A Few Fun Demographic Facts About Tomato Nation
Hey, remember that survey I asked you to take? I thought you’d like to see some of the results.
51% of you are single.
83% of you live in the U.S. at the moment; 80% of you live in a city (more than 50,000 people in it).
65% of you have a pet of some sort. Despite inadvertent efforts on the part of my prose to discourage you, at least 36% of you have chosen to share your lives with felines.
18% of you either give or receive education; 8% work in the legal industry; 3% are job-hunting (good luck!).
44% of you watch at least 10 hours of TV a week.
95% buy books, music, and movies online; 45% by housewares online; 68% buy clothes online.
71% of you own or lease a car as your primary mode of transport. 1% of you get around by a non-car, non-bike, non-transit, non-walking means. (Skates? Neat.)
67% of you work out at least once a week.
73% of you like to cook; 26% like to knit; 10% like to make jewelry; 32% like to make trouble.
Almost all of you like to read — 99% read books, 73% read magazines, 10% read literary quarterlies, 63% use social media — except that one respondent who checked off “doesn’t like to read.” Hee.
Welcome, 2% of readers who’ve been coming for less than a year! Hope you stick around. 88% of respondents have read TN for more than 4 years; almost 20% have read TN for more than 10 years.
26% of you comment at least occasionally on TN content. One respondent comments on all entries, which even I don’t do. Heh.
And now, for the important stuff…33% of you hate raisins, and given the choice of dining with Freddie Mercury, George Clooney, President Obama, or your grandfathers (or possibly my grandfather…seems like people didn’t know to read the question in that case, but I’m told Clif Sr. was a nice guy, so you’re welcome to his company as far as I’m concerned), 31% of you would have dinner with Obama, just edging the grandpas (30%). 22% went with Clooney;17% went with Freddie; many many of you berated me for forcing you to choose between these options.
There’s more data where that came from, and if you’d like to purchase an ad or a sponsorship on the site, I’d love to share it with you.
Do you have an Etsy store you’d like to advertise? A city guide or zine? An online vintage presence? A veterinary or financial service you think TN readers could benefit from? Do you sell clothes, makeup, yarn, or TV-character action figures? A Tomato Nation sponsorship is the solution for you. Choose from a menu of sponsorship options, or work with me to customize one to fit your business. Cinchy; profitable. Let’s do this! I welcome your inquiries: bunting at tomatonation dot com.
Tags: and now a word from our sponsors
I know a couple of people who ‘don’t like to read’, but I am unable to comprehend what that must be like. I don’t go more than a few minutes without reading; I even like having subtitles up on tv and movies!
Fun results. City dwellers, represent!
What were some of the things people wrote in the spot where you asked if there was anything we wanted to tell you?
I think the Tomato Nation Knitting Club would be super-duper fun. Someone with more interwebz skills than I possess needs to set that up. :)
I’m still gobsmacked that I’ve been reading TN for over 10 years. Was there even an internet back then?
I loved reading all of this!
I somehow missed the survey. Is it still a thing that one should fill out, in the interest of getting the most data, or is it all tallied now and better not to mess with it?
I hope you get fantastic people selling marvelous things. I expect anybody selling through TN would have a good product, since they already have great taste in advertising space.
@Rachel-
All about the TN Knitting Club! Maybe a group on Ravelry? That’s about the extent of interwebz prowess I possess…
@ attica: I always thought my father was one of the “doesn’t like to read types” (it was always my mom who read aloud to us growing up), and then recently we took a family trip to Europe. My dad read a whole book on the two plane rides. As it turns out, it isn’t so much “doesn’t like to read” as “doesn’t have time to read” in any regular way.
My sister hates to read. She does not read. When we’re driving down the road and she’s looking out the window (apparently watching signs go past), I’ll ask what that last sign said and she’ll look at me like I’m crazy. What sign? There was a sign? It had letters on it?
I can’t *not* read signs. She has to force herself to read signs.
It’s a strange world.
Sarah,
Is that a picture of you as a wee tot? Cause if I didn’t think it was virtually impossible, I’d swear it was me.
That is indeed me, and the late Blecket, who I believe took her vengeance moments after this photo was snapped.
