A Depravity Metric

I recently had reason to use the phrase "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" (my sister's fiancé is having a bachelor party), and then a few days later I read an Onion article titled "What Happens At Yucca Mountain Stays At Yucca Mountain".  This got me to thinking that maybe it would be possible to roughly measure the reputation for depravity of a particular location by counting the number of Google hits for the phrase "what happens in PLACENAME stays in PLACENAME".  The results below are an interesting catalog of spring break hotspots, gambling meccas, and other places where you're likely to embarrass yourself.  Use it to plan your next vacation!

Methodology:  I first searched for "what happens in * stays in *" (and also "what happens in * * stays in * *" to catch the two-word place names), which produces an overwhelming number of hits for "vegas", so I filtered this out by searching for "what happens in * stays in *" -vegas. I also tried searching for "whatever...", but there were few hits and so I decided to ignore that variation.  I looked at the top couple of hundred hits, making a list of all the place names mentioned. Then I searched on the pattern for each place name I found, and made of note of the approximate number of Google hits.

Place Name	ghits	Comment
Vegas	13,000	Vegas, baby!
Dewey	1,720	Dewey Beach, Delaware—I had no idea
Mexico	948	Possibly inflated by the Toby Keith song "Stays in Mexico"
Cancun	467	+1 for "Cancún"
Las Vegas	312
Neverland	208	The ranch, presumably—[shudder]
the Keys	191	The Florida Keys
Michigan	190
Thailand	135
Cabo	115	Cabo San Lucas, Mexico
Jamaica	73
Miami	55
TJ	47	Tijuana, Mexico, also listed separately below
Iraq	46
Fallujah	34
Amsterdam	33
Texas	31
Florida	29
Canada	27
Tokyo	21
London	21
Bangkok	20
Europe	20
Chicago	20
Whistler	16	Whistler, British Columbia
Dallas	15
Tijuana	14
Daytona	13
DC	13
New York	13
Madison	12
Milwaukee	12
Reno	11
Korea	11
Louisiana	10
Africa	10
Bear Mountain	10
Havasu	10	Lake Havasu, AZ
Boston	9
Padre	8	South Padre Island, TX
NY	8
Boracay	7	Boracay Island, the Philippines
Paris	7
Spain	7
Detroit	6
Garden Grove	6
Redmond	6
Bristol	6
Colorado	5
Minnesota	5
Seattle	5
Redondo Beach	5
Russia	5
Milan	5
Baghdad	4
Dayton	4
Japan	4
FL	4	Fort Lauderdale or Florida?
Ybor	4	Tampa's Historic District
Cleveland	4
Vancouver	4
Wisconsin	3
Morocco	3
New Hampshire	3
Berlin	3
Jackson	3
Cannes	3
Britain	2
Stockholm	2
Tobago	2	Trinidad: 0.  Take that, Trinidad!
Shinjuku	2
Barcelona	2
Oakland	2	This doesn't bode well for the 2005 LSA meeting
Tribeca	2
Fort Lauderdale	2
Columbus	2
Olowalu	2	Maui
Panama City	2
Camrose	2

In addition to the examples with the real-world geographical names listed above, there were various other occurrences of the target sentence pattern, including ones with common noun phrases like "the class", "our room", "the limo", and also the more entertaining "Church camp" (WWJD?), "Spacecamp" (who knew?), "outbuildings" (eww), "Uranus", "Rumspringa", and "Britney" (heh).

So, based on this, it looks like our next vacation will be in Dewey, Delaware.  Don't worry, you won't have to read a post about what happens there—I know the rule.

Comments

[chris waigl]

Delightful. The expression is not particular journalistic, so is it a legit snowclone?

You could also change the preposition. For "at" you get a number of convention names (SF and other), plus "band camp" and the like. For "on", there's the road, the bus, the cruise, the field, the pitch, the ship ... I didn't count them, though.

[polyglot conspiracy]

This...is...brilliant.

I'm wondering why it didn't pick up New Orleans (= 88 hits), my personal favorite spot for depraved behaviors. Another thing I thought an "on" instead of "in" search might turn up were islands, traditionally hotbeds of depravity. Instead it seems to mostly pick up things about Mars. I was unaware that anything at all happened on Mars, really.

Sidenote, it makes me kind of sad that Fallujah made the list (and is, in fact, the first hit! Even though it's lowculture, still...).

[John Cowan]

I suspect that at the root of all these expressions is the Alcoholics Anonymous saying "What's said in the room stays in the room", which of course is about verbal accounts of depravity rather than depravity itself.

I have even heard this given, absurdly, as a principle for meetings at work! The whole point of having meetings is so that those who are there can report back on "what is said".

[Idle Fellow]

Great post! Various synonyms for online/on the net turn up hits.

Plus a Navy guy I know says that what happens at sea stays at sea.

[Miles]

In a few cases (such as Detroit) shouldn't it be "What happens in $PLACENAME gets buried in a $PLACENAME empty lot"?

[The Tensor]

>Plus a Navy guy I know says that what happens
>at sea stays at sea.

I think I've heard about that. I seem to recall a quotation that mentions rum, the lash...and what was that middle thing again?

[aelfheld]

The 'middle thing' now prefers white wine, the lash is silken, and anything that happens at sea was probably on a Carnival cruise.

[willyum]

"What happens here, stays here" is the original slogan.

http://www.casinocitytimes.com/news/article.cfm?contentID=153971

"What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" appears to be an offshoot.

[s9]

Why is San Francisco not on this list?

Apparently, what happens in San Francisco eventually goes viral, and pretty soon, they're even doing it in Svalbard fergawdzakes.

[Vincent Grady]

Well as a Delaware native maybe I can shed some light on the Dewey Beach reference and the underlining homophobic discourse that gives meaning to the statement. In Delaware, Dewey Beach has been a popular destination for the gay population in the surroundings area since at least the time i was a kid (25 years). In addition to a famous "gay beach", Dewey has a number of bars and restaurants that are gay friendly and or gay owned. The remark what happens in Dewey stays in Dewey is obviously an allusion to "down low" behavior by supposedly straight men, or men who are straight but enjoy deviating from their normal sexual behavior. Either way the statement further stigmatizes and marginalizes homosexuality and assumes that there is something deviant or deprave in engaging in sexual acts with the same sex. This is not surprising i guess given the homophobic society we live in.