Gay Sex vs. Straight Sex

October 12th, 2010 by Christian Rudder

Gay issues have been in the news a lot lately, from the debate over same-sex marriage in Congress to a sickening rash of gay-bashing here in New York City. We see a lot of emotion out there, instead of information, and we wanted to provide some data-based context on sexuality so that people might make better choices about what they say, think, and do.

We run a massive dating site and therefore have unparalleled insight into sex and relationships. Here's what we've found, in numbers and charts.

First of all, gay sexuality is not a threat.

Gay people are not sexually interested in straights.

The subtext to a lot of homophobic thinking is the idea that gays will try to get straight people into bed at the first opportunity, or that gays are looking to "convert" straights. Freud called this concept schwanzangst; the U.S. Army calls it Don't Ask Don't Tell.

We combed through over 4 million match searches, and found virtually no evidence of it:

Match Search Returns
  • only 0.6% of gay men have ever searched for straight matches.
  • only 0.1% of lesbians have ever searched for straight matches.
  • only 0.13% of straight people's profile visitors are gay.
Furthermore
In our dataset, there was not a single gay user, male or female, who primarily searched for straight people.

Gay people aren't promiscuous.

Another common myth about gay people is that they sleep around, but the statistical reality is that gay people as a group aren't any more slutty than straights.

Median Reported Sex Partners
  • straight men: 6
  • gay men: 6
  • straight women: 6
  • gay women: 6

Here's how the distribution curves compare:

  • 45% of gay people have had 5 or fewer partners (vs. 44% for straights)
  • 98% of gay people have had 20 or fewer partners (vs. 99% for straights)

It turns out that a tiny fraction of gays have single-handedly two-handedly created the public image of gay sexual recklessness—in fact we found that just 2% of gay people have had 23% of the total reported gay sex, which is pretty crazy.

Straight people have gay sex, too.

Another inquiry that had unexpected results: we asked 252,900 straight people have you ever had a sexual encounter with someone of the same sex?

Almost a quarter answered 'yes'.

Click the airport-bathroom style icons to toggle the sex(es) displayed. Not unexpectedly, more women than men have had same-sex desires:

    straight women's same-sex desires:
  • 1 in 3 straight women has hooked up with another woman.
  • and of those who haven't, over 1 in 4 would like to.

As for straight men, a surprisingly high 13% have had a same-sex experience, and another 5% haven't yet but would like to.

Using the incredible power of computers, we were able to break down this question geographically. Here are straight people who either have had or would like to have a same-sex experience in the continental U.S. and lower Canada. You can see some sharp geographic divides.

Awesomely, the mountain West lives up to its Brokeback reputation, and Canada is orange nearly coast-to-coast. Even in the yellow and blue areas, you can see pockets of gay curiosity in interesting places: Austin, Madison, Asheville. Anywhere soy milk is served, basically.

Sidenote

Doing the research for this post, I came across many awful things our elected officials have said about gay people; here's a relatively calm example:

For starters, I found that a fun game to play with stuff like this is to replace the words "homosexual" and "gay" with "politician"—then you have something that's actually true.

I also spent a lot of time looking up match questions to debunk this particular claim. Down in the database I discovered one question with a surprising disparity, not between orientations, but between genders. Like Frodo to the Balrog, I wished I'd never unearthed it.

Come on, people. #facepalm.

Beyond Sex: Gay & Straight Personalities

More than just asking about specific desires and behaviors, our match questions are designed to tease out our users' underlying personalities. We've collected over 669 million answers from users so far. Below is a straight/gay comparison on 23 personality categories. You can mouse-over the ?s for each category to pop-up some examples of the many questions that affect it.

Two things: (1) The idea of the typical straight man as a kind bullying jock seems to be broadly true, though there is also a strong dork streak there, as well.

(2) Looking closely at the chart for females, we can improve upon Marx's famous dictum.

Religion is the opiate of the masses, so long as the masses are straight. However, amass a bunch of lesbians and you're going to need actual drugs.

In any event, a lot of these measured traits are reflected by the users' own words. Like we did before with race, we looked at the interests and tastes statistically unique to the different orientations, according to their personal profiles. We crunched millions of words of essay text and found the phrases most correlated to a particular sexual preference; again, these are the users' own words.

