How we self-identify and relate to other people has increasingly become based on the products we purchase. The Times has created interactive maps for twelve metropolitan areas that allow you to see the Netflix rental habits within that city based on 100 movie titles. The resulting colorful maps are telling examples of how demographics are distributed across these cities. For example, “Tyler Perry’s The Family That Preys” and “Milk” were popular exactly where the other wasn’t. A crucial flaw to this mapping system is that we are not shown how many Netflix users live in each ZIP code. Presumably, areas with higher disposable incomes were more accurately mapped by this system.
