An interview with Instagram’s @bachelordata, Bachelor Nation’s favorite data scientist

Welcome to Small Talk, a series where we catch up with the internet’s favorite Extremely Online individuals offline.

If you watch the Bachelor franchise with any regularity, you know there’s a lot of talk about being there For The Right Reasons. While people are supposed to go on the national reality TV show to find love, season after season we see contestants who hog up screen time with manufactured drama, not-so-stealthily try to further their careers, and show more interest in receiving fame than receiving roses. 

As each season ticks on, people are kicked off the show — their hopes of finding love or fame are long forgotten — as others begin racking up followers and fans. And there’s one person who tracks the contestant’s social media growth and how that interacts with their time on screen, whether they’re there for the Right Reasons or not.

Suzana Somers started Bachelor Data as a way to teach herself Excel and data visualization, embracing the reality TV show she already loved. Over the years her casual effort turned into a truly impressive catalog of the show. She tracks everything from dress colors and firework dates to the screen time of each contestant, which has helped shed light on diversity issues in the franchise. 

In an effort to find out how she does it, I called her to chat about her process, the show’s villains, and if she’d ever go on Bachelor in Paradise herself.

Mashable: When did you start the account?

Suzana Somers: So my Instagram account, I started it February of 2020, so just a few weeks before the world shut down. But I didn’t actually start actively posting on it until Fall 2020, just because when the world shut down, my job got too hectic. So it’s only been about a year.

What’s your job outside of doing bachelor data?

I am a technology director for a K-12 school district, so I work in public education.

What made you start the account?

I had originally started this project back in December 2018 as a way for me to learn how to use Excel. I had just been promoted to technology director and there were so many people in my school district that were expecting that I was this Excel wizard, and I really didn’t know how to use it. And I tried to do a ton of courses online and I just found them so boring that I decided to start collecting Instagram follower counts on Colton’s women just a few weeks before the season started. And I posted about it on Reddit as a way to just learn how to use spreadsheets and how to show data. And then in February of 2020, I started the Instagram account as a way to really push myself a little bit more with data visualization and how to show data in a visual way quickly and get my story across.

What’s your favorite season?

I would say probably a tie between Hannah Brown and Peter’s season, but I think it’s more because of the data around it and how just crazy the Instagram follower growth was those seasons that it was just a blast to analyze.

Alright, the Hannah Brown one doesn’t surprise me, but the Peter one surprises me. You loved that season?

If we’re talking about seasons that I loved the lead or the contestants, it’s a different story, but with Peter’s season, we had Maddie Pruitt and Hannah Brown. And then with Hannah’s season, we had Tyler C vs. Jed, which was so interesting to analyze because of the spoilers and then spoilers changed in the middle of the season. And then seeing Tyler’s growth just obliterate anybody else. And then seeing Jed just not grow after the rumors about him with somebody at home. I really enjoy seasons that give me unique data to analyze, because with spoilers out there, it’s really nice to have a season that you don’t expect something coming, so you can see what happens with the data.

What’s surprised you the most over the past year and a half that you’ve been collecting all of this?

My first surprising trend that I found was back on Colton season. I started collecting Instagram follower counts and every week you would see who would get the most followers. And it normally had something to do with who had a one-on-one date or who had a big storyline if they were on a group date. And you would see these spikes every week, or like who came the most. And it was this bright spot in the data. And Tayshia [Adams] was my first interesting trend that stuck out to me because when she got a one-on-one date, she didn’t stick out in the data. And I think that’s when I started to notice that the data would not only be this, ‘Oh, let’s see who’s gaining the most followers.’ It would also start to find some of the inequities in growth around contestants and their race. I think that has been one of the more interesting trends that you just can’t ignore every season. But in the most recent season of Bachelor in Paradise, I think this last week has been absolutely fascinating to see the fallout of people going on this show to openly talk about followers. I think that has been a very interesting trend to see how viewers react to it. Right.

That reminds me of this last season of the Bachelorette, right? What have you learned from a data perspective?

Aside from mastering Excel and Google sheets now, which is a place I never thought I’d be in coming from a place where I was so scared of it, I would say the ability to tell really powerful stories when I didn’t realize that this many people would be this interested in data. And through this process, as somebody who has no background in being a data scientist or any type of degree like that, I’ve now learned data’s everywhere in every job in every industry. And when it’s presented in a way that’s fun and engaging for people, it’s amazing how many conversations it can start. I think that’s the biggest thing for me.

How do you clock Instagram followers? Do you check it daily? Do you use like a scraper, a third-party app?

We used to use a web scraper. When this all first started, though, the first season I collected by hand. And then some fantastic people on Reddit helped me get set up with a web scraper, but then Instagram started to block those because they changed their terms of use. So, long story short, we are back to hand collecting it because I know that there are third party services that will report on it, but they don’t report it consistently at the same time every day. So we really like to have data every night at 8:00 p.m. ET, when the episode starts on the East Coast. If I go all the way back to Colton season, I know that all that data is every night at 8:00 p.m. ET. And it still is to this day. So I know if I’m looking at a 24 hour growth period, I know that it’s actually 24 hours. So yes, we manually open every single profile, which is a lot right now for Bachelor in Paradise.

