Ah, San Jose. Home of the Sharks, the Tech Museum of Innovation, expensive apartments, and finger-free chili, it might seem to the casual observer that the tenth largest city in the US has plenty of exciting features to keep it fresh in the mind of the American public. Not so, say the wunderkinds over at FiveThirtyEight, who note that based on a data set they reviewed, our neighbor to the south appears to be "the most forgettable major American city."
To come to this conclusion the site looked at data from Sporcle, an online quiz site, that showed the results of over 500,000 people asked to name "the 100 most populous U.S. cities."
More than 99 percent of quiz takers name New York as one of the 100 most populous cities, more than any other city. About 90 percent name San Francisco and San Diego. But just two out of three remember San Jose before the allotted 12 minutes is up. That makes it the least named city of any of the 10 most populous ones. And people are more likely to remember much smaller cities, such as Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Cincinnati.
FiveThirtyEight then obtained data from Google regarding searches for cities in the United States, and the site says "the [Google] data matched Sporcle extremely closely." Meaning, in relation to city size, just not that many people are searching for "San Jose."
“It’s fair to say we don’t bat our weight in terms of marketing and reputation,” San Jose's mayor, Sam Liccardo, told the publication.
San Jose is widely known for one thing, however: Dudes. Its lack of gender diversity has earned the city the nickname of "Man Jose." A fact which, we have to believe, only helped it in the search rankings.