@Rachel & @Jessica S:
I’m so in on the TN knitting club. First thing we should do is a tomato KAL! PM me on Ravelry, I’m Craftistic. Let’s get this thing set up!
Not only could we be heroes, some of us apparently already fly around? Super-neat.
I was surfing the internet with one hand while absentmindedly delivering a pet/scritch/rub to a purring feline with the other (really, all I need to do is extend my hand and wiggle my fingers, and she does the rest). Clicked on my TN bookmark, saw the picture, and looked down at my own hand, which happened to be, at that very second, holding firmly to said feline’s tail, yanking gently and playfully, while she continued to purr her little face off. Cats, they are different. Mine is perhaps a bit weird :)
I want in on the knitting group on Rav please! I’m oneandonlysteph over there.
And seeing how many knitters there are here makes me wonder if I should advertise my wares. Sars, expect an email!
I love TN. (sigh)
It’d be cool to have a TN marketplace made up of the regulars here. Probably a pain to actually implement though.
I so don’t get not reading either. God, I have been known to read the labels on the back of cleaning products if nothing else comes to hand. Mainly out of curiosity about what you’d write on the back of a cleaning bottle, but still.
I used to have a long rail commute to work from the suburbs, back in the days when portable CDs were a pretty nifty technology, and I could never understand people who didn’t come armed with books or mags and just sat there the whole ride.
Now that I’m doing the child-job balancing act (all the fun of being a fulltime worker and a housewife, but with less pay, in one convenient package) and have so little free time I get really angry if I am caught somewhere without something to read. All I can say is thank goodness for Kindle on the iPod Touch…
I have been known to read so compulsively that I activated my reading-related carsickness. I get panicky if I run out of stuff to read. None of this makes me anything like an intellectual; it’s not like there’s imminent antsiness over Homer’s lack of follow-up work. The “don’t-like-to-read” thing just flummoxes me. It’s like saying you don’t like to eat or shower.
Those of you who have been known to read the writing on cleaning products (and feminine products, and cereal boxes, and…) just because they’re there and you don’t have anything else on hand may want to look into Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap. Also, I am totally guilty of this.
(As for not liking to read, I sometimes wonder if it’s more or less the same for people who are good at/enjoy math re: people who aren’t good at/don’t enjoy math. Since I love to read and do not really enjoy math, I can’t really comment!)
I’m not precisely sure when or how I came to Tomato Nation, but I know I was here by 2005 because I distinctly remember reading Dear Retail Fashion Industry when it was first posted and going “YES. AND ALSO YES.”
My dad doesn’t read because he’s dyslexic and when he was in school they just thought he was stupid (no such thing as a learning disability in boondocks of Massachusetts in the 50s and 60s apparently) so no one bothered teaching him how to cope with it. He’s not illiterate by any means, but reading is a huge struggle for him so he doesn’t unless he absolutely has to. That, to me, is the only good reason for never reading. It still kind of pisses me off that the education system failed him so badly, because he’s so smart.
Meanwhile, I’m surprised so many of my fellow city dwellers own cars.
I was more struck by the fact that that one respondent, on a survey on a content website, said s/he doesn’t like to read. I know some people don’t care for it, but in retrospect, I should have left the “I don’t like to read” option off the answer list entirely under the circumstances. Bad construction on my part, and kind of a funny answer.
Hey TN knitters & crocheters: I just checked on Ravelry and there is already a TN group! Looks like it’s small and not terribly active, but maybe if those of us who are expressing interest here all go join up, then we can liven it up a bit.
I work at a bookstore, and you’d be amazed how often we hear “I don’t like to read” or similar comments when asked if they would like to join our membership program/get put on our email list/check out our eReader. I so want to ask them, “Then what the hell are you doing in a bookstore?” but A) I like my job, B) No answer they could possibly articulate would satisfy me, and C) There are way blunter and yet more necessary questions I’d love to ask some of our ruder customers if I could get away with it.
At least with someone like my brother, I know he doesn’t read books. He does read a ton of magazines. I’m the opposite – I don’t read magazines, but a ton of books. We both at least like to read.
I have no idea how long I’ve been reading TN, but I remember the very beginning of Operation Find Don, and given the memorable date, I’m looking down the barrel of a decade, I’d say.
