Thursday, July 27, 2006
Forbes ranks the lonely
When I first saw this Forbes list of Best Cities for Singles, I was pleased to see at least four cities where I had recently taken residence. And look at that! Philly was ranked no. 12. But upon closer analysis, the pessimist within emerged.
My beloved NYC is ranked number 5, followed by my city of origin Seattle. But what is this? Washington DC ranked no. 9? If Philly follows DC then I am in for a bumpy ride.
Here is how Forbes ranked Philly (Each metro is assigned a ranking of one to 40 in each category, based on quantitative data):
Singles - 8
Nightlife - 21
Culture - 7
Coolness - 15
Online Dating - 17
Cost Of Living - 17
Job Growth - 38
Perhaps a greater concern than the ranking of my current city of dwelling, is how a magazine like Forbes decides what makes a city ideal for singles.
What makes a city ideal for this single girl is a lot of other single people, cool shit to do and people that want to do it with me. So that leaves me with the following two questions...
- What does job growth have to do with being single? That has something to do with being young and having upward mobility. Which doesn't exactly translate to being single. Because this implies that only young people are single. And this is obviously a sensitive topic with my 33rd birthday less than two weeks away.
- Upon further inspection of the on-line dating methodology, the ranking is determined by the number of active profiles in each metro, per capita, on dating site Match.com. Match.com? Great, do I have to join Match.com now? And I thought a lot of people on Match.com meant a lot of lonely people lacking social skills and willing to pay to get dates.
Labels: Pop Culture Casualty, Sober
