Facebook has a feature which lets you view certain tastes and preferences collectively of members in a network as well as pieces of a collective profile.

Was playing around with it and pulled out some stats on members within 3 specific networks - India, Pakistan & New York (well, they didn't have USA!)

Let me present these stats in comparision and also my comments.
(Legend: a. Orange colour to indicate matches between 'India' and 'Pakistan'
b. Green colour to indicate matches between all three networks (India, Pakistan & NY)
c. Yellow colour to indicate differences between 'India' and 'NY' in one section.)

(Membership Details: India (632,875), Pakistan (158,367) & NY (861,425))




Clearly, the subcontinent and NY listen to completely different music. Haven't channels like VH1 and MTV tried enough to feed us new music? Why isn't it working? Why does it look like the music scene in India (and Pakistan) is stuck in the 80s and the 90s with Metallica, Pink Floyd, etc? Or is mention of these names clearly due to peer pressure?

Actually, thinking about it, I think VH1 and MTV are doing a decent job dishing out the latest that side of the Pacific but I guess we just don't fancy that stuff enough to become a fan. It's almost like we are one generation behind the Yankees on this.

And clearly, India and Pakistan listen to the same music! (Err...Creed? Really?)



One interesting thing to note in the table above is the overwhelming presence of 'classics' in the NY list (Scarface, Fight Club, Pulp Fiction, etc) while the subcontinent lists veer more towards contemporary cinema (Blood Diamond, Departed, RdB, 300). It's almost like the Yankees list their all-time favourites to the question 'Favourite Movies' while we list the ones we saw last week! Do we really not have any classic favourites?



Ok, this is too generic so there is bound to be substantial overlap between any pair of lists. Even so, take a look at the odd ones out. What comes to your mind? BORING!! Shopping? Art? Cooking? REALLY?

But then again, Indians are smart enough to list 'Sports' as one of their Top Interests and then go on to list Cricket & Football too as their other interests! Duh.

.....to be continued

Note:
1. When I say 'India' or 'Pakistan' above, I refer to the collective identity of the members of these networks on Facebook. And not to the countries or their people as a whole.