Buffalo Most Anti-gay City?

Twitter

Buffalo tagged most anti-gay city in America, based on rampant homophobic tweets - Welcome to Buffalo, the most anti-gay city in the US, according to an unofficial study that examined the origin of homophobic social media messages. The City of Good Neighbors may show some altruistic, hospitable efforts when it comes to assisting one another to quarry themselves out of hefty piles of lake effect snow, but when it comes to tolerance of gays, Buffalo blows.

Writes the Buffalo News on March 5: “Using data culled from Twitter by apartment-location startup Abodo, Buffalo has sent the most anti-gay tweets and eighth-most anti-black tweets in an 18-month span starting in June 2014.” The News then goes on to explain why the study should be debunked.

The study was reported on by the Daily Beast, which wrote:

If we’ve learned one thing from this presidential election, it’s that we’re a nation divided by, and overrun with, hatred. No matter your skin color, gender, race, sexual orientation, physical appearance, or any other attribute, some segment of our society has a pronounced bias against you, and they’re not afraid to announce it on social media.

Adobo scanned millions of tweets, searching out egregious, bigoted slang and racial names. While Trump is out to “make America great again,” it appears this country has a deep problem with racism – and the anonymity of social media evidently is being used as the platform to bring out the little vitriolic anti-gay Klansman in the best of us.

The other cities that topped the ignominious list behind Buffalo: Arlington Texas, then five cities in California, sandwiched around Lincoln, Nebraska.

At least Buffalo didn’t top the chart of this other study – the most anti-black tweets – although they did make the top ten. Leading that shameful list are the fine white folks in Baltimore, Maryland. Atlanta, New Orleans, Newark, and Arlington round out the top five, respectively.

The study also ranked overall derogatory language, derogatory language against women, anti-Hispanic tweets, anti-transgender tweets, overweight tweets – and one category that gives us a tiny glimmer of hope: overall least derogatory language by state. Congrats to Wyoming on that. Boo on Buffalo.