The perfect place to find love. via Flickr user Nick Sherman

There is nothing worse in the game of romance than the missed connection. If we didn’t know any better, we would think that all of these passive-aggressive, middle school-style love notes were all written by aspiring comedians trying to come up with the most ridiculous scenarios to not engage a person you’re interested in banging. But, they’re real, terribly terribly real, and sometimes people study them. Like a researcher at Psychology Today, who mapped out where the most Missed Connections occur in each state, and made a handy infographic out of it.

As you can see, a lot of it seems to fit into the stereotypes of plenty of the states. Okies can’t bear to talk to each other at the state fair, Utah is a hotbed of barely suppressed collegiate hormones, America’s worst states form a kind of “L” shape of missed connections in a Wal-Mart. And New York has the subway.

Which, yes, you shouldn’t be obnoxiously hitting on someone in a subway car, but our experience is that you can in fact talk to someone you don’t know on the subway. It happens. Just approach it like any other situation in life, i.e., if the person makes eye contact or smiles or generally shows interest in actually talking with you, then talk to him. And then if he doesn’t want to give you his number, well that happens. Maybe you’ll get an awesome, subtle burn of a rejection like we got once. But at least you won’t be a wuss whining about your infatuation to Craigslist.