1,204,986 Votes Decided: What Is The Best Thing?
Dipublikasikan tanggal 5 Jun 2023
Sometimes, you regret asking a question. • Win your Ultimate Tech Bundle by entering Fasthosts’ Techie Test here: www.fasthosts.co.uk/tomscott
Thanks to Graham Haerther for the main audio mix, and for recovering the terrible sound in my echo-filled flat!
(For the folks asking: I'm not planning to release the ranked list -- partly because "ranked list of major world religions" sounds like the sort of thing that'll cause trouble, and partly because I can't guarantee there aren't some other nasty things still in the list. Apologies!)
00:00 Introduction
00:38 Every Thing
04:35 How To Rank Everything
05:45 What Is The Best Thing?
I'm at tomscott.com
on Twitter at tomscott
on Facebook at tomscott
and on Instagram as tomscottgo
Thanks to Graham Haerther for the main audio mix, and for recovering the terrible sound in my echo-filled flat!
(For the folks asking: I'm not planning to release the ranked list -- partly because "ranked list of major world religions" sounds like the sort of thing that'll cause trouble, and partly because I can't guarantee there aren't some other nasty things still in the list. Apologies!)
00:00 Introduction
00:38 Every Thing
04:35 How To Rank Everything
05:45 What Is The Best Thing?
I'm at tomscott.com
on Twitter at tomscott
on Facebook at tomscott
and on Instagram as tomscottgo
30:53
JUALAN ES CINCAU PAKAI FOOD TRUCK DI CHINA,OMG TAK DISANGKA SEMUANYA PADA SUKA🤩SHANTY DI CHINA
Ditonton 976 rb11:59
BUNDA ANTER LEIKA & LEXIE FOTO JADI MERMAID DI SKRATA 😱 PERTAMA KALI ADIK BAYI LEXIE BISA DUDUKDiena Fitri
Ditonton 717 rb18:11
Berawal dari Manusia Lemah Sampai Akhirnya Jadi Raja Duyung TerhebatTeguh Sugianto
Ditonton 256 rb12:46
I Asked 64,182 People About “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells”. Here's What I Found Out.Tom Scott
Ditonton 6 jt30:53
JUALAN ES CINCAU PAKAI FOOD TRUCK DI CHINA,OMG TAK DISANGKA SEMUANYA PADA SUKA🤩SHANTY DI CHINA
Ditonton 976 rb
Komentar: 16 504
Thanks to all the people who voted! The results were definitely not what I'd have predicted.
_6 hours ago_
Hi
Hi tom!
Eeee
Comment: *_Not a week ago_* Channel: *_Tom Scott_* Me: *_Wait. That's Illegal_* Hotel: *_Trivago_*
I like how some people might have seen air vs. pizza and been like, oof that's a toughie.
Lmaooo
"do i want to die in a few seconds but enjoy this pizza, or do i wanna live?" decisions, decisions..
No, that question has a clear winner
@MrSBS yea pizza
Pizza is horrible anyway
"Given the expected audience, it's no surprise that the #1 thing is..." "It's internet." "...sleep." "I need to get off the internet."
sleep is highly valued when you spend all of your time skipping it by being on the internet
i said internet as well bcs like,,, without the internet this poll wouldn't have existed
tw// mildly suggestive topics Friendly reminder, if it is at all possible in your current living space or when you have the time, energy, power, and other means to change it around so this is doable, that not having any computers/electronics in your bedroom, period, apparently helps a lot with making it a "sleep/love/masturbating" exclusive area, with nothing else to interrupt or disturb its explicit intended use. I also suppose you can try using computers/electronics for sexual matters in...another room just for...that activity, if you even have such a fancy and specific room, I sure don't, or use other places in the house when no one's around or others are asleep/out of sight enough, private places if possible to have/find them, even, and discreetly finish in and on your clothes, which can hopefully be washed later. Speaking from personal experience, the "no electronics in the bedroom" rule hasn't helped a whole lot, yet, as my sleep schedule is chaotic, nocturnal, and frustratingly difficult to control/direct, plus finding non-digital alarm clocks might be a hassle, I imagine, or may make you seem/look old/outdated, but I'm glad to at least be building one new positive habit recently that can serve me well, especially in the future if and when my sleep gets back to a healthy state. Even now, it's nice to have no, like, phone calls, conversations, virtual appointments...anything in there, though the last one may especially be hard for me someday soon to find a quiet, private room in the house for that. partial tl:dr It gives the bedroom a more "sacred space" vibe, if you can believe that, to leave electronics and computers out, if and when possible. That was a really long paragraph, huh? 😒
Repent to Jesus Christ!! “Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,” says the Lord, who has compassion on you.” Isaiah 54:10 NIV
hearing things like orgasms being number 69, sleeping being the best, and tom's hold on the bi community make me love the internet
There is no community. That's like saying there's an alcoholic community
@Pupper Gump Do you know what a community is?
