Power laws in the wild

A lot do a little and a little do a lot – and a reminder that averages are often meaningless.

OnlyFans pays out $7 billion to its content creators, but the split is far from even. As Tom Hollands notes, the top 1% of accounts make 33% of all the money and the top 10% of accounts make 73% of all the money.

1% of Reddit communities start 74% of all conflicts. As Ethan Decker puts it, “most people, most of the time, are mostly good.” It’s also a reminder that opinions on social media don’t reflect the general population.

Big supermarkets sell over 40,000 products, but they’re not made the same: the top 300 account for 25% of sales. (If you’re interested, bananas and milk are usually bought most often)

97% of tweets come from one quarter of all accounts.

The richest tenth of UK households holds over 40% of wealth (though income is distributed more evenly).

Across all types of video watching, some people watch a lot and a lot watch a little.

On YouTube, fame is not the norm: a tiny proportion of channels (<1%) have more than a million subscribers.