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iPod More Popular Than Beer? 258

Posted by Zonk from the screwed-up-priorities dept.
prostoalex writes "Whenever someone says college students, the first thing that comes to mind is drinking beer, right? Wrong, says new research by Student Monitor, which claims than in 2006 73% of students it surveyed said iPods were in, while beer drinking and Facebook.com fought for the second place with 71% of popular votes."
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iPod More Popular Than Beer? More

iPod More Popular Than Beer?

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  • Bzzzzzzzzzt! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Whiney Mac Fanboy ( 963289 ) * <whineymacfanboy@gmail.com> on Thursday June 08, 2006 @05:05PM (#15497700) Homepage Journal
    Summary is incorrect. First line of story clues you in:

    Move over Bud. [emph mine]
    Story is about american students. Summary headline should read:

    Apple: iPod more popular than flavourless brown fizzy drinks.

    (I'll leave the facebook==beer popularity jokes to others:)

    • Re:Bzzzzzzzzzt! (Score:5, Funny)

      by HillBilly ( 120575 ) on Thursday June 08, 2006 @05:10PM (#15497761)
      As it goes...

      American beer is like sex in a canoe, its fucking close to water.

      • *snort* - thanks for that, haven't heard it in years :-)

      • Re:Bzzzzzzzzzt! (Score:4, Informative)

        by Sponge Bath ( 413667 ) on Thursday June 08, 2006 @05:40PM (#15497973)
        ...its fucking close to water

        There are plenty of very good (and close mainstream, pun intended)
        beers from the US these days. Avery, New Belgium, and Victory breweries
        are some of my favorites. (beware the Golden Monkey)

        Of course, most of those brew English or Belgium style,
        so props to the originating countries for showing the way.
        I just wish I could convert more of my 'NASCAR' type friends
        from 'Bud' and the 'Silver Bullet'. When they come over and peruse
        my fridge full of tasty, bottled treats they give a blank look
        and whine: but where is the Coors?

        *shudder*
        • How is the States for real ales, instead of just lagers? I've heard you can get hold of some imported in specialist stores.
          • Plenty of good ales. (I see/drink way more ales than lagers around here.)

            Then again, I'm very near the aforementioned Portland, OR. (That's Oregon, for the joker with the followup.)
          • You can find good domestic and imported beers easily enough here in New Jersey. You don't nessecarily have to go with imported, though - not all American beer is bad. My favorite brewery, Dogfish Head [dogfish.com], is American. They make some seriously good ales.
          • As far as imports go, Ales lose out to Lagers. There are a few, but for English imports stouts seem to have the upperhand. Germany has a majority share of the imported brews I find here in Connecticut. There are lots of European brews imported as well. Belgian trappist brews are quite popular as well. Alas, even in my favorite local beer super-store (Amity Discount Wine and Spirits) Canadian beer is sadly underrepresented. Only the major breweries are available, and while a decent drink, you miss some
        • I personally love Miller Lite on a hot humid New England summer day. Not a NASCAR fan but there is a time and place for nearly every brew...except the non-alcoholics which taste just weird.

          I have a weakness for the floral hops in Magic Hat brews, although it seems that they use them indescriminately and some styles would benefit from a different type.

        • Sure, there are plenty of good American beers, but the vast majority of American beer drinkers don't drink them. Anheuser-Busch holds roughly 50% of the market, SABMiller takes about 18%, and Coors is somewhere around 15%. Add 'em up and you get about 83% of the beer drunk in America is from one of those three megabreweries.

          Given that beer from those megabreweries is generally shit, one could very realistically say that American beer is indeed fucking close to water.
        • If you're in or around SE Pennsylvania, you can get your hands on Juengling beer--in particular their black & tan. It's as cheap as the bad beer and as good as the good beers.

    • Re:Bzzzzzzzzzt! (Score:5, Funny)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Thursday June 08, 2006 @05:21PM (#15497852) Journal
      I am a PhD student, so I'm perhaps not representative, but I find this 'research' slightly hard to believe. In the last three years, I have bought exactly one iPod. Over the same time, I have bought several hundred beers. Taking this week as a fairly representative example, I have bought two beers, and no iPods at all.
      • Taking this week as a fairly representative example, I have bought two beers, and no iPods at all.
        Spare us the anecdotal evidence! Why should we assume that this is a typical iPod consumption week? Do you have any studies that show that average weekly iPod consumption is so low?

