America is the swearing capital of the world. New research shows that American social media users use more swear words than users in any other country.
A state-by-state breakdown shows that Maryland residents are the biggest offenders when it comes to swearing, followed by residents of Louisiana, Georgia and Virginia.
The top ten most cursed capitals in the US were completed by: Ohio, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New Jersey and Michigan.
But New York was noticeably absent from the list – compiled by the online Scrabble game WordTips – surprising locals.
“That can’t be true,” a New Yorker shouted at a street reporter after he was informed of the findings.
WordTips analysts found that 66.3 tweets per 1,000 in Maryland contained profanity, making it the state with the most profanity in the US.
WordTips analyzed 1.7 million geotagged tweets to determine where residents of English-speaking countries swear the most.
The findings showed that Maryland residents cursed 66.3 tweets per 1,000 published posts.
In Louisiana, this figure was slightly lower, at 61.7 per 1,000 tweets.
The study also found that Baltimore had the highest incidence of online swearing.
Approximately 78.2 out of 1,000 tweets posted by someone from Baltimore contained profane language.
This was followed by Baton Rouge (Louisiana), Atlanta (Georgia), Detroit (Michigan) and Houston (Texas).
“It used to be that the only media you could consume was highly edited. Now, with social media, we suddenly have direct access to people’s informal language,” author Benjamin Bergen told WordTips.
“If we have access to people’s informal communication and there’s more swearing, that just means we’re going to be more exposed to it. That’s going to normalize it and people are going to get used to it.”
New York ranked a lowly 17th on the list, below Delaware, Michigan and California.
One notable New York city that ranked high on the list is Buffalo, which scored 48.8 per 1,000 tweets, making it the area in the state with the most foul-mouthed people talking about.
Louisiana came in second, with a score of 61.7 out of 1,000 tweets. Baton Rouge was also ranked as the second most foul-mouthed city in the U.S.
One notable New York city that made the list was Buffalo, with a score of 48.8 per 1,000 tweets, making it the dirtiest area in the state
Buffalo has been in the news in recent years for free speech issues, with an incident from 2016 flaring up again earlier this year.
X users in the US were found to use significantly more swear words than users in other countries.
On average, 41.6 tweets per 1,000 posts from US accounts contain a swear word.
In the United Kingdom this figure fell to 28.6, in Australia to 26.6, in New Zealand to 25.2 and in Canada to 24.6.