There's one pesky follower Twitter users wouldn't mind losing. New Yorkers are leading the nation in a futile Twitter campaign against mosquitoes, registering more than 27,000 concise complaints since the start of 2015. Their furious thumbs are followed by tweets from Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Atlanta.
This coast-to-coast, 140-character griping was captured by Terminix, provider of termite and mosquito control services. The company combed through more than 500,000 tweets to discover where skeeters are getting on tweeters' nerves the most. The top 50 cities buzzing about mosquitoes are:
1.New York, N.Y.
2. Los Angeles, Calif.
3. Chicago, Ill.
4. Houston, Texas
5. Atlanta, Ga.
6. Washington, D.C.
7. Dallas, Texas
8. Miami, Fla.
9. Boston, Mass.
10. San Francisco, Calif.
11. Austin, Texas
12. Seattle, Wash.
13. Philadelphia, Pa.
14. Minneapolis, Minn.
15. New Orleans, La.
16. Cleveland, Ohio
17. Indianapolis, Ind.
18. Baton Rouge, La.
19. Phoenix, Ariz.
20. Columbus, Ohio
21. Las Vegas, N.V.
22. Sacramento, Calif.
23. Baltimore, Md.
24. San Antonio, Texas
25. Ft. Worth, Texas
26.San Diego, Calif.
27. Orlando, Fla.
28. Wichita, Kan.
29. Mesa, Ariz.
30. Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
31. Portland, Ore.
32. Kansas City, Mo.
33. Denver, Colo.
34. Milwaukee, Wis.
35. Tucson, Ariz.
36. Buffalo, N.Y.
37. Irvine, Calif.
38. Honolulu, Hawaii
39. Cincinnati, Ohio
40. Charlotte, N.C.
41. Memphis, Tenn.
42. San Jose, Calif.
43. Tampa, Fla.
44. Salt Lake City, Utah
45. Detroit, Mich.
46. Akron, Ohio
47. Norfolk, Va.
48. Fresno, Calif.
49. Pittsburgh, Pa.
50. Lansing, Mich.
"For most people, mosquito control means incessant swatting, open flames and noxious aerosols," said Stan Cope Ph.D., director of entomology and regulatory services for Terminix. "We want these tweeters and regular bite victims to know they have simple, professional options."
Additional discoveries from the Terminix Twitter study include:
• If the cities were ranked per capita, Glasgow, Mont., would come in at No. 1, followed by Kingsville, Texas; Key West, Florida; Aberdeen, South Dakota; and Woodward, Okla.
• A majority of the tweets paired 'mosquito' with 'bites,' 'outside' or 'summer;' many turned violent with 'kill,' 'control' or some choice expletives; and a significant number reflected current headlines with 'GMO' and 'Zika.'
• The most-used hashtags include: #Zika, #ZikaVirus, #Health, #Summer and #Bugs.
• Women tend to have the itchiest fingers, claiming responsibility for 63 percent of the total tweets.
To find the nation's most bitter bite victims, Terminix analyzed 510,234 geo-tagged tweets shared between Jan. 1, 2015, and April 24, 2016, mentioning 'mosquito' as a pest. Rankings were determined based on the number of English-language tweets in each U.S. city. Terminix used Crimson Hexagon social media analytics software to collect this data from Twitter.