@Калашніков Руслан Any group of people that live and work together. It severely pisses me off that people try to describe some aspect of an individual, like their race or preferences, as a "community", as if they're all the same. If you don't treat someone as an individual rather than a characteristic, you do not value them, and instead you further all aspects of segregation and the trouble that comes with it.
@Pupper Gump is the internet a community
@Pupper Gump if you don't want to be a part of a community, you don't have to, it doesn't change who you are
As a sleep-deprived bisexual English-speaking nerd myself, I consider this list to be extremely accurate.
hello fellow sleep-deprived bisexual english-speaking nerd
@Shackman there's three actually
the three musketeers
@草Shrimp44 we can start an army of fellow sleep-deprived bisexuals
@Shackman im all for this
It would be fascinating to see a bunch of creators from all different communities run the same poll to see how different sections of the internet compared to one another. Both the differences and similarities would be fun to speculate about.
Even better idea; seperate by countries. I'd love to see china
@E and at number one is, Xi Jinping, what a suprise
@BareMangus 😂😂 +20 social credits
Apparently none of these people have eaten a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos while getting some neck.
What would be more fascinating would be for Tom to have created two separate independent rankings - A and B. When a new user shows up on the website, randomly allocate them to either A or B. Then, at the end of the voting period, compare Poll A and Poll B's top 10 - that'd tell us if all of these were random, or of there's some trend to it.
It's interesting that the only physical object that makes it on the top ten list is pizza. Government: "You can have pizza *or* privacy, not both. Which do you choose?" Citizen: "Hrmmm..." *thinks for a while* Citizen: "I'll take the pizza."
Take my like and leave me alone.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary pizza, deserve neither liberty nor pizza." - Benjamin Franklin
@TooManyBrews Ah, but what if it's a choice between privacy and *ever having pizza again*?
pizza et circenses
Bread and circuses
"The brain is the best part of the body." -the brain
I'm surprised it wasn't another part of the body was voted the best part of the body!
@BryTee I guess the other part of the body you thought of has 2 "variants" and therefore split their votes.
I do like the spleen, though.
I think this "body part" may (for some) fall under the category "brain"
I like how we science nerds so firmly insist that space and time are one thing that we even put them in the same place.
I like to imagine there was one guy who got the options "Space" vs "Time" and could have decided it once and for all, but elected to just immediately turn off his phone instead. Maybe Stephen Hawking?
@Stephen Derry hes dead
@Nia Marwaha pffft linear thinkers
Arceus Legends tldr
@Nia Marwaha alive elsewhere?
“the bottom of the list is a bunch of nasty diseases and unpleasant concepts. and one of the twilight movies” as someone who likes twilight, fair enough
I hate-watched the twilight movies in the middle of the night (I quite liked the books at the time but had very low expectations for the movies) so I remember none of it - which one would that be do you think?
You can enjoy terrible things. I enjoy Jesus Christ : Vampire Hunter, so I can't judge anyone for movie tastes.
which one was it? :D I don't remember the movies, I think 4-1 could be the worst
@vxicepickxv Hahah, you must be kidding, aren't you?
I’m going out on a wing and saying it’s New Moon. While the other movies were honestly kind of terrible, New Moon is straight up boring
I'd love for Tom to periodically re-run this quiz for 5 hours at a time with the same data, perhaps annually. Eventually he could take the top 10 results from every session, pit those against each other to find his audiences ultimate best thing.
The biggest problem with something like that is when you start predictably repeating something like this, eventually someone will be ready with a bot to automate and control the results.
