Craigslove

Love in the time of Craigslist

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Blogpost #3

This week we continued to make progress on clustering posts. We’ve working on separating out data into groups, performing clustering on each of those groups, and comparing the resulting clusters.

Since last time, we’ve improved our clustering algorithm so we can now draw more meaningful insights from the clusters–– rather than simply seeing the top terms per cluster, we can also now see other information about the posts in each cluster, such as the city it was posted in it, the “type” of post (i.e. woman seeking man), or the “category” of the post, like “platonic.”

In this example, we ran the clustering algorithm on a random sample of 100,000 posts written by men and 100,000 posts written by women. Each of these groups include both ‘romantic’ and ‘platonic’ categories of posts, including varying queries such as ‘man seeking woman’, ‘man seeking man’, ‘man seeking trans’, etc.

As a result of the 2-means clustering on each of these groups, male-written posts clustered into two groups which we dubbed the "casual sex" cluster and the "romance" cluster. Female-written posts clustered into two groups which we dubbed the "friendship" cluster and the "relationship" cluster.

male poster - cluster 1

(the "casual sex" cluster)

insights

This cluster seems to represent posts written by men that are likely looking for casual sex. Words like 'travel,' 'host,' and 'discreet' indicate that the poster is looking to set up a meeting immediately. Many posts in this cluster are written by men who are seeking another man, multiple men, or trans men and women.

top terms

host, suck, cock, top, bottom, stat, clean, fuck, discreet, white, play, free, travel, nice, fun, love, prefer, email, body, open

category distribution

4014 posts tagged as "miscellaneous romance"

25 posts tagged as "strictly platonic"

top types

m4m, 0.015240618922541704

m4mm, 0.0058139534883720929

m4t, 0.0038659793814432991

m4w, 0.00062360751276978115

m4mw, 0.00060975609756097561

top cities

jacksonville, 0.010692804633548674

washingtondc, 0.010088816073122359

sfbay, 0.0089880322396808602

providence, 0.0087665143844919118

chicago, 0.0085959885386819486

denver, 0.0085023784788670793

dallas, 0.0083261058109280143

newyork, 0.0081342833585606872

male poster - cluster 2

(the "romance" cluster)

insights

This cluster contains posts written by men that may be seeking romance, love, or friendship. The most represented types in this cluster are men that are seeking one woman (m4w), multiple women (m4ww), men and women (m4mw) and trans men and women (m4t).

top terms

love, fun, friend, time, interest, seek, meet, work, nice, enjoy, white, email, open, free, thing, find, well, great, long, play

category distribution

5026 posts tagged as "miscellaneous romance"

935 posts tagged as "strictly platonic"

top types

m4ww, 0.035999999999999997

m4mw, 0.025000000000000001

m4w, 0.022336487275572161

m4t, 0.016752577319587628

m4mm, 0.011627906976744186

m4m, 0.007414983380209665

top cities

oklahomacity, 0.014692787177203919

minneapolis, 0.013712477475497737

losangeles, 0.013566938763901136

denver, 0.013314013888129477

chicago, 0.013180515759312322

sfbay, 0.012830741675486444

dallas, 0.012508432109472873

providence, 0.012470675392023707

female poster - cluster 1

(the "relationship" cluster)

insights

This cluster contains posts by women that may be seeking romance or relationship. Words like 'relationship' 'love' 'single' and 'attract' indicate that these posters are looking for more than friendship.

top terms

love, time, fun, seek, interest, meet, single, life, picture, female, relationship, work, email, thing, attract, real, enjoy, find, year, ladies

category distribution

6217 posts tagged as "miscellaneous romance"

1665 posts tagged as "strictly platonic"

top types

w4m, 0.27408056042031526

w4t, 0.23762376237623761

w4w, 0.22351871495681164

w4mm, 0.21428571428571427

w4mw, 0.19727891156462585

w4ww, 0.16666666666666666

top cities

newyork, 0.020132658963094227

jacksonville, 0.020049008687903765

seattle, 0.019932622122403144

dallas, 0.017731521634383733

sfbay, 0.017650411137344297

losangeles, 0.016126738530674933

lasvegas, 0.015303119482048263

oklahomacity, 0.014841199168892847

female poster - cluster 2

(the "friends" cluster)

insights

This cluster contains post written by women looking for friends. Many of the posts are categorized as women seeking multiple women, multiple men and women, trans men and women, or another woman. Words like 'movie' 'drink' 'friend' 'talk' indicate that these female posters are looking for friendship. The majority of posts in this cluster are tagged as "strictly platonic"

top terms

friend, hang, love, female, fun, time, meet, email, talk, interest, year, work, movie, thing, people, go, drink, hope, live, find

category distribution

804 posts tagged as "miscellaneous romance"

1314 posts tagged as "strictly platonic"

top types

w4ww, 0.14102564102564102

w4mw, 0.12730806608357628

w4t, 0.099009900990099015

w4w, 0.08774056675253826

w4mm, 0.057142857142857141

w4m, 0.044483362521891417

top cities

lasvegas, 0.0063138744716143185

jacksonville, 0.0062374693695700601

miami, 0.0056550424128180964

dallas, 0.0056471041726896022

seattle, 0.0054900492856697234

denver, 0.0045109081961834984

sfbay, 0.0044614507856386874

newyork, 0.0042701911125878345