Right, because you want to be able to track how the followers change during the episode.

Yeah. And I know there’s some third party apps that I’ve actually looked into, but when I reach out to them, they all say the same thing where they can’t guarantee their data is pulled at the same time. And it could be anywhere between midnight to midnight. So if it’s pulled at 7:00 p.m. one night, and then the next day at 3:00 a.m., that’s not a full day.

How many people are helping you?

So I have two people that help me now. One of them helps with [pulling follower counts from] Instagram, especially because sometimes I have work things that run late or I’m just not at home. And I have a person who helps me with pulling screen time data.

For the screen time data, I’m imagining a PE coach in high school with like a start and stop at the end of the mile.

I love how that traumatizes us all.

The great equalizer! How do you actually track it?

It’s similar to that. We obviously use a spreadsheet to collect the data, but we use Amazon video and we collect the timestamp every time it changes who’s featured on the screen. So it is pretty manual. We don’t have a stopwatch, but our spreadsheet does the work of the stopwatch for us. And it can take us for Bachelor and Bachelorette, it can take anywhere from three to four hours, but for Bachelor in Paradise, it’s been taking us easily, like five to six hours per episode.

That’s a full second job.

And that’s why I am so grateful to have somebody else on board now.

I am sure.

I have a family member that helps. And then I have a friend that helps who also is super into the show. I actually share the revenue now. So one of them is paid, the person who helps with screen time, and I’m so, so grateful to be able to have her just because the amount of work is just not sustainable for one person.

What’s your favorite thing to track?

I think it’s the cross section between Instagram followers and screen time. I think the real power is when you combine those to have accurate data on people who are getting a lot of screen time and not growing versus people who are also getting a lot of screen time and growing. So you can see who’s the favorites and people who, it doesn’t matter how much screen time they get, they’re just not growing.

It comes down to race and storyline.

Do you extrapolate from that at all? Are there any strong other trends that might make you believe that there are certain reasons why some people aren’t getting the same follower increase?

One thousand percent it comes down to race and storyline. If you look at two people who are getting a similar storyline, when it comes to race, the people who are white typically get more followers than people of color. But then when it comes down to storylines, it’s really interesting to see how people react to villains. Whereas a few years ago, like Colton’s season, you’d see some villains, like Demi for example. They get a ton of followers, but now we’re seeing Demi’s not gaining a lot of followers. We’re seeing some of the villains this season, like Brandon and Piper, an easy one, but throughout the season of Bachelor in Paradise, if you have gotten a villain storyline, you are not growing at all. So I think it’s really interesting. And then people who get typically romantic storylines, you know, if you’re looking at a Bachelor season like Michael [Allio], or Abigail got the underdog storyline. You’ll see them grow a lot. But over the last year, year and a half, we’re starting to see that if you’re involved in drama, you’re really not going to grow anymore.

Why do you think that’s changed?

I was thinking about that too because we saw villains grow before the pandemic and then we had a period where we didn’t have any bachelor, no bachelorette, the world was shut down. And then it seems like ever since it’s come back, the villains just won’t grow anymore. And it was a sweet spot. Like if you look at Demi, most of her growth came from when she was a villain pre-pandemic. But if you look at like Kelsey Weier from Peter’s season, she hit 200-something K and she kind of had like a slight villain storyline with the champagne… How can I not remember who was the villian of that season?

It was Peter.

I mean even him! He hit almost 2.2 million followers. He hit 1.19M. I guess Victoria F was pretty much the villain and like she had half a million followers. She had the storyline at the end with the “excuse you, what,” and she did not get painted in a really good light. Obviously we don’t survey people, but I think something’s happened since the pandemic that people just aren’t responding to wanting to follow the villains as much. I do think too that having watched a lot of these seasons now and analyzing it down to the minute, especially Bachelor in Paradise, the amount of time that is spent, just drilling down on the drama. Like for example with Aaron this season and Carl and Thomas, I would notice that they’d be using the same sound bits over and over for the same person, but in different spots. If we look at this season, we can see Abigail and Noah have been together, but they’re just not showing us them. And I think there’s just such a focus on drama and I’m not sure how much that’s helping, not only the contestants, but the franchise.

We had Kelsey and Demi and even Victoria F they feel like very different villains than like queen Victoria or Yosef, right? It’s interesting that it sounds like it’s not necessarily what the audience wants.