@HamsterFromAbove that is a fair point. I just didn't have it in me to think about someone actively ruining some perfectly good data collection. 😒
Imagine if he’d used the full database, and the best thing turned out to be “No label defined”
Or some random location
randomly: pillow
@loozis That's not that random!
@Minimal Grammar depends very much on your point of view buddy
@loozis I-- What?
I LOVE that Space and Time got the exact same number of votes. That's poetic.
pizza. flowers. bisexuality. wind turbines. long ago, the four nations lived in harmony. then everything changed when tom scott attacked
bold of you to assume tom scott isn't the avatar himself
@VeryTastySoup Why?
@VeryTastySoup I hate homophobes
@VeryTastySoup ok
No one has seen a wind turbine in 100 years. We thought they were extinct.
Pizza > Privacy makes sense, actually, cause you normally order pizza and have to give up a bit of privacy when the delivery person sees in your front door or window.
this is not privacy unless you go out face entirely covered
Choosing to not have privacy for life or not have pizza on the other hand...
We should replace human rights to privacy with human right to pizza
law equivalent exchange
💀💀
The fact that space and time share the exact same statistic is just mind-bendingly hilarious
I have to agree
well they are kinda the same thing
I'd love to see something like this, but hosted perpetually with visable live results and anaylsis of results over time, so we can see how things change in popularity over the years and track where large cultural shifts occur.
nice pfp
@RichConnerGMN what is the pfp?
Well the reason he didn’t do that is because he didn’t want people writing code to break it and rig things
Obviously it’s very different, but Google Trends is a similar concept.
@Android It stands for ProFile Picture. For example, your pfp is a blue android from Melon Playground. If you meant what the original poster's profile picture is, I think it's just a drawing they made since I can't find an original source online.
An audience of sleep deprived, bisexual, pizza-loving nerds with a weird appreciation for gravity, and an amazing sense of humor (#69 can confirm)...checks all my boxes. I feel compelled to subscribe now...
Me too, but shouldn't pizza have been higher on the list? Have fun!
Heterosexuality: *loses 50 percent of its match ups* Bisexuality: *is only second to doctors* Me: *I love democracy*
@kistertheartist I love democracy
me except instead of Bi, lesbian
Someone needs to do this with a larger group of people, and I want to be part of it this time.
true
And without excluding groups of people from the database so we can see which race is the best
Conclusions about the viewers: -nerds -tired -bisexual -eats like a child -really hates lyme disease -needs a hug
👍👍
yep, sounds about right, now can you be quiet, I'm trying to get to sleep.
When you live in a place with alot of deer and ticks, you tend to hate lyme disease.
all a little gay inside
Very accurate
"someone out there that really really doesn't like pipe organs" - Tom Scott 2020
@RWBHere eh, some of them do my head in... but then I was all but born on an organ bench and have spent most of my life around and often inside them.
@Richard Harrold dafuq? what kinda of Pianist parents you got?
@Janitor Wilbur my mum is a lifelong working musician, pianist, organist and teacher of both, my dad a choral singer, bellringer (that's how he met my mother) and musicians' agent... the organ which caused my parents to meet is one of my least favourites.
We need a site like this that stays up where you can view the rankings in real-time
omg YES!!
Absolutely
bots :(
It would get botted to hell
I like the way you phrased your conclusion. "This statistic reveals something about the group of people who watch your video". Thats true. Nothing more, nothing less.
That's Tom Scott for you. He makes every attempt to be aggressively accurate. Makes every attempt to tell his audience exactly what the data says, not just what would be easy or convenient to pretend it says.
Okay MomTom, I know you did not just give my insomniatic ass a 10 minute talk about the best things only to end on Sleep being number 1 as a way to tell me to stop watching ID-tv in bed at 4AM and finally go to sleep. Tell me you did not just do that.
momtom?
@Hank J. Wimbleton That joke had momentom.
@Hank J. Wimbleton Mom Scott
@Felix Tuchinsky damn youuuu/lh
@joshuabarbeau9159 same
You should repeat this every 5 years and note any trends and changes over time. It'd be really cool to see what changes and what stays the same over time
“The best part of the body... the brain” The brain voting for itself is very wholesome
basically the Obama giving himself a medal meme
Also, electricity voting for electricity. Maybe no human even took the poll at all.
Biased much?
But also entirely self-serving.