The Stuff Gay People Like

For both sexes, a lot of this stuff is way stereotypical. The size of the phrases indicate their relative popularity to the norm, and I actually had to shrink "The L Word" down to fit in our template. Meanwhile gay men's interests speak for themselves, evidently with an exaggerated lisp.

Compare those lists to their equally typical straight counterparts, below. It's like two zen koans, one by Meg Ryan, one by a viking:

The Stuff Straight People Like

As you can see, sexual orientation makes a huge difference in the words you choose to describe yourself. The small but enormous difference between lesbians' a girlfriend and straight women's my girlfriends says it all.

We extended this gay vs. straight analysis and for each orientation measured the frequencies of all one-, two-, and three-word phrases against the site-wide rates. Here's the breakdown:

There's no question that according to this analysis gay people are "different;" as you can see, gay interests and self-descriptions have little to do with the mainstream's. In fact what these numbers are saying is that the average gay person has only about 30% in common with the average American. But, ironically enough, when it comes to identity, it's hardly rare to be an outlier here. Adding an ethnic group to the plot helps put it in perspective:

Of course, as far as I know, no one's saying that Indians shouldn't get married or shouldn't be allowed to adopt children. The people of Louisiana even elected Bobby Jindal, an openly Indian man, as their governor!

We hope gay people can expect the same treatment very soon.

Adventurous

Would you consider trying food without being told what it is?

Would you consider permanently living in another country?

Would you ever get on a motorcycle?

Aggressive

Do you like to argue?

Have you ever yelled at the TV?

Do you go to great lengths to avoid conflict?

Ambitious

Would you be happy raising the kids while your spouse worked?

Which comes first for you, work or friends?

Do you want to be famous?

Artsy

Are you an aspiring actor/artist/writer or other creative type?

Do you like going to museums?

Do movies with subtitles bother you?

Compassionate

Is it your responsibility to help your fellow human beings?

Are you the type of person to tell a homeless person to get a job?

Do overweight people annoy you?

Competitive

Is it important to you to have the last word in an argument?

Do you like board games?

If someone wrongs you...do you eventually exact revenge?

Confident

Would you say you're smarter than average?

Are you okay with trying things that you're bad at?

Are you intimidated by a partner who is more sexually experienced than you?

Dorky

Do you think the International Space Station would be a cool place to get married?

Do you know what 'http' stands for?

Do you own any dice with more than six sides?

Generous

Do you give your best friend a birthday gift?

How much do you give each year to charity?

When you loan something small to a friend, do you really care if it gets returned?

Horny

How often do you think about sex?

How often do you masturbate?

Ideally, how many dates would you go on with someone before you have sex?

Into Drugs

What's your relationship to marijuana?

Do you think drug use with your partner can be a romantic activity?

Have you tried hard drugs, like, anything you need to 'cook'?

Into Sports

Do you play actual sports?

Do you enjoy exercise?

Do you have a favorite sports team, that you really like to follow?

Introverted

Does the idea of staying in and reading a book on a Friday night appeal to you?

Do you need "alone time" to re-charge after social situations?

At parties, do you go up and talk to people?

Kinky

Does group sex sound like a great idea?

Do you like sex toys?

Have you ever used nipple clamps?

Literary

Can you name an author from each continent (besides Antarctica)?

In high school, did you read books that weren't assigned in class?

Do spelling mistakes annoy you?

Optimistic

Do things generally turn out for the best?

Can just one person significantly change the world?

Do you think happiness is possible for all people?

Polite

Do you say something like 'bless you' when a stranger sneezes?

Do you hold the door for people?

Are you frequently under-dressed for special occasions?

Political

Have you ever marched in a protest?

Is it a person's civic duty to vote?

Do you know who your state's Senators are?

Romantic

Have you been around candlelight recently?

Do you like costume dramas?

Do you like to say 'I love you'?

Religious

Do you believe in the power of prayer?

Is there a God?

Do you believe in miracles? You sexy thing?

Spontaneous

Do you bring an umbrella if it looks like rain?

Do you often find yourself bored in relationships after a few months?

Have you ever had a one-night stand?

Trusting

Do you think most people give to charity?

Do you ever leave your drink unattended at a bar?

Do you think a straight man and a straight woman can truly just be friends?

Violent

Would you find it easier to kill for your beliefs or to die for them?

Have you ever thrown an object in anger during an argument?

Do you own a gun?

