I live in one of the least boring states in America, according to this list

• A site called BestLife produced a ranking of the U.S. states based on how boring they are.
• Some of the factors taken into account include the number of bars and the number of elderly people in a state.
• The rankings are a bit suspect, with Rhode Island being deemed the least boring state in the country.

Now, I’m not one to judge a state based on any type of criteria (except maybe how well they handled the coronavirus outbreak), but when it comes to ranking states based on how exciting or boring they are, I think I’d have some pretty good guesses. Or at least I thought I would before I read this ranking of all 50 states by BestLife.

The site used a number of, well, let’s just say interesting metrics to rate each state and assign it a “Boring Index” rating. The site then ranked the states based on their rating. There’s really no easy way to say this, so I’ll just say it: I find this list highly suspect.

So, there are a number of things that factor into the “Boring Index” rating for each state. Using data from the US Census and other sources, the site decided on the following metrics:

• Population Density
• Population over 65
• Percentage of homes with children
• Marriage rate
• Bars per 100,000 residents

As someone who lives in Wisconsin — which happens to be ranked #48, meaning its one of the least boring states in the country, I have to say that using bars as a metric to rate how exciting a place is to live is kinda silly. On top of that, I’m not entirely sure how residents being married or having kids factors into how boring the state itself is. You’d expect exciting states to have a lot of things to do, like parks and amusements, maybe movie theaters or sports stadiums, and the like. Bars? Babies? Ehhhhhhhh… I don’t know about any of this.

Anyway, the top 10 most boring states based on this particular rating scale are:

1. Utah
2. Arkansas
3. New Mexico
4. Mississippi
5. New Hampshire
6. Alabama
7. Virginia
8. Arizona
9. Maine
10. Kentucky

Okay, fine. I guess I don’t consider any of those states to be super-duper exciting, but I also don’t know that I’d classify them as particularly boring. If you’re feeling a little weird about these rankings, just wait until you see the top 10 least boring states:

1. Rhode Island
2. New Jersey
3. Wisconsin
4. North Dakota
5. Montana
6. Massachusetts
7. South Dakota
8. Connecticut
9. New York
10. Iowa

Oh, come on! I mean, I would never rank Wisconsin as one of the least boring states and I’ve lived here my entire life. The Dakotas? Montana? Rhode Island? It looks to me like this is purely based on which states have the most single people and the most bars. If that’s what you think of when you’re looking for “excitement,” then I guess this list is for you. If not, well, then just check out the entire list and have yourself a good laugh.