The only organ to name itself
As an aspiring video editor, I don't know why, but seeing editors show the software they are working in and literally making an edit in the video is my favorite thing I see on this website as far as editing goes.
Coming back after a year, I really really like this experiment. I really wish that there could be a universally ran thing like this but unfortunately it would likely just encourage trolls to break it and would naturally be limited by how developed the society of those taking part is. I had the idea of governments coming together and asking 'what is the best thing' on censuses etc. with all the methods they have in place for that, but I also don't know if censuses are a worldwide thing, and they sound like something exclusively for developed countries. It would also not lead to as accurate of a ranking, since certain things are more present in our minds and we wouldn't necessarily rate them higher, but would put them down (this also explains why things like gravity won in this poll, since no one would write it as an answer, but when compared to other things they would say it's better just because they're indifferent to the other thing but appreciate the necessity of gravity etc. It may be cool just doing this with a less online but wider group. You may also need to conduct it as a single entry so it can be done without needing a computer. Like put it to multiple info gathering methods, conduct IRL surveys, online polling, use local councils as mediators to get an outreach of people that are probably still 'uncool' but not quite nerds, as well as other internet personalities too. Gather it all into a huge data pool and see how the results compare to this one.
I guess one solution would be to get something like an atm machine or arcade cabinet and put the program in there, and then leave it on the side of a busy street in some big city.
I think censuses (or should that be censi!?) are fairly widespread around the world, but you're assuming that they can't be trolled. They can, as was proved in the UK a few years ago when a small but significant proportion of the population, when asked about their religion, put down Jedi.
A while ago I was working on a project that was esentialy this but in discord bot form. If I ever get around to it (zero promises) I might make it a website
@Atanaa You're suggesting people that put Jedi as a religion are trolling?
it's been 2 years but every time I think of "dog go fishing" I laugh incredibly hard, what a thing to happen
Love isn't in the top 100, yes extremely online nerds. Can relate
or their Aromantics
women and extremely online nerds just dont mix
@FungiCaptain **vanishs**
Seattle kraken
or bots, it's really easy to set a bot for his website
You should run this every year and then consolidate that data, I think it would be really interesting 😊
y'all like "tom scott calling out the sleep-deprived bisexual nerds" forgetting that you guys voted for this. you called yourself out.
well i didn't vote for it so as a bisexual sleep-deprived nerd i AM getting called out
@James Gaming Same
what if i am a bisexual sleep deprived nerd
Hey is your profile picture a pie chart of a pyramid
Sleep-deprived bisexual nerds represent!
i never expected sleep to be at the top but the moment it appeared, it made so much sense and looked incredibly wholsome
Nerd question: Why is “creativity” at 83.6 ranked below “logic” at 83.2?
Cause it's only logic that logic should win
Because of this 5:40
Cuz nerds.
Because 0.4 didn't like logic nor did they use it.
I would have expected the top 10 to be something like: Air, food, water, sex, rest, play, compassion, contentedness, peace, escape, nothing.
I like how shelter and family isn't on this list.
arrogant of you to assume food instead of pizza
@No One Not arrogant, but sensible.
Please make a poll 2.0 of this it would be interesting to see how it changed over time.
i am also surprised gravity is so high up. its really not doing its job
ok, that was funny.
"I'm a privacy advocate!" "I'll give you a slice of pizza in exchange for your email password." "Deal!"
My password is 8 characters long, so I demand 8 slices ...
Hagen von Eitzen people with long passwords will never have to starve again
If I offer a new mattress instead, there's no way they'll turn me down!
@Hagen von Eitzen my password is 26 characters long, I demand 26 slices of pizza
@Hagen von Eitzen one pizza coming up!!
This somehow feels like the most profound video you've made. It's like a summary of humanity's (or this audience's) psyche.
This video is the symbol of humanity in a whole. We understand the things that we need and I'm very happy to see them at the very top. I'm going to go cry. Thanks to you all. *May the world be with you*
I would love to see the list of items that got in "circles". That when matched against each other, they form a circle of victory/defeat; i.e., rock paper scissors.
This is the type of content we love Tom for. Fun, informative and just a little bit nonsensical
Tom Scott's videos are so well-written and well-researched. Thanks a lot!
