A Very Scientific Study

SHAMELESS PLUG: Please follow me on Twitter. I only have 14 followers and I only know who like three of them are. I'm starting to get depressed about this. @blackswan305. thx! xo

When I moved back to Miami from New York in July, I changed the zip code on my OKCupid profile from 10019 to 33137. I promptly got a flood of Bienvenida A Miami messages, in a quantity that was like whoa. Their algorithm must float people who are new in town to the top and put them in heavy rotation. In fact I have 162 notifications waiting for me right now. One. Hundred. Sixty. Two. I KNOW! That's cuh RAZY right? It's never ever happened before, I'll tell you that much! I mean, I never had more than five before and three of those were Quiver matches who never ever ever ever messaged me. I could get used to this new in town thing.

Anyhoo, the 2% of my brain that is quantitative decided to write a chart about it comparing NY and Miami men on a few dimensions on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the highest: Intellectuality, Physical Beauty, and Game. To make the data set more representative of the population I did not limit my observations to OKCupid. This also applies to the fellas trying to holler at Home Depot and Publix.

For those of you who think it's obnoxious of me to rate men, this is a scientific endeavor. Sometimes science has to ask tough questions in the pursuit of knowledge and enlightenment.

Intellectuality: A completely made up term referring to the author's estimate of the respondent's IQ and general sophistication or worldliness. More objective data contributing to this measure include grammar, spelling, professionalism and education level. You can also measure sophistication or worldliness by a passport inspection but I haven't gotten that far with anyone yet.

If only all Thinkers looked like this too...

Physical Beauty: This refers to facial beauty (a term I learned from watching Toddlers & Tiaras), an eyeball estimate of body fat percentage, and height.

Sadly I missed the entire season of Honey Boo Boo but intend to catch up soon.

Game: A rating of the balance between attire, aggressiveness, appropriateness, specificity, and creativity. Also, whether or not the guy pays for the first date.

Note: I can't figure out where to put cool accents on this axis because they really belong half in Physical Beauty and half in Game. Maybe a little bit in Intellectuality if it's a British accent, which always makes folks sound really smart. Anyway, for the purposes of data integrity I left it out but a hot accent will always catch my attention. You get great accents in both places anyway so I would call it a draw.

Please see below for the results of this very scientific study...which took me forever to figure out how to paste into this interface because you can't just copy a joint from Excel for Mac (which SUX) and click control-v to paste, you have to command-shift-4 the thing as I found out on Google, so I hope you appreciate it, because I almost had to have a drank for breakfast cracking my head on it:

As reluctantly expected, NY men easily edge out Miami guys with respect to Intellectuality. I was totally ready to say that men in Florida are just as smart and urbane and sophisticated as men in NYC but it's just not true. Perhaps normalizing for the tremendous demands of and opportunities available in life in NYC they are equal but the first impression is that on average the fellas down here are scoring lower on that dimension. But you know, sometimes super intellectual guys are too damn emo.

Also as expected, Physical Beauty far favors the Miami crowd. NY has a very serious epidemic of skinny fatness affecting all genders. Men here generally tend to work out and most have learned to show it off in a not cheesy way. I haven't seen a muscle shirt yet. The fact is, a nice pair of shoulders is gonna peek through no matter what you're wearing, and a soft chin is also evident no matter what you're wearing. And guys, I see that gut and your muffin top. Pretending it's not there doesn't make it go away. This is a welcome change and a motivator to take my personal fitness to the next level. I have begun training for a 10k.

Game is where it gets tricky. Miami men tend to be more aggressive and want to meet right away if the introduction is online. They are also much more likely to approach you in the grocery store, in Home Depot, in the parking lot...in fact I met my late 90s/early naughts boyfriend at a gas station down here on 119th street when I was buying a bag of ice one night in 1998. This like, NEVER happened to me in NY. Maybe once in 6 years did I get approached by a legit person when I was out and about. So, while the fella following me around Publix the other day may have been creepy, the fact is that I'd rather get too much attention than too little.

Regarding the other aspects of Game - creativity and wardrobe and all that - it's hard to tell. There is so much to do in NY maybe men aren't really being creative but instead are going to UrbanDaddy.com and doing as they're told. Or maybe they just read Time Out NY. I mean, at least guys in NY know what Zagats is. Here, the opportunity set is more finite so it's hard to ding fellas for a lack of creativity. And as far as fashion is concerned, I have seen heinous offenders and super fly dope boys in both places so that's a draw. However, you CAN ding a man for not paying for your date. This hasn't happened to me yet but I'm on the lookout.

Overall Result: Miami 7.3, NY 6.3. I upgraded! Yayyyyy! Miami is the Champion!

On a related side note, can someone tell me why people post such flattering pictures of themselves online when they hope to meet someone in person? If a guy is concerned women won't accept a date if he doesn't describe himself as athletic, what does he think will happen when he shows up looking all unathletic? And no, big biceps and a big belly is NOT athletic. Especially if your boobies are bigger than mine. Perhaps online dating sites should provide guidelines as to what they mean by body type.

I think this would be helpful.