So who are the people in your neighborhood?

Via “Laura”:http://apartment11d.blogspot.com/2003_09_01_apartment11d_archive.html#106333241625339719 at _Apartment 11D_ comes this fascinating “website”:http://cluster1.claritas.com/MyBestSegments/Default.jsp?ID=20. Enter your zipcode, and you can find out which cheesy and facile marketing categories inhabit your neighborhood. Are you going through difficult times along with other Hard Years Sustaining Families, or hanging out with hip and happening Successful Singles? Details also provided on the likely purchasing habits of your neighbours (‘Struggling Metro Mixes’ are likely to buy jewelry, and own more than four televisions). You could waste hours if you’re not careful.

Neal Stephenson and his uncle had a lot of fun with these kinds of marketing labels in their pseudonymously written _Interface_ (purportedly written by ‘Stephen Bury’). Among the subcategories that Interface‘s crazed political-demographic operatives identify in their efforts to manipulate the American voting public are:

* Mid-American Knick-Knack Queens
* Post-Confederate Gravy Eaters
* Frosty-Haired Coupon Snippers
* Mall-Hopping Corporate Concubines
* Debt-Hounded Wage Slaves
* Trade School Metal Heads
* Depression-Haunted Can Stackers

By their labels shall ye know them.