It’s Not You. It’s Not Me. It’s This Town.

Washington might have more single people than most US cities, but it’s still a terrible place to find love, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data released this week by Facebook. DC has the second lowest percentage of people switching their Facebook status to “in a relationship” of the 50 cities most active on the site. DC trails only San Francisco for stuck singletons.

Other major cities—New York, Los Angeles, and Atlanta—round out the cold-hearted bottom five.

Then again, the Journal’s conclusions are less than scientific. Many people don’t bother to change their relationship status even when they find a partner, whether for security reasons or simply not caring to do so. (Facebook might encourage it, but we’re not at The Circle-levels of surveillance just yet.) But Washington’s digital love-life isn’t entirely grim. DC only ranked 12th in the percentage of the Facebook-users who registered single overall. If you really want to go fishing, try Detroit, which was No. 1 for singles as a percentage of users.

But if you’re really looking to fall in love, the top cities for getting into relationships—or at least advertising it on social media—are Colorado Springs, Colorado; El Paso, Texas; and Louisville, Kentucky.

Then again, maybe people in Washington really are just that unloveable, which really isn’t a new finding.

Benjamin Freed

Staff Writer

Benjamin Freed joined Washingtonian in August 2013 and covers politics, business, and media. He was previously the editor of DCist and has also written for Washington City Paper, the New York Times, the New Republic, Slate, and BuzzFeed. He lives in Adams Morgan.