A lot of people, myself included, define being a ‘reader’ as someone who reads two or more books a week. Reading things online isn’t generally considered ‘reading’, as a pastime. Don’t ask me why. I can’t explain it.
Blecket looks like my cat Bella! I love to yank on her tail affectionately, too. She just purrs and flops on the floor.
Count me as one whose been reading for over 10 years, and one who missed the survey entirely. Must have been uber busy that day.
@Jeanne: My husband is the same way, although this was the boondocks of Pennsylvania in the 1980s (and parents who didn’t know/care enough to insist the school actually, I don’t know, try to educate him — reason #2 I LOVE my in-laws).
Reading anything more than a catalog is practically painful for him, especially since he is now back in school. But we get along — sometimes I read his school work aloud to him. Which helpfully satisfies my reading need as well. Think I can get that criminal justice degree, too?
When I was younger, my mom swore that in a nothing-to-read emergency I’d unroll toilet paper on the off chance I might find something to read on it. Cereal boxes were my personal favorite, since mom would not allow me to bring books to the table.
@Jeanne: The same thing happened to my dad. He was 30 before my bibliophile mom managed to convince him that no one was going to make him read out loud and no one cared how long it took him to get through a book. He’s now one of the most voracious readers I know.
And, yeah, I agree with the rest of you that this is kind of a weird place to be claiming you don’t like to read…
I am a librarian, which of course means genetically incapable of not reading at all times. And I am currently seeing a teacher who … doesn’t like to read? How is that even possible? Okay, he’s a music teacher, but still.
I may be converting him though, he actually bought a book. Denis Leary was the author, but still, a book. Pages and all. And it actually wasn’t horrible, kind of funny.
However, I just bought my THIRD copy of Infinite Jest, this time in iBook format. I don’t think I’ll be able to talk him into that one.
@Mystery Amanda: YES, yes, a thousand times yes on the Dr. Bronner products, because hilarious and borderline (but benevolently) insane.
@Sam: Wow! Two or more books a week is impressive. I’m doing well if read one book every two weeks.
Unrelatedly, TN kinda-sorta inspired me to go dig up a few of those lists of books à la the BBC’s The Big Read (and, as I discovered while Googling for a list of books involved in The Big Read, there’s also a program by that same name being done by the NEA that I will have to look into) and see if I can work my way through them. Since this isn’t a school assignment I reserve the right to not read books like Stephen King’s It (I’m sure it’s a fine book, but killer clowns augh), but it might prompt me to pick up a few books I wouldn’t have necessarily chosen myself.
@Sam:
My guess is that reading online generally has some sort of purpose, however vaguely defined – get information, be amused, talk to friends, etc., whereas reading for the sake of reading (which can certainly be amusing or informative in itself, but I’m preaching to the choir here) generally takes more of an attention span and doesn’t necessarily lend itself to multitasking like most of the reading we do online does.
I do kind of wonder how much of the “I don’t like to read” attitude is fostered by the sorts of books that are frequently chosen for school-related reading – there’s a reason why those books are chosen and I kind of wonder in retrospect how often it’s the case that the teachers dislike the book as much as their students do, but either way I’m just not sure, for example, that Wuthering Heights (a book I keep meaning to give a second chance now that I am not 15 years old) was a good early foray into Victorian lit.
I can’t imagine what it would be like to not enjoy reading. I find myself reading in three separate languages, even, and when my husband and I had to downsize our physical personal libraries to make room for our firstborn recently, it was pretty painful to part with a lot of “non-necessary” books from our bookshelves (sorry, reading from a Kindle is just not the same!). The kid herself is boosting a pretty good personal library already, despite being under 1. =P
As for the grandpa question, I read it as “dinner with my own grandpa”. I’d kill to see the old man one last time after nearly 30 years since he passed.
@Mystery Amanda — Stephen King’s It is on the list of (his) books I WANT to read again! I actually liked the movie, too…but that’s more due to Tim Curry, I think. I’ve never had a fondness for clowns, and this book justifies all my sneaking suspicions of them…
Re: demographics — I have no idea when I started reading TN or why…it might have been through TWOP way back in the early Gilmore Girl era…dunno, but definitely nearly ten years…
Thanks Sars! and to the rest of the Nation with your comments and community!