What Our Favorite Athletes' Twittering Says About Their Sexuality

Barry Petchesky|published: Wed 22nd July, 02:00 2009

You can learn a lot from a person's Twitter account, like "I'm an attention whore," and...well, that's about it. But thanks to a new tool, we can analyze our sports heroes' tweets for clues to their sexual preference.

The Stockholm Gay Pride Festival has put together a good time-waster of a program that will analyze the Twitter feed of any user, look for key words and estimate their heterosexuality. So naturally we used it on a bunch of pro athletes. It goes without saying that this is all for novelty purposes only, highly unscientific, and please don't sue us Chad Ochocinco.

What did we learn?

-The most famous jock Twitterer of all, Shaq, had to be first analyzed. With his key words of "bucket," "blow," "body," "blonde," and "dude," his 79% hetero rating seems a little generous.

-The straight arrow award goes to Andy Roddick, whose key words of "ass," "boozer," "bike," "wow," and "office" score him a 92% hetero rating and a supermodel wife.

-The not-that-there's-anything-wrong-with-that award goes to skateboarder Ryan Sheckler, who probably should have tweeted less about "new york," "shopping," "soho," "meatpacking," and "ass."

-Stereotypes enforced: the female athletes score consistently low, except for the Williams sisters. Particularly damaging were multiple tweets including the words "butch," "booty," and "pride."

-Stereotypes broken: also scoring fairly low were the MMA fighters on the list. To be fair, they talked an awful lot about "gym," "body," "partners," and "cruising."

A presentation of scores and key words from a number of athletes:

Nick Swisher: 57% hetero. Key words: new york, milk, big game, coming out, wow

Chris Cooley: 72% hetero. Key words: shop, bear, blow, rent, bruno

Quinton Jackson: 30% hetero. Key words: ass, birthday party, black jack, gym, body

Seimone Augustus: 54% hetero. Key words: booty, loring park, pride, shopping, cute

Lance Armstrong: 83% hetero. Key words: survivor, barcelona, bob, miami, clueless

Chad Ochocino: 31% hetero. Key words: ass, gym, barcelona, fame, south beach

Natalie Gulbis: 48% hetero. Key words: butch, orlando, condo, bucket, community

Dwight Howard: 59% hetero. Key words: pink, bruno, body, chips

Andrew Bogut: 62% hetero. Key words: bashing, homo, gay, available, drag

Michelle Wie: 65% hetero. Key words: partners, orlando, intentions, bunny, body

Stewart Cink: 88% hetero. Key words: master, bob, milk, bbq, golf