Yeah. And I mean, if you look at the first season we had since the pandemic, one of the first villains was Yosef on Clair’s season two was shockingly aggressive with her. It’s one of those things that like, if we look back at Hannah’s season, right. Luke Parker was the worst villain that we had. And it was really just around like his religious views. And now we’re seeing like this last episode of Bachelor in Paradise, we saw basically the entire group of people bully Chris off the beach for not being there for the right reasons and wanting followers when they all talk about like when they are all influencers themselves. So I think it’s just interesting to see where the storylines that production is really pushing the contestants towards is going and how people are reacting. And I’m not sure if it’s necessarily helping, but I’m also not on the side of production that can see all of the trends around viewership that is available to the public.

Are there any things that you really want to track, but you can’t just cause like the data isn’t available?

I think honestly it’s just more around ratings because a lot of the ratings are only visible to ABC, especially around streaming data. But I think would be really interesting. I’d also be interested in doing some survey data, but the problem with that with my account is that my account is only a very small subsection of the people who watched the show, and can lean one way versus the other, depending on the topic. So I’d be interested in those two pieces of data, to be able to survey based on how people think about different contestants or even down to some more controversial items.

Right. It would be great to see YouGov do polling on this or like Gallup do polling on this and see how that like corresponds. But I’m assuming that that’s what you’re interested in. Right? Like how did the public opinions correspond with screen time and followers?

Exactly. Yes. That’s what I’d like, because even just the ratings data that is out there through Nielsen, it’s not the best just because it’s such a small portion of people who are tracked through for that data. And then there’s no breakdowns other than 18 through 49 years old. So I love to see a lot more on who is actually watching the show, but I think is available for places like Hulu, it’s just not publicly available.

Does it ever, on a personal level, frustrate you when someone that you just cannot stand on the show is getting a ton of screen time, so you’re having to watch them constantly?

I think it’s just more frustration whenever you’re having to collect the screen time and you can just blatantly find the frankenbiting, where they’re chopping up different parts of people’s sentences or reusing the same sentences or the same scenes of a person. I think that’s what gets more frustrating. Because obviously there’s always going to be villains on the show and that’s a storyline and that’s going to be there. And there are certain storylines that I don’t care for. Like this season, I don’t care for the Demi storyline. I don’t care for the Aaron storyline. But when you see that, yes, Aaron’s being painted as this villain, but you’re also seeing them use the same lines over and over from the guy. It’s frustrating to see that from the production side, not so much about Aaron or the contestant themselves.

It’s just more frustration whenever you’re having to collect the screen time and you can just blatantly find the frankenbiting, where they’re chopping up different parts of people’s sentences or reusing the same sentences or the same scenes of a person.

So you’re saying it does not make you want to go on the show?

No, I have no envy for these people.

Right? I would find it deeply tragic to watch myself on Bachelor in Paradise.

Yeah, I don’t know if I could stand to see myself on national TV like that.

You are getting national attention, though! Your account has grown so much. Do you have a follower that you’re particularly excited about?

I think Natasha [Parker] has been a really exciting one to see because she’s blowing out any growth that we really even seen even with like Tyler Cameron, which was one of the biggest success stories that we saw in terms of the data. I think it’s just exciting to see something different happen, and that’s the fun in data, right? It’s finding different trends to be able to tell a story or to make a decision and with Natasha, to see not only “OK, here’s what happened on the show that influenced something else.” But it’s when you see, not only did people rally around Natasha, but then social media made it a movement to try to make her grow so much that she would pass up Brendan. So I think it’s really interesting to just see those types of trends that get you excited to see.

Regardless, I have no problem with people go on the show for followers. It’s 2021. It’s not the early 2000s where Instagram, wasn’t a thing yet, and people who went on the show couldn’t post. They’ve just embraced the fact that people are going to show to be influencers. So it’s exciting to see when people do grow, because it is such a big industry and a sustainable one, too, if you can really find your, your place in it after the show.

Right. Don’t you think people can go on the show to find love and also a career as an influencer?:

Exactly. Like, I don’t think that the two are mutually exclusive. I think people can go on this show to find love. And I think that they can also go on to become influencers and we seen it. We’ve seen people go on the show and have these successful relationships. And if everybody was just going on just to become an influencer, they wouldn’t have stayed together. I think it’s a very unique way to find love that can also probably bring people together. But I don’t hate on anybody for going on to show to be an influencer, because it is such a great job to have if you want that life.

And honestly, if any of them went on the show just to find love and they didn’t have any interest in being an influencer, none of their profiles would be public. And they’re all public.

Exactly! Before we go, can you tell me a little bit about Bachelor Data Academy?

Yeah. So it launched in July and the version that’s out right now is the Google sheets version. And then the Excel edition is going to launch this October. And it is a full course that takes you from not knowing how to use spreadsheets, to intermediate and advanced skills. The difference of the entire course uses my own Bachelor data. So you go into it already knowing the topic that’s going to be discussed, and then we connect it to different ways that you can use it in your professional life or across your hobbies. So we have over 300 students in the course already and it just keeps growing every week. And it’s been so exciting to hear about the people that are going in it and learning so much, and then changing careers or growing in their current job. It is just so exciting to be able to share this knowledge with people.