When it comes to big brains and big followings online, Leonardo DiCaprio appears to best them all: the Wolf of Wall Street actor is the smartest celebrity on Twitter. DiCaprio scores higher than the rest when judged by a commonly used reading comprehension test. Here’s where the tweeting and famous rank, according to analysis of the reading levels of the tweets produced by the 500 most followed celebrities on the popular social network. Or test the reading level of any Twitter username.
1
Followers
10,537,477
7.5
2
Followers
3,240,488
7.3
3
Followers
4,105,738
7
4
Followers
9,495,505
6.8
5
Followers
3,394,539
6.8
6
Followers
3,876,935
6.8
7
Followers
9,624,350
6.6
8
Followers
3,618,047
6.6
9
Followers
3,512,750
6.5
10
Followers
6,547,046
6.5
11
Followers
3,465,262
6.5
12
Followers
6,957,631
6.5
13
Followers
4,313,917
6.5
14
Followers
4,348,803
6.5
15
Followers
9,330,945
6.4
16
Followers
5,679,824
6.4
17
Followers
12,790,629
6.4
18
Followers
3,916,429
6.4
19
Followers
5,430,990
6.4
20
Followers
4,439,241
6.4
21
Followers
7,024,230
6.3
22
Followers
8,330,339
6.3
23
Followers
6,679,206
6.3
24
Followers
3,609,118
6.3
25
Followers
5,224,026
6.2
26
Followers
3,777,176
6.2
27
Followers
3,453,774
6.2
28
Followers
6,667,346
6.2
29
Followers
3,717,750
6.2
30
Followers
10,384,608
6.2
31
Followers
4,243,642
6.2
32
Followers
3,430,272
6.2
33
Followers
18,374,747
6.1
34
Followers
4,962,687
6.1
35
Followers
3,356,790
6.1
36
Followers
17,130,614
6.1
37
Followers
3,862,527
6.1
38
Followers
5,043,670
6.1
39
Followers
12,014,650
6.1
40
Followers
3,088,771
6.1
41
Followers
17,130,615
6.1
42
Followers
24,784,725
6
43
Followers
28,273,688
6
44
Followers
3,730,469
6
45
Followers
3,315,673
6
46
Followers
3,492,788
6
47
Followers
4,148,210
6
48
Followers
13,448,230
6
49
Followers
9,688,482
5.9
50
Followers
4,157,413
5.9
Methodology
The ranking above is based on a reading comprehension test known as Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG). The SMOG test measures the number of three syllable words used in a text to calculate the years of education required to understand it. An environmental activist, DiCaprio often tweets about “conservation” and global warming which may have helped him earn the top spot.
In a recent analysis of more than 1 million tweets, we found that messages on Twitter average a fourth-grade reading level. All of the celebrities above exceed that grade. To find Twitter’s smartest celebrities, we analyzed the last 20 tweets from the 500 highest followed celebrities (stripped of URLs and hashtags), then ran the results through the SMOG test to calculate reading level. SMOG is intended for processing English, so users tweeting in multiple languages were removed. Computer processing of natural language has its limitations. For example, the SMOG test can falsely read slang as multi-syllable words.
You can test your own Twitter grade level or anyone else’s here.
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Contact us at letters@time.com