702 Responses to “Gay Sex vs. Straight Sex”

  1. Rowan says:

    @Paul
    For someone who claims that they have their own ideas and know all there is to know about homosexuality, you would think you wouldn’t waste your time and energy reading such an article. Let alone leave hateful, completely unnecessary, and unappreciated feedback. Get a life. Seriously, there has to be something better you could be doing with your time than arguing about something that really has no effect on you. If all homosexuals are going to Hell, well I say great! Gay party in Hell! At least I know I will be in good company. Stop the hate.

  2. Facts says:

    “HIV Incidence Estimate

    Incidence is the number of new HIV infections that occur during a given year.
    In 2008, CDC estimated that approximately 56,300 people were newly infected with HIV in 20061 (the most recent year that data are available). Over half (53%) of these new infections occurred in gay and bisexual men. Black/African American men and women were also strongly affected and were estimated to have an incidence rate than was 7 times as high as the incidence rate among whites. Visit the HIV incidence page for more details.

    1Hall HI, Ruiguang S, Rhodes P, et al. Estimation of HIV incidence in the United States. JAMA. 2008;300:520-529.”

    Why not tell all the facts…

  3. unknowntraveler says:

    Whether or not homosexuality is right is a separate issue from the legality of gay marriage. Government didn’t officiate in the institution of marriage until sometime during the last 50-75 years (AFAIK). Before that, religion was the sole officiate in matrimonial issues. It seems to me that passing laws against same sex marriage is a violation of the ‘separation of church and state’.
    Of course, that’s just my opinion. BTW, I DO think homosexuality is wrong.

  4. Andrew says:

    Clearly from those lists of interests I should be gay.

  5. Paddy says:

    I would have liked to see the percentages of how many users describe themselves as gay, straight, and bi. I’m a little surprised that wasn’t in there.

  6. dinothaur says:

    According to this I’m a straight female, gay male and straight male. WTF :/

    Um, who really cares? Everyone is so busy getting in other people’s business but never mind looking in the mirror. STFU and get a life :) Also, “quitcherbitchin”

  7. Jeremy says:

    This is awesome. I love when this stuff comes out :D

  8. Heather Emme says:

    Hi Jim,
    Thanks for providing that stereotyped diatribe against bisexuals. Like any other people group, we are all the same and our complex behaviors can be predicted using only one facet of our identities. Oh, and you forgot to mention that we also use kittens as soccer balls and control the senate.

  9. Kas says:

    I’d like to see stats on bisexuals, too. We’re always left out.

  10. Maria says:

    Awesome job, but I can only see it in Internet Explorer. I guess you do need a web developer.

  11. miconian says:

    The evidence presented does not indicate that gay people are (necessarily) not sexually interested in straights. What it does indicate is that, in an environment in which they have ample opportunity to pursue other gay people, gays tend to do that, as opposed to pursuing people who are clearly signalling that they are straight, and that they are looking only for other straight people.

    I certainly agree that “gay sexuality is not a threat.” But “gays are not interested in straights” is a different statement entirely, and the evidence presented here does not support it.

  12. Patrick says:

    I was looking over personality traits by orientation and found that answering yes to the question, “Do you own a gun?” makes you more violent in the eyes of OkCupid. Come on, people. Owning firearms does not make you an inherently violent person.

  13. RICK says:

    Thanks now my parents think Im on a gay website service because they saw the ad to this blog on the main page

  14. Tudor Bosman says:

    The disparity between the US and Canada is misleading.

    It appears that you aggregated the data with zip code granularity in the US, and with province granularity in Canada. Canada is very sparsely populated, probably less so than the US, and so a liberal, gay-friendly metropolitan area (such as Toronto or Vancouver) would paint the entire province red or orange.

    The equivalent scenario for the US would have been to aggregate with state granularity, in which case I would expect all of California, Illinois, and the north-east to be orange or red.

  15. Rebecca says:

    Funny how even on on OKC there’s bigots showing up throwing their weight around. You’d think that this would at least get people rethinking their positions, but I guess they’ve had enough chance to do that and they’re just insanely stubborn or trying to appease someone, or something, that doesn’t deserve it.

  16. jennifer says:

    Very well done research article… Thanks for publishing it and attempting to educate people. I hope in my lifetime we see more proponents of social equity and less hate crimes and bigotry… breaks my heart! This article is a great intro to even more dialogue concerning human rights.