      • Re:Bzzzzzzzzzt! (Score:3, Insightful)

        by krunk4ever ( 856261 )
        I personally think instead of comparing the purchase, it's comparing the usage that's more relevant. Let's rephrase the question and ask this Ph.D student, how much time he spent listening to his iPod this week and how much time, she spent drinking beer?

        I mean iPod isn't just a 1 time purchase thing, it's the ongoing usage. If I purchase a bunch of beer, but because it's to accomodate my guests that I hang out every week, it doesn't mean I'm into beer.

        Just thought it was something to think about.
    • I believe the production of American beer is quite cheap, hence its disfavour outside of the USA (for the most part).

      I think the process is get a european beer, drink beer, urinate into bottle, lable as American beer.

      *Ducks away from American Mods, making sure not to spill his Newcastle Brown*

      • "hence its disfavour outside of the USA (for the most part). "

        Bud is the #1 pacakged beer in Ireland.

        http://www.checkout.ie/MarketProfile.asp?ID=2 [checkout.ie]

        Beer snobbery knows no bounds. Projecting your opinions on an entire continent just to bolster how you feel about something. Astounding.

        • Uhhm, Budweiser [wikipedia.org] or Budweiser [wikipedia.org]? Because, you know, the latter comes from Budweis, Czechia, and is indeed quite popular in Europe, though it has nothing to do with the American one (different company, entirely different beers), but both sold under the same name.

          Read this:

          In many countries, the beer produced by Budjovický Budvar is the only beer that may be sold as "Budweiser" - in those countries, the American Budweiser is usually marketed as "Bud." Since both Budjovický Budvar and Anheuser-Busch h

          • Nice try, but if read the link you'll see mention to Louie the Lizard. That's a Budweiser (Anheuser-Busch) mascot.
          • Bud.

            Bud is usually sold under the name "Bud", due to the unclear ownership of the other trademark.

            And in my post I said "Bud", I meant "Bud".

            No one would confuse the sales of Bud with Budvar. Even in Europe, Bud outsells Budvar by many orders of magnitude.
        • Only tourists drink packaged beer in Ireland anyhoo. The irish stay at the pub ;-)
      • European beer isn't that much better than American. It's bad enough that it doesn't even matter if you drink it at room temperature.

        Canadian beer is the best, just stay away from Molson or Labatt's.
      • You forgot a step. Remember, here in America it's all about saving on costs. The process is to ship European beer to India, (or ship it here and bring in a few H1B or L1 workers) hire a few Indians to drink the good stuff, then pee into tankers, then ship back to US. When the tankers reach American ports, it is then taken to bottling plants where this "concentrate" is then watered down. :-D
    • Apple: iPod more popular than flavourless brown fizzy drinks.

      Why are you calling Standard American Lager [bjcp.org] brown? It's yellow.

    • Re:Bzzzzzzzzzt! (Score:5, Funny)

      by thefirelane ( 586885 ) on Thursday June 08, 2006 @06:01PM (#15498109)
      I'm sorry, you seem to be under the impression college students drink for taste.
    • This is one of those many instances where British English (boffin, lorry, ground ground nuts, pantechnicon) is different from American English (geek, truck, peanut butter, moving van). In this case, "beer" is British English for a beverage, and American English for a cheap way to get drunk.
      • This is one of those many instances where British English (boffin, lorry, ground ground nuts, pantechnicon)

        Hmm, I don't know where you get your translations from, but we call it 'peanut butter' and a 'moving van' is known as 'removal van'.

  • Not just college students (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BWJones ( 18351 ) * on Thursday June 08, 2006 @05:05PM (#15497704) Homepage Journal
    It's not just college students. No, the iPod has absolutely become a phenomenon that I was thinking was perhaps restricted to college students and those of us Apple geeks that were early adopters (I had an iTunes music server made out of an old Powerbook as soon as they released iTunes). However, my thinking has essentially been completely corrected with all the travel I was doing over the past year giving talks and such. On every trip, I saw white earbuds connected to iPods and just last week on the Washington, D.C. metro subway, I counted twenty people in my car alone coming back from the Pentagon who were using iPods of various types, three people with Powerbooks/MacBook Pros and two people with brand new Macbooks. It was amazing and given the performance of the stock market over the past couple of weeks, made me feel much better about the shares of AAPL that I purchased.

    • I counted twenty people in my car alone coming back from the Pentagon who were using iPods of various types, three people with Powerbooks/MacBook Pros and two people with brand new Macbooks

      You're having a laugh! Twenty five people in your car using Apple products? Did you have four elephants in the boot running Windows laptops, as well?
      • On a similar vein...

