If Miami was dating, what would her profile look like?
Go ahead and stuff your "slutty photos" jokes. According to multimedia artist R. Luke DuBois, the Magic City is chiefly talking about skin in terms of ethnicity: "Latino" is overwhelmingly the word used more often locally than anywhere else in the country.
DuBois's dating profile maps of the nation are soon on view in his first solo show at Sarasota's Ringling Arts Museum. Census reports give demographic information, but what DuBois wanted to explore is what his massive survey could reveal about personality. To create his 2010 "census" he joined 21 major dating sites including Match, eHarmony, OKCupid, Jdate, and Gay.com to glean 20,262 unique words from profiles.
The resulting maps of "A More Perfect Union" reveal not only where Americans are shy, but what folks from Tallahassee to the Tortugas post about most when looking to hook up.
Our favorite words that popped up in parts of Florida: boondocks, flooring, RV, relation, mermaid, waistline, tanline, Prozac, explode, insanity, and lobbyist. Yep, our profile sounds about right!
Zoom to see which words were used more often in Florida cities than anywhere else in the U.S.:
Catch R. Luke DuBois's show "Now" at the Ringling from January 31 - May 4, 2014.