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Friday, March 29
The Indiana Daily Student

Foursquare names Bloomington as 4th rudest city in world

Bloomington was recently named the fourth rudest city in the English-speaking world by Foursquare, a location-based social networking platform.

Foursquare looked at tips — messages left electronically at locations by its users — to determine which cities used more curse words than others. Cities with fewer than 1,000 total tips were excluded.

The result was a list of 20 English-speaking cities, 18 of them American, with the highest percentage of swear-ridden updates.

Mike McAfee, executive director of the Bloomington/Monroe County Convention & Visitors Bureau, said the high ranking is probably due to the fact that Bloomington is a college town.

“All it means is we are a young, hip community,” McAfee said. “When people check in at Nick’s or Kilroy’s, maybe they put a swear in there.”

IU sophomore and biochemistry student Will Tilbury said he also thought the ranking was closely related to IU.

“I would say all college towns get a great diversity of individuals, so for Bloomington to be the fourth rudest, they probably didn’t survey a lot of other college towns,” he said.

The three cities that outrank Bloomington are Manchester, England; El Paso, Texas; and Pittsburgh. Riverside, Calif., was ranked fifth.

McAfee said the Bloomington/Monroe County Convention and Visitors Bureau is not worried about the ranking having an effect on people visiting the city.

“Honestly, it’s a clever way for Foursquare to create publicity about Foursquare. It doesn’t concern me at all,” he said. “All the comments we get are how friendly Bloomington is and how friendly Indiana is.”

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