"What's your favorite thing?" Hexagons. Hexagons are the bestagons.
take my like and leave
*yes* _you understand_
TRUE
That and hexa-flexa-perplexagons.
CGP grey fans here Also don’t forget toroidal polyhedrons and octagons
Judging by the thumbnail, it's a hard guess between Pizza, Bees, Bisexuality, and Wind Turbines They're all such good picks.
A good solution to the issue that caused privacy to be below pizza would be to take the top 100 or so things and re run them through the poll, that way they are more likely to be compared to each other like pizza being compared to privacy would be significantly more likely
I'd really like to see this Done again but with a much wider spread like 10000000 plus participants see how much different the results would be
I wanted to show this to mom when I got home from work. But while waiting to show it to her I took a nap and was out half the night. I finally woke up at like 8, ate dinner and finally got around to showing it to her and….the answer was right in front of me the entire time. The very thing I was doing.
I thinkTom should make this poll available to other big youtubers. I think the results would be telling/interesting of the demographics of different audiences.
“Orgasm was rated #69” Everything about this poll is amazing.
that was it should be
Nice
So the poll was actually the number 1 best thing
Nice
Nice
i would like to see a long term web-game version of this
i feel like this would be fantastic to try among many other groups as well to see the similarities. some of the things that just generally bring the human race together
9:33 We are sleep depreived nerds who like pizza and not many of us are straight.
That's ..... That's accurate..
Yep
Yup
yep
Hm, that is scarily accurate.
this was actually really interesting, i would love to see more of this.
Fun to revisit this! I thought this predated the pandemic actually, so all of those caveats and the specific mention of coronavirus kinda surprised me but still fun! Just by it’s very nature this lends itself to all sorts of fun. The way you’ve written it up is great. Bisexuality being just below doctors, orgasm being 69th etc. lucky, but also, however this had panned out I’m sure it would have been full of fun things to note. I assumed this would have been a fun script to right (unless it was just totally overwhelming)
Nobody is talking about how orgasm is in 69th place and space and time has the exact same amount of EVERYTHING
Perfectly balanced as all things should be.
Nerds at work.
Einstein was right, space and time was the same thing afterall.
YESSS, I FOUND THE ANSWER I WAS LOOKING FOR 42 YEARS
I’d like this, but it has 669 likes and I can’t mess that up
Lyme Disease really is the worst. I've had it, it caused Bell's Palsy, and I'm glad I recovered from both.
I would love to see this again, like, updated. And if one spent way too much time making it, even function like an app possibly? I'd play it on the bus all the time.
I'd love to see this run every year or two just to see how things change
You should make another video of this, same things, same way of everything. It be cool to see how much people who watch these videos have changed.
Loved the metaphor at 3:14 - 3:33 Great work Tom
"so, what have we learned from this video?" "the majority of toms audience is bisexual"
@Pebblesbytheriver Go outside and touch some grass buddy
@roofogato what did they say?
@Orpheus i forget, sorry
I feel called out
I’d love to see a poll that lets people enter the answer of their choice and then aggregates similar answers
It would be interesting if you made one poll per category (or at least the categories with most things in them)
I've never agreed with a ranking so thoroughly
I think i am glad that this happened during the pandemic. It is quite interesting and would have gotten a live talk instead of a vid. Unfortunately Live talks are usually much harder to find online if uploaded at all.
It would be interesting to re run this poll now, and see how much our priorities/likes have changed in a year!
I got "Guillotine" vs "Monarch" when I tried the poll. Real France moment
The Committee of Public Safety hopes you made the right choice, Citizen Jan'ari-asha...
*the origami king wave battle music intensifies*
Nice
You win
Its amazing that Space and Time got the same scores since they are equally as important in physics
Maybe a good idea, take the top 100 or top 50 things and run the poll on those again, leave it for a week or so to reach more people and see how that works out ?
For some reason a simple(kinda) video about the best thing in the world, has made me laugh more than most things on ID-tv as of late. Loved this. Could not contain myself when privacy came below pizza
Would you consider doing this again but either give people just those ten to pick from and run the results (or have them pick which order those things are 'best') or run something similar omitting 'obvious' best things like air/water/being alive, etc?
I wonder what the results would have been if it was presented as a pair of items that people have to select between, and arrive at the best thing by elimination.
