Why in God’s Name Do You People Want to Be Quarantined with Joe Exotic?

Ranker data says that our readers know Joe Exotic is a bad person — but that doesn’t stop them from wishing they could spend a few months in quarantine with him.

Would you want to spend two or three months with a gun-toting zookeeper who has 18 federal convictions, two husbands, and a genital piercing? How about a former drug lord accused of dismembering a federal agent? If you answered “no” to either of these questions, then congratulations: you’re more normal than most of our readers!

If you haven’t guessed yet, we’re talking about Tiger King, a new Netflix show about extravagant animal collector and zoo owner Joe Exotic. It’s an insane true crime documentary, covering America’s illegal tiger trade, several sex cults, and multiple alleged murder plots. And after several consecutive weeks of quarantining, it looks like the audience for this crazy show is going a little crazy itself.

Don’t believe us? Take a look at the results of these two polls we took of Tiger King fans in recent weeks: one poll that asked “Who Is The Worst Person On Tiger King,” and another that wondered “Which Person on Tiger King Would You Want To Be In Quarantine With?”

You’d expect a scatterplot like this to trend upward: the better you think a person is, the more likely it is that you’d pick them to quarantine with. That seems to hold true with the lower-left quadrant of this scatter plot, which holds the documentary subjects considered by Ranker readers to be both bad people and bad potential quarantine partners (though Doc Antle is a lot further right than you might expect). Same for the upper-right quadrant, which features Saff, John Reinke, Barbara “Bala” Fisher, and others that readers consider to be both good quarantine buddies and good people generally.

But what’s more surprising are the other two quadrants. The lower-right section is filled with people that readers think are somewhere between morally “sketchy” and just plain “bad,” like reality TV producer Rick Kirkham, former drug kingpin Mario Tabraue, and Joe Exotic himself. All those same people are also pretty high on the list of people with whom readers would willingly spend months at a time. It’s one thing to find Joe Exotic interesting or exciting, but are you guys really ready for 12 weeks of this guy shooting Tannerite in your backyard, or cooking expired meat for dinner?

On the other side of that coin (the upper-left quadrant) are morally good people that Ranker readers would rather not spend quality quarantine time with, like Joe Exotic’s mom, his bodyguard Marc Thompson, and the show’s creator, Eric Goode. These people might not be the most exciting on the show, but you’d think that if you had to isolate yourself with anyone, the more boring that person, the better. 

What’s up with our readers’ strange choices in quarantine bedfellows? It could be the fact that isolation is making us crave any kind of excitement — even if it results in the loss of an arm or a few legs.

These stories are crafted using Ranker Insights, which takes over one billion votes cast on Ranker.com and converts them into actionable psychographics about pop culture fans across the world. To learn more about how our Ranker Insights can be customized to serve your business needs, visit insights.ranker.com, or email us at insights@ranker.com.