R. Luke Dubois is an artist and curious human who sought to create a US census based on the words people use to describe themselves in dating profiles. We first came upon Dubois’ work in an article from a local New Jersey news website that poked fun at some of the words that appeared for Jersey towns. When we looked up Dubois and began examining the maps, the national data was fascinating!
As you will see, Dubois took the data to create an “atlas” of the United States, with the names of cities, towns, and neighborhoods replaced with the words people use to describe themselves and those they want to be with.
In order to accomplish this task, he joined 21 dating sites to make his own census, which served as the foundation for a series of fascinating maps. According to Dubois’ website, the maps contain 20,262 unique words, based on the analysis of online dating profiles from 19,095,414 single Americans.
Each word appears in the place it’s used more frequently than anywhere else in the country. Which is why this is fascinating.
We could spend hours examining his creative works, and I assure you, we will. But for now, we’d like to share two “perfect union” stories we’ve conceptionalized from his state and city maps. First, Manhattan.
Oh Manhattan, you crazy strange island. You house many freaks and stereotypes, sometimes you scare us. And perhaps more than any other city in the US, each of your neighborhoods is distinct from the next. For that reason it took a lot of searching on the NYC map to find the perfect union we’d want to have.
After careful evaluation, we’d seek out a perfect union somewhere on the east side of the island below Cental Park and above 14th street. Why? Because here it appears we could find an adorable, communicative mate- either a doctor or attorney? Wow! Who can put us in the nation’s center of bagels- perfect- know how to maintain a woody- double bonus. He might cause us the need to consult a shrink (no big deal), but will hopefully have a fund to pay for it. AND will occassionally take us to bistros. Great! Sold.
Although…we were also really intrigued by the looks of perfect unions in this next neck of the American woods. Cue Eastern Kentucky in the great Appalachia. Here, we could find an accomplished parachutist- more than anywhere in the country, apparently- who enjoys assembling things. This fine mate would have sturdy bowels and enjoy getting stoned. After a long day, we would sit toegther and watch the tumbleweeds pass by. Golly!
We know, the maps are a lot to take in. Dating in person is hard enough as it is, let alone when you have a map pointing you to the nation’s center of moose hunters, XXX, hipsters, Hannukah, nobles, sheets, narcissists and thigh? Who includes “thigh” on a dating profile? Really??
We highly encourage you peruse your neighborhood in these maps. Once more we are reminded, dating is awkward, but we might as well laugh about it.
Xo SFAR