I’d like to imagine everyone’s collective internet hive mind subconsciously balanced the win and losses for “orgasm” to be 69th place
*Whip noise _NAIIIIIIIIIIICCCCE_
Nice.
Noice
Additionally the collective consciousness of nerds unify space and time
Nice
Space and Time having the exact same matchup and percent is kinda awesome I've gotta say :D
What we need is not just random matchups, but matchups between things that have a similar score, so you can create an Elo systeem.
Would you mind running this again after the pandemic is over? I'm curious how things would change
I’m blown away by some of these coincidences. I watched the part where sleep is revealed to have been ranked as the best thing just as I’m finishing an all-nighter that I pulled for no reason, the orgasm was ranked 69th, and time and space ranked exactly the same out of exactly the same number of contests. Wild
It's a pity you didn't keep the pairwise data... I bet there would have been some interesting stuff to discover in that. Could also ask questions like "was there a condercet winner?" :) Might also have been nice to always present least-voted-on items to people (randomly selecting from all items with fewer votes than the most-voted-on item), to make sure everything got seen a similar number of times. Maybe also pair up things that are doing similarly, to get specific comparative rankings between both-good or both-bad things.
Tom Scotts audience, sleepy, bisexual, and deeply concerned about the earth's magnetic fields.
so a cartoon character or superhero with those traits would be very popular among this group of likely nerds. Marvel, DC, you have the formula for a hit.
dont forget the pizza
My bad. Half gay
I did not know it was possible to be this deceased
"i removed all listings for groups of people because.. yikes" good move there tom
I’m not sure if anyone noticed but number 6 and 7 should be switched, number 6 is 83.2% and number 7 is 83.6% which obviously is higher
see 5:40
I wonder what ranking Mathematics achieved? 😂
Thanks Tom, no idea why I missed this one earlier but this is -the best video!-
This is the most oddly wholesome video I have ever watched. Good job, Tom
Would love to see this done again but narrowed to actual tangible things existing outside our bodies. (Stuff you can hold etc.) I know the technical definition of "thing" might include functions like "sleep" but that's not really how I/most people I know use the word "thing"...
Space 80% - Time 80% Perfectly balanced as all things should be.
Well, as Albert Einstein once said, space and time *are* the same thing
r/expectedthanos
I wonder if there were any space vs time match ups...
Guys that math doesn’t add up
@Hiro Tanaka space vs time ctrl + alt + delete... balance must be maintained.
Love that my thirst thought of the best thing was indeed sleep and yet I don't get enough of it
Very good video! I wish I had been there for the voting!
Imagine aliens trying to befriend the human race using this list...
A follow up video where you do the same poll on the top 200 would be interesting to see how it changes the outcome.
It's not even about the people who watch your videos. It's voted by the people who follow you on twitter and follow it actively enough to know about this vote and participate. Because I certainly watch all your videos but only ever know about those votes AFTER it's already done because I learn about it in the "result" video you're making and neither follow you on twitter nor look at twitter more than maybe once or twice a day and even then I am not looking carefully at everything so I would probably still miss that. Some is probably true for a LOT of your audience as well ^^
this is literally the ultimate tier list for everything ever.
yes according to _extremely online english speaking nerds_
@melted yakky stick Thats great, because extremely online nerds like us can relate to it.
It is Howard from fresh meats wet dream
quite literally not everything, a couple million of things that definitely exist were removed
This video could actually be done again honestly, it'd be interesting to monitor the changes if any. Maybe make it an annual thing
This channel is underrated🧐I discovered this channel a few hours ago, great content😊
I feel like the methodology, which obviously was already keeping track of appearances, should always have shown the items with the least appearances. And, probably been mad to make sure that they can't appear next to the same item twice in a row.
Honestly revisiting this but leaving it up for like a month or so I think would be quite fascinating.
It would be interesting to see this done again now that the pandemic is wrapped up
“Something I didn’t expect to be so high, gravity.” I see what you did there
i guess people quickly “gravitated” to it
@Prehistory Da Dum Pshhhhh
@Prehistory "Do you believe in 'Gravity'? That there's a reason two people meet?"
@Prehistory *ba dum tsss*
@Maxine Senior i can’t escape it
I'd love to see Tom Scott on Taskmaster
I love how space and time is ranked equally.