America The Mood Ring
Thanks to Mashable for finding this awesome infographic made by researchers at Harvard and Northeastern Universities. It shows, “…analyze the sentiments we collectively expressed in 300 million tweets over three years against a scholarly word list, these researchers also mashed up that data with information from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Google Maps API and more. What they ended up with was a fascinating visualization showing the pulse of our nation, our very moods as they fluctuate over time.”
They also made an awesome time lapse video!
Favorite Comment: Graphite jC from Tn says, “I think there is a correlation to how f#@&ing hot it is in the middle of the country.”
The only thing I learned from this is that the Midwest is generally pissed off.
lol me too, i thought i was happy
you forgot Virginia
sigh. virginia is like, constantly unhappy. im moving.
As a fellow virginian, I noticed that too. I see that as one of two things, either Virginia is a very unhappy state or we have few people twittering and those people are very sad people.
I vote for the first scenario.
I can explain why the middle states hate lunchtime. It’s because we’re doing all the work for people who come back from lunch with ideas in the eastern states. Same goes for the cali side to us. Not only does shit roll downhill, it follows the sun.
Hey, at least us eastern states don’t schedule 2 hour conference calls to start when you central and western states usually leave work…
I’m lookin’ at you, California…
So, if you live in that central band, you’re always miserable?
apparently ppl in california have lots of time to ‘like, express how good it feels to be in california’ like. WHere as those of us out East are tweeting things like “Hey, I sold something today!” and sold infers capitalism infers sadness? that’s my take…. biased? naaaaaaaaa
…what?
I do have to agree with you however, your comment is definitely biased. Incoherently so, but biased.
Love that Maine is pretty much always pissed off. Happiest we get is at around 7:00 in the morning, and even then it’s not “happy.”
And the unhappiest California gets is around rush-hour time.
This was supremely interesting.
Texans are happy after work 5pm-midnight and before it really gets going 5am-9am. They hate work time 9am-5pm and the middle of the night is for Texas haters too.
It would be more accurate if it graphed vs local time instead of always being on EST. I think if it represented the mood at the same time of day across the map you could better identify patterns. But maybe that wasn’t what Harvard wanted to do.
Haha my home state was happier than I thought it would be! And California’s always too freakin’ happy…maybe I don’t want to go there….
Dang I lives in california, and im always so depressed, i wonder wat id be like if i lived in freaking kentucky or whatever :]
I love how the midwest is pretty much always pissed off.
You would be too if all the manufacturing jobs went to China.
west virginia is always unhappy. if i lived there, i would be too.
Working those coal mines must suck.
Yes, yes you would! It effing sucks here! In my home town we had “Chicken Parades”(People dress us like chickens and ride floats through F*CKING MAIN STREET and give kids candy!!!!) because the main attraction is the Chicken Plants where the state’s Fried Chicken is made, Walmart, and the classic “The Civil War isn’t over yet and the Mexicans are stealing our chicken plant jobs!!!” racist trolls. So yeah, fun childhood… T_T
Why is Delaware so happy? Is there something in the water? Every other state in the area is red most of the time.
Y’know, as insane as florida is, it seems to be a happy insane.
I don’t know if this has anything to do with it, but doesn’t California have the most *cough* mary-j available in it? Mellows people out and it’s semi-legal.
Also, notice that New York is always angry. It gets to almost neutral, then goes immediately back to really unhappy. Are most of these reports coming from NYC, or is it split between the whole state?
I don’t get it – why would people be happy first thing in the morning? That’s the WORST time of day! If anything you get happier as the day goes on and by evening its wayhey! The same as Monday to Friday really…
I don’t agree. I’m by no means a morning person, but mornings are full of potential. You haven’t gone to work yet, and therefore you haven’t been bombarded by the fifty things that went wrong overnight (as an example).
I guess the people that are most likely to tweet something first thing in the morning are going to say something like, “Coffee is so good, I love it,” which probably triggers the “happy” words on Harvard’s list.
Maybe the Midwest is pissed off because of all the flooding.
I think there is a correlation to how f#@&ing hot it is in the middle of the country.
I think Iowa and the other mid-west states are dark red the entire time. With maybe the exception of missouri and illinois…lol. Maybe Midwesterners only tweet about complaints. Probably because they have to drive for like 30 minutes to get to work and people like to cut others off or drive like an old grandma….. lol idk.
Wisconsin… I am dissapoint.
why is wisconsin never happy?
First, the sample is Twitter users. It’s not the pulse of the nation, it’s the pulse of people who Tweet, which is still a vast minority of the US population.
Second, more to the point of how flawed any conclusions drawn from this are, I would submit that those people who are less likely to use Twitter are generally happier people anyway.
Most busy people I know are happy, and most of those happy, busy people have no time for twitter. Most barely check their e-mails and still have cell phones with nothing but a 10 key, if that. I’d like to see a study that quantifies the happiness-technology correlation (if it exists), but that requires researchers that get off their a**es and away from the computers.
No, the irony of this post is not lost on me.
It seems that New Mexico doesn’t use twitter at all .. or exist on this map. Interesting to know. I bet it’s the happiest of all states for being mostly excluded!
I love how Indiana (my state) stayed red most of the time and was always distinguishable from its neighboring states due to its unhappier coloring.
Well if ur from indiana you should know the only thing to do here is complain about how boring it is here lol
Why was the entirety of America pissed off at 3 PM? Well, at least New Englanders are slightly less pissy than the rest of the country besides CA and FL.
Can you really measure happiness by evaluating the words used on twitter?
Well, some words have a more positive connotation than others (e.g. “scent” has more of a positive connotation than “stench.”) All that one would have to do is give these words a positive or negative value corresponding to the degree of the connotation of the word, then allow a computer to look through all of the entries on twitter for data, perhaps setting aside some words that were not inputted at the start (like “Blararghargh”) and asking the user later.
The biggest issue I can see with that is that the computer would not catch sarcasm, and that issue might be eliminated with pattern-matching, i.e. someone follows up their sad post with a
(or similar) then it could be considered happy… or something.
Holy crap Indiana (my home) didnt turn green once. we must be some mad mofos
The only two states that can be said as “constantly happy” on this map is Florida and California. There are moderate exceptions in Delaware and Kentucky. When you think about it, there’s not ~too~ much Florida and California, at least Culturewise, really don’t have in common. Both states have a large Spanish-Speaking Immigrant population, both states are known for their beaches, and both states experience year-round good weather. Both states have a very large population – California and Florida are 1st and 4th respectively – and both states have a remarkably high amount of Beta World Cities with 1 major city. (Miami and Los Angeles). Their Geography and Political Views are the only thing that radically differ (California is relatively mountainous, and has deserts and is majority democratic, Florida is relatively flat, humid, with a swampy inland and leaning slightly to Republican side).
What I do NOT get is why Delaware and Kentucky are “on and off” happy. Can someone from either of those two states please give an adequate explanation to me?
Wow… New Jersians sure are morning people.
Wow thats not right, I mean NY iz not always pissed, try doing this on a day of a Yankees game
Well, Delaware always seems chipper.
Hahaa. I’m a texan, and this is hysterically true.
We’re happy in the wee hours of the morning and from 8 to midnight.
It’s too damn hot to be happy from 9 to 6.(:
Washington State, never happy never angry… just blah… at least it’s the truth *sigh* back to working in the rain, as usual.
apparently MN (and much of the midwest) is an unhappy place.
Why you so down, Indiana?