Bemidji ranked one of the most mosquito-hating cities...on Twitter, at least

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Updated:: Mar 8, 2018
Original:: May 18, 2015

Either the mosquitos in Bemidji are really bad, or Bemidjians just really, really don't like mosquitos.

The northern Minnesota city has managed to tweet its way into the top 10 of a survey by pest control giant Terminix, which ranked U.S. cities based on how loudly they share their dislike of the blood-sucking insects on social media.

According to a news release published Monday, the Memphis-based company tracked mosquito-related posts on Twitter and used geo-tagging to determine their cities of origin. Specifically, they were looking for tweets venting their users' frustration about the vampiric little fliers.

Terminix says they took a "per capita" approach, adjusting the results to reflect the size of each city, and that methodology put Goodland, Kansas in first place, with the "worst whining" about mosquitos.

Bemidji ranked in seventh place and is the only Minnesota city in the top 10.

Interestingly, the analysis found women are significantly more expressive about mosquitos than men, who were responsible for only about 38 percent of the tweets (as opposed to women's 62 percent).

The study also indicated that "kill," "itch" and "hate" were among the top words associated with mosquito mentions on Twitter, which, if you've ever been bitten by one, is probably not terribly surprising.