Data from The Onion's "American Voices" series

 

 

 

Since at least 1996, The Onion has run a series of fake person-on-the-street interviews called American Voices, which has made me laugh often enough that I decided to collect the responses in a spreadsheet. Enjoy!

(If you're not familiar with the schtick, they run the same pictures with new names and occupations each time. Initially I was just curious to see which picture had appeared most often.)

The dataset is pretty straightforward:

• Each row in the data worksheet is one response to a prompt, so typically three rows per prompt.
• The article_id column is a unique identifier for each prompt, in addition to the page URL.
• The picture_category column has the numeric ID I gave to each picture. The picture_key worksheet has the list of pictures and their IDs.
• The occupations worksheet has a unique list of every occupation listed in the data. ("Systems Analyst" is the most common.)
• As of August 2023, there were ~23,000 responses to ~7,200 prompts.

Of the 56 pictures used in the series, 14 have been used more than once:

Count: 3,963

3,779

3,765

3,644

3,629

3,564

104

102

102

102

102

100

2

2

... and these appeared only once:

John Edwards
Lawyer

Thag
Forager

Gron
Gatherer

Paulette
Spear Maker

Hamon Millins
Stoveblack

Godwin Smyth
Offal Forrager

Alviva Gwynyk
Noblewoman

Ethel Smith
Auto Worker

Walter Booker
Craftsman

Herschel Mandelbaum
Unemployed

Susan Hawk
Rancher

Bryan Ferry
Singer

Sarah Palin
Television Personality

Timothy Geithner
U.S. Treasury Secretary

Michelle Obama
Nutrition and Exercise Advocate

John Boehner
U.S. Representative

Harry Reid
U.S. Senator

Mr. Bobo
Monkey

Joe Garden
Features Editor

Mothra

Hal Von Beltz
Unemployed

Joss Whedon
Film And Television Producer

Bruce Springsteen
Musician

Curiosity
Mars Rover

Robert Ferdinand
Nursery Manager

Scott Rudin
Producer of Lady Bird

Snappers
Zoo Animal

Brian Cornell
Target CEO

Warren Buffett
Berkshire Hathaway CEO

Jeremy Rosenbaum
Onion Social CEO

Thich Nhat Hanh
Zen Master

Abe Acker
Ghost

Clifton Stacker
Rat Breeder

Olga Popescu
Weightlifter

Jeff Bezos
Unemployed

Andrew Cuomo
Unemployed

Barack Obama
Former U.S. President

Prudence Murdoch
Heiress

Chris Pratt
Actor?