Looking for love in the great United States of Uhmerica? Then maybe you should be spending more time at Wal-Mart. That's according to a recent (and depressing?) Psychology Today map by Dorothy Gambrell that crunched Craigslist "Missed Connections" data to show where denizens were not quite finding love.
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It's not terribly surprising that health-conscious (and gay-friendly) California hopes to find their special someone in a 24-Hour Fitness. Also, those places are like roaches! Turn your back on a business for one second and -- bam! -- stretchy pants and elliptical machines.
It's also not surprising that New Yorkers (and a lot of the Northeast) seek their partners on public transit.
But what of Indiana's confounding "at home" status? Unless there are a lot of lonely traveling insurance salesmen or passive-aggressive incest hopefuls, we can't figure out how you'd have a "missed connection" while at home.
Wal-Mart's 15-state presence speaks to our love of mass-consumerism and, we imagine, the utter lack of things to do in Mississippi. In fact, if you add the amount of "super store" connections to the Wal-Marts, you'd have a compelling argument that boxed wine and cheap sweatpants are our greatest inspiration for love-feelings.
Other highlights of the map include a gender and sexuality breakdown, where it is revealed that lesbians are not using Craigslist to meet their soul mates ("women for women" occupy a mere 1 percent of total posters), and that men over 40 think their true love is just around the corner from the Extreme Anal Cum Dumpsters XI porn.
At least that would make a better story than "We met in the discount Oakland Raiders throw rug aisle."
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