Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/07/21/survey-republicans-dont-lik.html
…
2 Likes
And apparently Big Bang Theory?
7 Likes
Um hello… Supernatural is higher up on BOTH lists than BBT or TWD!
14 Likes
It’s interesting because this shows part of why representation is so important.
Like, a gay character on Supernatural might be the only openly gay person a given conservative sees on a regular basis!
…not that I know if those shows have any of those characters, because I’m a big lefty dork who has seen all of one show on that list because I get all my TV from Netflix…
7 Likes
I’m always extremely sceptical of these kinds of surveys. In this case I can’t seem to find out how many people were in the survey other than this vague line:
“Surveys are conducted monthly among a representative sample of US viewers with 1,200 respondents per show.”
That could mean 1200 people who watch a shit-ton of TV, or (with 3000 TV shows tracked) 3.6 million people who only watch one show.
Also, they say republicans like “family friendly” shows better, but the scant data that they publish doesn’t show that. In fact the data they publish shows that the democrats watch more “family friendly” shows than republicans (three shows with a rating lower than TV-14 versus two on the republican side). I’m guessing the rest of the data shows this but, and here’s my third problem, they didn’t publish that.
My guess: broken, quick survey done over some existing data to create a spiffy headline to generate pageviews.
8 Likes
Isn’t The Walking Dead about the Republican party?
25 Likes
The original source states that whether a show is family friendly is the opinion of a small percentage of the viewers:
“By contrast, half of the top 10 shows on the Republican list had more than 25% of respondents describing the shows as “Family Friendly” and air on broadcast television.”
It might be a large grouping of respondents that all have the same answer compared to less shared support for other descriptions of the shows.
The good vs. evil part seems to coincide with the simplicity of conservative ideology that I’ve seen in other studies, but that could also therefore be confirmation bias.
4 Likes
One fun fact: the favorite Tv program of Leo Strauss, the father of Neoconservatism, was “Gunsmoke”. Why? because there was a clear cut between Good and Evil.
https://youtu.be/dTg4qnyUGxg?t=7m49s
At 7:49
6 Likes
I think it plays well to their fantasies. “See? We’ve been saying all along that our survival would ultimately depend on heavily armed rednecks and border walls!”
13 Likes
Why would they bother with the fantasy of Game of Thrones when they’re playing out the scenario in real time?
14 Likes
To me it’s not just “good vs. evil.” That theme has been everywhere, since always. The shows on the Republican side, though, are ones where evil is incarnate—where it sticks its head out so you can hit it with a machete / flathead arrow / katana / shotgun blast / fist / etc. etc.
And yeah, I think that squares nicely with the need to find (overly) direct, simple solutions. Also with scapegoating entire categories of people to distract from the real problems.
6 Likes
You seem to have completely missed the point of my comment.
Point in case - The Federalist has a recent article titled:
“When The Zombies Attack, ‘Enlightened Males’ Will Be The First To Fall
Society still needs men who know how to swing a machete with authority.”
It seems to basically be appealing to that whole “my mythical perception of the cave man was the natural and therefore best state of man” concept mixed with the libertarian post-apocalyptic fantasy where they want to live in society as if society has already ended so they’re not ethically obligated to care for anyone else in society if they don’t feel like it.
Or, If Ayn Rand and Tyler Durden had a child, this is the monster it would grow up to be. ::shiver::
14 Likes
Well simple good vs evil or morally simplistic is the something close to the opposite of “cultural relativism” which conservatives like to rail against almost as much as “politically correct.”
2 Likes
Walking Dead surprises me as a clear good v evil device. If that’s how they are watching it, then they are missing the point.
I don’t remember in what context I saw this comment (other than it was sincere and not in jest), but recall someone saying that they don’t watch Walking Dead much any more because it’s “not as scary as it used to be”. 
2 Likes
Huh. The zombies have faded into the background and are waaay less scary than the surviving people. Whomever said this clearly skipped the second half of Season 6, particularly the closing minutes of the last episode.
5 Likes
I’m super surprised that Two Broke Girls isn’t on the Republican list. Who IS watching that show?
1 Like
I’m also not convinced because different people can always rationalize their preferences when they appear at odds with stated beliefs.
My conservative co-workers as well as my VERY conservative mother can’t get enough of GOT, but don’t care for Supernatural because they play fast and loose with biblical characters. Some like NCIS because of the camaraderie of the characters, others for the law enforcement focus, while a few don’t like the show because of occasional comments that show nuance to issues that they disagreed with or because they read that one of the actors supported gun restrictions.
1 Like
“‘I’m going to be totally useless during the Apocalypse’, says blogger yearning for the Apocalypse”
8 Likes
I wonder if they’d continue to like it if it was peppered with more “we could have been less fucked if we used renewable energy” nods.
2 Likes
