The United States of Online Dating: Maryland In Words

Last night, my college friend Tricia posted this amazing link on Facebook. An artist named R. Luke Dubois mined data from 20 online dating sites and created detailed maps of the entire U.S., replacing place names with the words most frequently used in the online profiles.

The results are revealing, if not always surprising. LA is Acting, Richmond is...Tobacco.

And Maryland. Maryland is Crabs, but apparently only if you live in a little pocket of Kent Island. Other than that, Maryland is Interesting and Afraid and Give - guess which one of those three is in the middle of Baltimore City. (Interesting is outside DC and Give is Annapolis.)

Here's what the state looks like as a whole:

And here's a close-up of the middle section of the state, where most people live. To give you some perspective, the Bay Bridge is right in the middle, just to the right of Give:

As it turns out, I grew up in a community called Discipline (unsurprising, in so many ways) and now I live in Future. I liked seeing all of Severna Park - Analysis is right up the river from Discipline - and Future seems like a pretty appropriate place to settle down.

I do wonder, though, how Timonium somehow became Epidemiology. Academic? Or just creepy?