        I just got back from an African Safari. The close proximity with nature is amazing. Why, on my first day I got out of bed and shot an elephant in my pajamas. How the elephant got in my pajamas I will never know!

        (No, the elephant was not listening to my iPod. Apparently they don't like the earbuds either.)

  • Go away, you're not 21 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tepples ( 727027 ) <tepplesNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday June 08, 2006 @05:05PM (#15497705) Homepage Journal

    For one thing, beer is never going to be popular with more than 37 percent of law-abiding college students in the United States, where the legal age for possessing an alcoholic beverage is somewhere in the junior year. With an iPod, on the other hand, any college student in the United States can rip CDs and buy DRM'd tracks from iTMS.

  • Stupid kids. (Score:5, Funny)

    by mctk ( 840035 ) on Thursday June 08, 2006 @05:06PM (#15497710) Homepage
    No matter how many songs you listen to, she's still gonna be ugly and talk to much.

  • In other news... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Nerdposeur ( 910128 ) on Thursday June 08, 2006 @05:06PM (#15497714) Journal
    ...sandwiches are still more popular than laptops.
    • Well, yeah. Threesomes, should you be able to find them, are free, or can be. A lapdance costs money. College students don't have money! Their parents buy them the iPods. It'll be a lot harder to explain the credit card charge at sadie's skin corral...
      • That's right, reply to the poor Christian man's innocent comment with a post about threesomes and lapdances. Betcha he's sinning in his heart right now just thinking about it. You've probably doomed an innocent Christian to hell, are you happy now?

        And for the record, a sandwich pretty much implies two guys. That's not what most guys picture when they think of threesomes.

        • You've probably doomed an innocent Christian to hell, are you happy now?

          Not at all. That's only a tiny fraction of my quota. Time to get cracking!

          And for the record, a sandwich pretty much implies two guys. That's not what most guys picture when they think of threesomes.

          No it doesn't. Though, you couldn't tell from the dictionary [reference.com]; "She was sandwiched in her airplane seat between two fat men" ... But seriously, a man can definitely be the filling in a sandwich, it's just not as much activity for th

      • I guess a lapdance would be expensive. Where do they find people small enough for that? They probably have to fly them in from tiny islands in the Pacific.

  • A new phrase. (Score:5, Funny)

    by gardyloo ( 512791 ) on Thursday June 08, 2006 @05:07PM (#15497718)
    "Free as in iPod"?!? I think not.

  • Tomarrows headline: (Score:5, Funny)

    by a_greer2005 ( 863926 ) on Thursday June 08, 2006 @05:07PM (#15497721)
    iPod better than sex; survey of virgins shows.

  • Oh crap! (Score:4, Funny)

    by larsoncc ( 461660 ) on Thursday June 08, 2006 @05:08PM (#15497726) Homepage
    I didn't realize this was a binary choice!

    I just bought an iPod! THE HUMANITY! Beer, I miss thee already!

    (heh)

  • Age factor? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by GillBates0 ( 664202 ) on Thursday June 08, 2006 @05:08PM (#15497727) Homepage Journal
    TFA doesn't mention the age groups of students that were surveyed.

    Barring underage drinking, it is more likely than not that students over 18 years would vote for beer, while iPod's would appeal to the younger agegroup as well. Infact early teenagers seem to be the target of their marketing campaigns, and people who're more likely to vote iPod over alcoholic beverages.

    Given the fact that most students in the country comprise of the 0-18 age-group, and a minority in the 19 and over age group, the results aren't surprising, and infact skewed.

    • All true, if this were a survey of ALL students no matter what educational level. However, this is a survey of college undergraduates, which generally are between 18-22.

      Again, most of which can't legally drink, but a lot less of a percentage than your post would indicate.
    • "Given the fact that most students in the country comprise of the 0-18 age-group"

      I thought collage was like uni... wouldn't that mean that people would go at 18 and be there untill 21? Also, because they can't legally drink then the "ooh... beer" thing wouldn't be there. besides did they ask if I would rather have one beer or an iPod (because I'd take the iPod) or was it whether you could never have one... because then I'd have to protect the beer...

      Well, I say I'd take the beer; it didn't say which
    • Here is real life, people under the drinking age are, I assure you, drinking. In fact most of them have been drinking since well before college.

