up because the latest result fascinates me: 58.9% of Wii users worldwide[2] would rather know their own future than the planet's future. Given humans' tendency to ignore what happens past their lifetime, that shouldn't be surprising. The funny part is which countries are most self-interested: Austria, Germany, US & the UK. We all know the US is selfish, and the UK just bites America's style. Austria and Germany, though? While the obvious joke to make here is about WWI alliances, this breaks down once you consider that the US didn't really care about Europe's infighting until Germany courted Mexico and that, in any case, I have heard only one funny joke about WWI.

For the record, Denmark, Scandinavia, and Portugal are running the bottom. I presume Scandinavia just cares about global warming. Portugal, I don't know, I'm lost. There's something funny in all this; I just can't find it yet.

On the current round of polls, I would rather meet Einstein than Edison, prefer the window to the aisle, and am pretty sure comedy beats the action. The last one is a real test of the Wii's gendering, though. I'll make sure to check back in four days from now. Meanwhile, much respect for/hate on "Mark" for getting to Everybody Votes before I. Honestly, I wanted to cover this in print but I can't convince an editor[3] that it's important enough.

[1] New Mexico seems torn. So much for "the grass is always" greener, non?
[2] The non-response bias on these questions may be crazy high, and without sample size the polls' validities are anyone's guess, but I don't feel like qualifying the statement more than I already have so nyaaaah.
[3] Of course, I just barely convinced myself it was worth blogging about.