It has struck me over the last couple of years that Popular
Culture/Trash/trash tournaments are becoming less Popular, and more
Cult. I can attribute it somewhat to my advancing age, but I
wondered if there was a shift in the questions being written by the
teams. So, I took this year's recently completed Trashmasters,
categorized all of the answers, and came up with a lot of data, but
I'm leaving it up to the readers of this group to make their own
conclusion. As to not make this a bore for those in the group who
just don't care, please look at the following three web pages:
http://www.mikeburger.com/2002tmbreak.html
http://www.mikeburger.com/2002tmpopular.html
http://www.mikeburger.com/2002tmanswer.html
The one thing that shocked me the most was the complaining (including
my own) about a certain subject being overrepresented--and then being
faced with the data--realize that it really didn't come up all that
often after all. Look at the results for hockey, Harry Potter and
science fiction. I think you'll be surprised.
Discuss.
--Mike Burger