Do You Live in the Funniest City in the United States? (If You Live Anywhere in Texas, You Do Not)

Chicago and Boston were among the funniest, while Texas and Florida were at the bottom

If you are from Chicago, you are HIIIIIILARIOUS. If you are from Fort Worth, Texas, well, you probably have other things going for you. We hope. Such are the results of a new study that determined the funniest city in the United States.

Dr. Peter McGraw, University of Colorado professor and author of The Humor Code: A Global Search for What Makes Things Funny, partnered with the Humor Research Lab to created the Humor Algorithm, or, as they explain it, "the most comprehensive analysis of humorous cities ever attempted."

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"Over a nine-month period, the team collected extensive data for the project," the study explains. "First, they mined the Internet and the comedy industry for a variety of objective measures."

Those measures were:

• Frequency of visits to Cheezburger comedy websites, such as Lolcats and FAIL Blog
• Number of comedy clubs per square mile in each city
• Traveling comedians' ratings of each city's comedy-club audiences
• Number of famous comedians born in each city, divided by city population
• Number of famous funny tweeters living in each city, divided by city population
• Number of comedy radio stations available in each city
• Frequency of humor-related web searches originating in each city

HuRL then traveled to various cities across America and interviewed the residents, asking them about the favorite types of entertainment, whether sense of humor was something they looked for in a partner or friend, and more.

Here are the results:

1. Chicago, IL: "For a place that's the funniest city in the country, Chicago doesn't seem to boast a lot of jokes! Many Chicago residents surveyed noted that they could not think of any zingers, since they prefer to mine observational humor from the situations in which they find themselves." (TLDR: Chicago likes improv.)

2. Boston, MA: Favorite joke? "Two fish swim into a bar. The first fish says, ‘I'll have some H20.' The second fish says, ‘I'll have some H20 too.' The second fish died." (If you don't get it, the study notes Boston prefers "dry, intellectual humor.")

3. Atlanta, GA: Favorite joke? "What do you call a black pilot? A pilot, you racist."

4. Washington, DC: "Is it any surprise that Washington, D.C. residents joke about politics? Much of this comedy appears to be cynical cracks about the frustrations of government work and political networking."

5. Portland, OR: Their comedy style? "Quirky, absurd, and just plain weird." You don't need to tell us that. We've seen Portlandia. We know.

And rounding out the Top 10:

6. New York, NY
7. Los Angeles, CA
8. Denver, CO
9. San Francisco, CA
10. Seattle, WA

Meanwhile, here are the cities that ranked lowest in the study. 

41. El Paso, TX
42. Tucson, AZ
43. Las Vegas, NV
44. Virginia Beach, VA
45. Tulsa, OK
46. Arlighton, TX
47. San Antonio, TX
48. Miami, FL
49. Jacksonville, FL
50. Fort Worth, TX

So, basically anywhere in Texas or Florida. No surprise there.

(H/T Laughing Squid)