According To Some App You’ve Never Heard Of, Pennsylvanians Really Know How To Drink
Okay, so I don’t know where this came from originally (and I don’t really care), but over the weekend, the good folks over at Kitchenette posted a piece quoting data gathered by the “drinking app BARTRENDr” which showed that the most popular liquor in a SHOCKING number of U.S. states was Fireball. Or Jack Daniels. And I want to make two things clear here. First, for the duration of this post, people who claim Jack Daniels as their most favoritest ever spirit do not have to live in shame because, for once, there are other people out there worse than you (those who prefer Fireball).
Second, only two states in our whole glorious union came back with the correct answer. When polled as to the most popular liquor, these two champions of drinking, these testaments to good taste and breeding, answered, “Why Jameson Irish whiskey, of course. Why would we drink anything else?” Indiana was one of these bastions of class and refinement. Can you guess what the other one was?
It was Pennsylvania! Which means that only we and the Indianoids know what we’re doing when we step up to the bar and all the rest of you garbage people living in your garbage states are just a bunch of shameless rubes and sorority girls who’ve been seduced by the slick marketing campaign of a Canadian schnapps manufacturer (because that’s what Fireball “Whisky” really is) hoping to unload a billion gallons of unloved, cinnamon-flavored bad-decision-juice into the American market.
Okay, not all of you. But seriously, a LOT of you. Because in 15 states (everywhere from Arkansas to New Hampshire), Fireball is the most popular liquor around (again, according to data collected by this app that no one here has ever heard of). Another 15 went for Jack Daniels (which, again, for the duration of this post, is now only the second-worst choice). And then there were the serious outliers, like Idaho (a three-way tie between Fireball, Captain Morgan and Jagermeister–the goddamn trifecta of bad Friday night lifestyle choices) or Oregon, which went Jose Cuervo, or South Carolina, where the most popular spirit is George Dickel Tennessee whiskey.
I’m honestly not sure what conclusions I ought to draw from this data. On the one hand, the accounting of top spirits seems so strange and skewed and random that I have to think there was some kind of fault or bias in the gathering or charting process. But to claim that would be saying I don’t trust BARTRENDr, “Your personal, private, social network for going out, staying out and enjoying social drinking with old and new drinking buddies.” And frankly, if we can’t trust the demographic and purchasing data harvested and regurgitated by random social media apps, then who can we trust? To reject this incisive survey is to reject the whole capitalist experiment, and I don’t know about you hippies, but I’m not ready to go live in a yurt somewhere, eating quinoa and drinking nothing but fermented kale squeezins once our system finally breaks down entirely.
Alternately, we could believe the national drinking model presented by BARTRENDr and accept that we, as Philadelphians, are just better than everyone else (except Indianites) on the basis of what we choose to drink when we go out (the only true judge of any individual’s character). We can believe that the Canadian schnapps pushers from Sazerac (who, I should add, have reported a billion-percent jump in sales of Fireball, from $1.9 million in U.S, sales in 2011 to $61 million in sales in 2013, according to that perfect font of wisdom, Wikipedia) have bamboozled 15 of our 50 states into believing that drinking Fireball is functionally different than chasing a mouthful of Red Hots with a shot of gas station nail polish remover, and that the residents of those states are lost to us. We can clutch our Jack Daniels-loving brethern close, wrap our arms around those Virginians who love Grey Goose and the Washingtonians with their Patron, and just try to ride out this long national nightmare.
I know what I choose. And if you need me, I’ll be right here at my desk, bottle of Jameson in hand, doing my best to add just one more notch to the consumer data standing between us and utter alcoholic oblivion.
You’re welcome, America.
The Most Popular Liquor In Every State [A chart]