This New England Town Ranked One of the Most ‘Smiley’ in U.S.
Editor's note: This article was written by a Townsquare Media Northern New England contributor and may contain the individual's views, opinions, or personal experiences.
The horror film “Smile” continues to dominate at the box office, putting a whole new spin on the universal sign of happiness. And, I mean this with all due respect, one New England town may be doing the same, as it was just ranked one of the “most smiley” towns in all of the U.S.
According to the website HouseFresh.com, Worcester, Massachusetts, is not only filled with more smiles than any city in New England; it’s among the 20 most smiley cities in all of the U.S.
Now, I have great respect for Worcester. It brought me lots of smiles as a kid when I saw The Undertaker take out his anger towards cucumbers on WWE Superstars at the Worcester Centrum.
Worcester is also the hometown of comedian Denis Leary, who has brought us countless smiles. But even Denis may check to make sure he was only smoking his trademark cigarette after hearing this news.
Worcester? Smiley? For that matter…any major New England city? Smiley??
Like most things these days, it all comes down to the analytics, particularly data acquired using social media. HouseFresh.com used Microsoft’s face recognition technology to analyze selfies taken throughout the U.S.
From there, they tracked a database of Instagram selfies in each state and the nation’s 100 largest cities to see which places are the happiest places to live. Sadly, no New England town or city made the list of “happiest” that was topped by Concord, California.
But when it came to the list of smiles (again, topped by Concord), there was Worcester at number 18 behind Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and ahead of Denton, Texas.
This seems to be part of a happy trend for the Bay State, as Cambridge was recently named the best city to raise a family in the U.S. and second-safest for Trick-or-Treating.
Who knows what’s leading residents to go from Massholes to Pilgrins. Maybe people are just happy to be out and about again, or perhaps it’s all the evil spirits who’ve grown tired of Salem’s harsh winters and migrated to Florida.