      If anything I would expect the 18-year olds to vote a bit more heavily FOR beer, because it is a "forbidden pleasure" still. By 21 it's lost some of the lustre.

  • Statistics (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kesch ( 943326 ) on Thursday June 08, 2006 @05:08PM (#15497733)
    The margin of error is 2.3% so they are all really tied.

    Still whats better than jamming out with your iPod while surfinf Facebook and getting drunk?
  • Yeah, right. Which college do YOU go to?

    Frack, mine. Guess you have a point.

  • I dizagrea (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jambon ( 880922 ) on Thursday June 08, 2006 @05:10PM (#15497758) Journal
    Bere is waaay mor popoolre tnah podis! I heave noo idia wat ur talkn abowt ociffer....seeriuslee, man.

  • huh? (Score:4, Funny)

    by blackmonday ( 607916 ) on Thursday June 08, 2006 @05:10PM (#15497759) Homepage
    "...beer drinking and Facebook.com fought for the second place with 71% of popular votes."

    You might want to check your math, you drunk facebooking iPod dancing freaks!

    Im ny day we studied in college, humming along to an 8 track! And that's the way we liked it!

  • Flawed Survey (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mattwarden ( 699984 ) on Thursday June 08, 2006 @05:10PM (#15497760)

    Not everyone likes beer. The percentage is higher with college females. Why didn't they ask 'alcohol' instead of 'beer'?

  • It's best to cover all your bases. When you head out to your next class, take your iPod AND a 6-pack. Everyone will marvel at how hip you are. (Except for, maybe, your professor.)
    • (Except for, maybe, your professor.)
      Even him if he's like my sociology professor/debate coach who after our debate tournements kept us well-supplied with, um... iPods... or something like that. I won't comment on some of our ages at the time, but we were still young enough that we didn't realize yet how bad PBR tastes.

  • Budweiser beats Barry White everytime (Score:5, Funny)

    by JavaNPerl ( 70318 ) * on Thursday June 08, 2006 @05:18PM (#15497829)
    You can take the one listening to the 6th song on your slow jams playlist, I'll take a women on her 6th beer.
    Once again the education system fails us.

  • Why, those young punks.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mswope ( 242988 ) on Thursday June 08, 2006 @05:19PM (#15497835) Journal
    I remember when it took my two roommates and me to scrape together $6 to get a pitcher of cheap beer. If there was a $20 between us, we were drunk and proud of ... something...

    These kids nowadays with their $250 iPods... Sheesh! :-)
  • Is there a new t-shirt with all the various models of IPODS instead of brands of beer?

    Fear... soon the metric will not be Olympic pools of beer drank by college students, but rather Gigabytes or Terabytes of data (music) purchased from ITUNES by college students!

    Just another reaon to feel that college students these day are "lacking that quality education we enjoyed back in the day."

  • Something seems fishy... (Score:3, Funny)

    by tool462 ( 677306 ) on Thursday June 08, 2006 @05:38PM (#15497958)
    I question the validity of this survey. Wouldn't beer-drinking college students necessarily be underrepresented in this type of poll? It's totally not a statistically representative sample of college students if they asked these questions during daylight hours, and even worse, if they asked them before noon.
  • How can you have an article like this and not link Google Fight with iPod vs Beer [googlefight.com]? iPod wins 431,000,000 to 153,000,000!
    • That's only because if you have enough beer, you don't need a computer, and it wouldn't do you any good anyway.
    • How can you have an article like this and not link Google Fight with iPod vs Beer? iPod wins 431,000,000 to 153,000,000!

      Perhaps they avoid it because GoogleFight references are hack, even with the if-it's-a-meme-it's-a-funny /. crowd?

  • I mean, those who make beer their top priority would hardly be able to articulate this order of priorities. Or were available for polling, being drunk and all.
  • well, lemmee tell you somethin' missster.. all I know is that I have drunken waayy more beers than i-pods. so whose more pop-u-lahr now!?
  • well, beer isn't exactly a new phenomenon. it's like saying football games are not "in" on college campuses.
  • what happens when college kids have way too many iPods...
  • iPod plays great tunes and lousy video. Beer tastes like jock armpit. The only surprise is that it was such a close race.
  • I couldn't care less about iPods, beer or facebook, and I'm a University student. I therefore dub this survey bunk.

  • Probably... (Score:3, Funny)

    by catdevnull ( 531283 ) on Thursday June 08, 2006 @11:06PM (#15499799)
    They were probably drunk when they took the poll...

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