Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon
Buds, buds, buds, buds!
After working on a data piece analyzing everything The Verge has ever written, I thought it might be fun to look at some other Verge data to see what I could find.
Becca Farsace is one of the best sports we have on our team here, and she also has some of the most distinctive speech patterns — and catchphrases — so I asked her if she would let me dive into the data of her words.
Her Slack response: “Wowee… I’m terrified, but go for it!”
We all have a tendency to use the same vocabulary and phrases from day to day — it’s a part of what makes us who we are, of course. So I pulled the transcripts of every video Becca has hosted on our YouTube channel (over 30!) to get an impression of her speech patterns. A few videos didn’t have transcripts, and I didn’t include videos where she was only a guest for ease of analysis.
After collecting the raw transcripts and analyzing them, I took out some common words, such as “a,” “the,” “and,” “I,” and so on, and came away with some interesting findings.
You can view the original version here.
In the chart above, you can see Becca’s top words across all videos she’s ever hosted. No surprise: “buds” is the top word with nearly 300 uses, followed by “really” and “camera.” “Buds” is a common term of endearment from Becca, referring to us the viewer, but it also reinforces what we already know: that Becca covers a ton of earbuds.
You can view the original version here.
By looking at Becca’s top words per video, we can see how her language shifts from video to video — generally to highlight the topic being discussed. Again, “buds” (highlighted in pink) takes the top spot here.
The use of “buds” is increasing over time, too. Is this due to an ever-growing number of “buds” named products she reviews or a deeper personal connection with her audience?
Mostly, it seems to align with what she’s covering. They can be broken down into five buckets: action cameras, cameras, earbuds, phones, and an assorted bucket of everything else.
Action Cameras, with six videos, didn’t have any particular word or phrase stand out.
Cameras had “camera” as the top word three videos out of a total of five.
Earbuds had “buds” as the top word in nine out of 10 videos.
Phones, with three videos, had “Pixel” or “Pixel / iPhone” in two videos as the top word.
In the Other category, the top word seemed to match the topic of the video, with an even spread over five videos of “AI,” “fiber,” “video,” “board,” and “bike.”
The data suggests that Becca’s speech most closely mirrors the topic she’s covering in each video, rather than being skewed by a favored catchphrase. Though it still goes without saying: Becca says buds a lot.
“In my defense, ‘buds’ is a product category I cover, but it is also a part of my everyday language,” Becca told me. “Is it time that changes? Maybe I’ll let the buds decide.”