    And remember guys… women do not find homophobic guys appealing! That shows insecurity, small mindedness and a general lack of education.

    Love your neighbor… Peace everybody :)

  17. Ryan says:

    Nice stats, though it’s hard to really address the malleable world of sexuality without resorting to the duality of just gay/straight for purposes of “simplicity.” Paul is probably just a troll. Also, for Jim, it seems bisexuals are just as capable of shouldering broad-brimmed cliches and stereotypes as anyone else. I’m a bisexual man. There are no black-and-white truths about anything related to sexuality and love. And this will only expand as time goes on, hopefully with more and more people realizing this. I don’t believe sexuality is a choice. Acting on it would be a choice to me, but the thing itself is not.

    I think people confuse choosing that you will henceforth be gay (etc.) with *realizing* that you are someone you didn’t know you were. It’s not the same thing, just as selecting a door to step through is not the same as having a light illuminate a door you didn’t realize was there.

  18. Lisa says:

    Whoa! You straight chicks will be cruising this sight in sheer panic that the next “wink” could be Paul L. Good Lawd! Stressful….

  19. Trouser says:

    yeh. non-gay people are such fags

  20. Chris says:

    Hi how many gays and how many straights were you able to pull in your survey? Also can you tell how many gay profiles exist to non-gay profiles? I’m curious if the 10% rule has some data-backed truth…?

  21. Greta says:

    @ Rick …You still live with your mommie and daddy. Blech!

  22. Matt Kamen says:

    Great data analysis, overall. Although, as a bisexual man myself, I’m a little disappointed that ‘the third way’ didn’t enter the discussion until towards the end, and even then only on a couple of graphs.

    I do wonder if it’s an ‘American thing’ to discount the idea or the self-descriptive nomenclature of bisexual, particularly for men? Do men who will have sex with men and women generally describe as ‘straight’, despite their own activities?

  23. Molly says:

    I’d love to see the data on bisexual folks, particularly in terms of who contacts who. My experience as a bisexual woman who’s gone back and forth between listing myself as “bisexual” and “lesbian” on OKCupid has been that when I was listed as bisexual I was only ever contacted by men. I’d really love to see the data on that more generally.

  24. Dan says:

    As a Church-going, politically-active Republican, i just want to say something:

    THANK YOU!!!
    I wish more of my peers knew this stuff, instead of my fellow Republicans running around complaining about how much government intervention is ruining the economy, but then saying that the government needs to intervene in people’s personal relationships, and when I point out the logical disconnect, they start criticizing me. Then my fellow Catholics who keep saying homeosexuality is a sin and homosexual marriage destroys the sanctity of marriage, but when I reply, “So does divorce. Should divorce be illegal?” they get all huffy and tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about. It makes my head hurt.

  25. Big Mac says:

    LOL. The last one confirmed what we all know and liberal whites won’t admit– that black people are stupid.

    Now this one confirms what men have known all along: Women are dumb as fuck.

  26. Daniel says:

    I’m curious how many people listed as straight have listed themselves as bisexual in the past. I have three bisexual female friends on OKCupid that have listed themselves as straight for different reasons including being marginalized by gay and straight people, being in a straight phase, and avoiding men looking for threesomes.

  27. jojo says:

    hmm..i’m a transgender female (male to female) who’s ONLY attracted to women.

    i wonder where i fit in.

  28. Amanda says:

    I always enjoy your research. I appreciate the tone of promoting acceptance and understanding through showing that much of the bait for homophobia is just plain wrong. However, I think you missed the mark in a few places.

    The presentation still sets up gay people as the other. You only look at how frequently gay users message or search for straight users. As a lesbian, I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been messaged by straight men or had men pop up on the “Visitors” section of my profile.

    You also choose to point out the differences between straight and gay women later in the article. Clearly women mean different things when they say “a girlfriend” vs. “my girlfriends”, but gay and straight women are still looking for much the same thing–straight women chose to phrase it as “mr. right”, but clearly the majority of people on this site are searching for a partner regardless of gender or sexual orientation–it is a dating site after all.

    I think that the data can be explored a little more and the framing needs to be tweaked. Overall, I enjoyed the article though. Thanks for posting!

