the numbers lie

The Advocate recently ranked their idea of the Gayest Cities in America. San Francisco came in 11th.

Whaaa?!

I looked up how they did this math. One of the heaviest weighted criteria in their "gay ranking" is the number of gay.com profiles in each city. These days, online profiles are either for online dating or online hooking-up, and I don't know of anyone with a "gay.com" profile. Gay.com is only "gay" in the third-grade use of "gay." That is to say, "lame." Having a gay.com profile is like being on AOL. Sure, its helpful and even necessary in places without a large gay community, but unnecessary in large "sophisticated urbanite" areas. That means that there is some tipping point in the gay-population-size:number-of-Gay.com-profiles ratio wherein fewer profiles indicate a larger gay population.

In San Francisco, we don't need Gay.com to interact with other gay people. We have "Open door, go outside."

Sure, the state of "gay journalism" or "gay press" is pretty dire like the rest of the publishing industry. The Advocate can't even survive as a monthly and not even stand-alone publication anymore. I shouldn't expect their puff pieces such as "The gayest Cities in America" to be of any substantial quality, or be able to withstand any critical scrutiny. It's like US Weekly of news now, but at least it' still the gay Us.

Work from the daily paper's gossip column in that The Daily Show is here this week running a variety of stories, one of which will include a little mockery of SF coming in at 11th place in the gayest city contest.