A recent article on Quartz posed a neat little question: “Is it possible to determine whether a twitter user is pro-choice or pro-life without reading their twitter profile?”

Through lots of very pretty charts clearly establishing the author’s extensive expertise in the creation of pretty charts, the article eventually concluded “Yes. It is.”

Personally, I had some trouble convincing myself this didn’t amount to a silly game played in a sandbox of sample-bias. Perhaps I was distracted by the charts (which, again, really great job on those), or perhaps the author was just a bit off the mark. I gave it a second read-through, following along carefully to assess the reasoning and be absolutely sure the charts were in fact pretty. All was good until I hit this bit of text:

90% of users with strong views in the Gamergate and conservative communities are pro-life;

Woah woah woah. Now hang on a second, buddy. Friend. Comrade. Unspecified-relation-with-whom-I-should-schedule-an-intervention-to-address-the-tendency-for-misleading-label-usage. You are tearing this family apart.

What are we talking about here? Is it “90% of the group labeled GamerGate and Conservatives are pro-life”

Or you saying:

“90% of the group labeled GamerGate is pro-life — as is 90% of the group labeled Conservatives.”

Or:

“90% of the group labeled GamerGate is pro-life. But this label includes only the people who tweeted under #ShoutYourAbortion, and not the people in their extended network who also identify as GamerGate.”

Because, if you’re saying the last thing, then the GamerGate label isn’t generally predictive of views on abortion. If you’re saying 90% of GamerGate members are pro-life — that sounds like the exact opposite of the GamerGate community I know. And if you’re saying that an aggregate grouping of Gamergate members and Conservative twitter users is 90% pro-life: then I very strongly suspect that the 10% of that group which is not pro-life is almost indistinguishable from the portion of the group composed of GamerGate members.

But suspecting is for wusses who fear closure. We’re here to take chances, make clarifications, and get messy.

Two days ago I sent out this tweet:

Now that some time has passed and exponential growth has had a chance to do its thing, it’s time to do some fucking science.

Are you pumped? YOU BETTER BE PUMPED. BECAUSE IT’S TIME TO SPEND 5 HOURS MANUALLY TABULATING INDIVIDUAL RESPONSES INTO A SPREADSHEET WITH THE CAREFUL CONSIDERATION AND RESPECT EACH ONE DESERVES.

LET’S FUCKING DO THIS.