  29. Rob Renaud says:

    How much of the correlation with the average is due to the size of population? Is it the case that there are more straights than bis than gays than indians on okc? If you took a random sample of 10% of straight users and compute their correlation against the whole okc population, what would the correlation be then?

  30. flintsparc says:

    Could we get the gay curious map broken down by male/female? Also, can we get it a bit larger?

  31. Allstarg2k says:

    Ok…I want to put out there that there is one thing that is wrong in this trend that you didn’t account for…I’m a straight male…tried same sex actions and absolutely hated it…on here you said gay men don’t try to convert straight into gays…well you didn’t enter the fact of they know that the person is gay or not on here because I’ve been hit on more by gay guys than straight/bi girls in real life…and most of the guys after finding out i was straight tried to convert me…so when gays don’t know the sexuality of the person and finds out after trying to get them they will keep the pursuit for that person until they’ve tried everything to get them…unless you’re like me and make them your friend rather than have them continuously hitting on you…that’s is my 2 cents in this trend thank you for making this site and these trends…they’re enjoyable to read.

  32. Dwigt says:

    The Devil Wears Prada, Britney Spears, Mean Girls, Kelly Clarkson, The Color Purple, Project Runway, Drop Dead Gorgeous…

    Why did you have to spoil me the second season of “Glee”?

  33. Truth Wins Out says:

    Facts always destroy the irrational basis on which people form their prejudice. Let’s hope your truth will do more allow gays to live and love freely here and abroad.
    Many thanks!

  34. Amed says:

    The article made a lot of since. I’m sure there is plenty of skewed data in this piece, but it’s still insightful. I’m just upset that we all live in a world where hate is still so vibrant. People still believe the “south” will rise again…I hate to say it, but those losers lost. There are much bigger things in this world to worry about that extend well beyond who someone decides to love.

  35. molly says:

    I love all these blogs…. no coddling… but all so true. I wonder how many users are upset that the people running their dating website are gay lovers. Fine by me. thumbs up.

  36. Tim says:

    Something I’ve always wondered: when people answer “earth” in the what-is-bigger question, do they mean it metaphorically? Because I find it really hard to believe people are that dumb

  37. molly says:

    ps: I wish more “church-going, politically-active Republicans” were like Dan. If they were, I wouldn’t be so terrified by the direction this country is going in. Thanks, Dan.

  38. Faith says:

    Kudos on this! As a Bisexual Activist, I’m glad you dug a lil deeper on the habits, views and experiences of OKC users. For me, I believe being bi is simply the ability to love, lust, partner, fall in love with etc a person of the same sex or opposite. A bisexual person doesn’t have to stick with one, nor be primarily attracted to one or the other to be bi! It’s all about respecting how diverse we can all be; no matter what we deserve the right to remain free to love and live. Thank you so much for your broad declaration in support of LGBT equality.

  39. Bethany says:

    Amazingly done. Impressed again, and so happy to call okcupid.com part of my internet home!

  40. ElTob says:

    Now, overlay your map with the one (near the bottom of a very long page) from the US Centers for Disease Control on the incidence of clinical depression in the US.

    http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5938a2.htm

    Your least-blue states (least ‘gay-curious’ or, dare I say it, most homophobic) correlates very strongly with the CDC’s ‘dark brown’ states, indicating the highest rates of depression.

    hmmmmmm…

  41. xak says:

    A note on data mining and statistics (hazily recalled from my college stat classes): When you have a large volume of data, the more correlations and other types of connections you pull from the data, the less likely each correlation is statistically significant. In essence, there’s always a small chance that a random selection of data points will show a correlation that isn’t actually there. Often this chance of a coincidental correlation is extremely small. The problem is, the more you’re pulling correlations from the same population of gathered data, that probability of a coincidental correlation increases. Perhaps this may be an explanation for odd data like women being twice as likely as men to think the earth is larger than the sun?

    In any case, I may be wrong because it has been a while since stats class : D

  42. Bryan says:

    It all comes down to who you believe makes the rules. If you believe in God and believe (as I do) that God has revealed himself in nature, Word, and human history, then God, as our sovereign Creator, has the right to set those rules–and He has declared that mankind was designed sexually to behave in a certain manner and also has put stricter confines on the domain of marriage.

    If you don’t believe in God or believe in some vague deist conception of God, then anything goes.

    So the ‘rightness’ of homosexuality or the legality of gay marriage fundamentally comes down to who you think is calling the shots–God, or man. It has nothing to do with intolerance. And of course violence and hatred should come upon no one regardless of their sexual orientation.

  43. Gwenyth says:

    Mauro makes a good point about the “Earth bigger than the Sun” data. A number of women seem to answer this and then explain it using a different metric. Meaning they are aware that the Earth is smaller, yet decide to answer the ‘No duh’ question in a fun and creative way. There is some evidence that women tend to be less literal thinkers than men.

    Our culture over-values literal and linear thinking. Creative and intuitive, loose and fluid thought has an equal value. It’s still a culture built on the ideas of men, “the shoulders of giants” who are almost all male. So it develops metrics of judging intelligence by which men will tend to outpace women, because we’re all judged against the great men of history.

    Happily though, that is slowly shifting.

  44. caleb says:

    I just want to comment about the number of people trying to justify the responses to “Which is bigger: the earth or the sun”. I understand that it’s common to find people spouting off nonsense about there being no absolutes in the touchy feely fields of life, but come on! This is a very basic, straight forward question that my third grade daughter could answer.

    Everyone who missed that question should be excluded from the study on the basis that they probably missed the question about where they were homosexual or not.

  45. Benthic says:

    My anecdotal evidence confirms the conclusions in the article regarding gay peoples’ interests in other gay people as opposed to straight people.

    I live in a gay neighbourhood and have been approached numerous times by folks of the same gender. However, upon discovering that I’m not gay, they *shockingly* don’t pursue me further.

  46. Gwenyth says:

    Hmm,

    Another note. A lot of this data is based on self-reporting on a dating site. A dating site that uses all the info you give it to compile matches, and in some cases will show data to other people. You get control of when to show info, but not precise control of what info to show. So, odds are good, some people are going to be lying about some things.

    It’s really hard to say how honest people are going to be about # of sexual partners. It really is interesting that across genders and sexualities there is a very similar pattern. I’d love to see male/female gay/straight all represented on the chart. I know the one you used you picked because of how striking it was that they were so similar in curve.

    One area honesty is almost certainly going to be lacking though is potential/possible interest in same-sex encounters. In almost all fully anonymous surveys the percentages of the bi-curious are a -lot- higher. But most people aren’t going to answer that maybe they’re interested, or even more so that they’ve done it, on a site where that info might end up being seen by a potential partner. Especially guys, as being bi is culturally -not- ok for guys(it’s often seen as sexy in girls).

    Just a thought.

  47. Metal Man says:

    I’d be interested in a post on self identified bisexuals. What are they *really* into?

    For example, most women I know that identify as bisexual end up married to or in primary relationships with men.

  48. Leah says:

    the term gay is nonsense! it’s about visibility, effeminate homosexual men. a lot of men are masculine and pass as heterosexual and commit homosexual acts with men. most if not all these men consider themselves straight, they have sex with men on the down low, most of the time oral sex and they don’t consider that sex so they can be reassured whatevet they do is not even homosexuality, but it is! i’ve seen married men (cops, construction workers, delivery guys, military etc) swaping oral sex with each other to completion (ejaculation, swallowing each others semen) tell me it’s not gay or homosexual. the fact is that bisexual, masculine men who have sex with men are self-loathing homosexuals. the media are responsible too, the world is more complex than just black or white, straight or gay! Obama is not black, he’s a biracial man raised in a white ennvironment, yet he sees himself as a black male, it’s easier for people to understand…

  49. Janky says:

    And you just confirmed you’re a total shithead, even if you’re mocking those results.

  50. Jviking says:

    @Jim: wow, thanks so much for your hateful and ignorant views! We definitely did not have enough people calling bisexuals sluts before, thank GOD you threw your cheap two cents in. I would like to point out something for any other ignorant readers here: bisexuality does not strictly refer to the act of sex, but also romantic inclinations and a desire. Just as it is possible to be a heterosexual virgin, it is possible to be a homosexual or bisexual virgin. So stick that in your bigot pipe and smoke it.

    That stupidity aside, I have a question about these blogs in general that has been driving me nuts. When you run the stats on words that pop up on people’s profiles, how can you account for people who say things like “here’s some stuff that I don’t like: country, hot dogs…”? Do those get added to the category of stuff they like or ignored somehow? I imagine that would really change some of these numbers from time to time.