Minnesotans are ill-tempered tweeters

The above video shows the mood of the United States over a two-day period as interpreted by various words used on Twitter. Green indicates a good mood, red indicates a foul mood, and pale yellow indicates the middle area. The size of the states scale up and down according to how many tweets were posted at that particular time.

As you can see, Minnesota rarely makes it out of the red. There are a few times when it sneaks into the yellow, but for the most part, we are a grumpy people, at least according to our Twitter activity and this study.

Speaking of which, here’s the official website. You’ll notice that the poster version of the data shows Minnesota tinged with a bit of green in the very early morning, indicating that on certain days, at around 6am, we apparently can drum up a tiny amount of positive spirit on the internet.

11 Comments

  1. Lojasmo Lojasmo on July 25, 2010 at 9:45 am

    Video crashes my browser every time. Damn it!

  2. Lithis Lithis on July 25, 2010 at 1:05 pm

    Lojasmo: The video doesn’t play for me on PDD, but the same video on YouTube works. It played in HTML5 in my browser; you might have luck toggling your HTML5 setting if you still have trouble at YouTube.

  3. Barrett Chase Barrett Chase on July 25, 2010 at 7:29 pm

    I think I might have fixed it.

  4. EvilResident EvilResident on July 26, 2010 at 4:34 am

    How are they making this decision? What words do they use? If it’s “swear words,” than I can say that a lot of people swear even when they’re happy.

    Also, the ages of people who tweet are probably different in different areas. I’d imagine that in the Midwest, it’s more teenagers, and on the coasts, the age range is probably wider. That’s pure speculation.

    Either way, I know what Tweeting is, but I’ve never actually twat before. Is that the right conjugation? Whatever.

  5. Jim M Jim M on July 26, 2010 at 8:31 am

    Wow! Georgia has more mood swings than my ex girlfriend.

  6. W.T.F W.T.F on July 26, 2010 at 8:37 am

    Evidently everyone is pissed off cause I don’t see any green on the map you posted. On another note I believe, technically speaking, one who tweets is a twit.

  7. Barrett Chase Barrett Chase on July 26, 2010 at 8:58 am

    The words were taken from the National Institute of Mental Health’s “Affective Norms for English Words” (ANEW) list. I don’t know what those words are, but if you follow the link in my main post, there’s another link that leads to a form you can fill out to request the list from the University of Florida. Which seems a teensy bit overcomplicated to me.

  8. Barrett Chase Barrett Chase on July 26, 2010 at 9:00 am

    W.T.F. — watch the video. Most of the green happens on the west coast and in Florida.

  9. W.T.F W.T.F on July 26, 2010 at 10:43 am

    I speculate that the west coast happiness is related to large quantities of readily available high quality weed. The Florida mirth is related to a large portion of the population being extremely well medicated geriatrics.

  10. Karasu Karasu on July 27, 2010 at 9:15 am

    The slight green at 6 a.m. is the flash of those goddamn cheerful morning people before they start annoying the rest of us.

  11. Julian Julian on July 27, 2010 at 3:58 pm

    Do the well-medicated older folks use twitter, though?

    I’m as intrigued by the relative sizes as the other info.

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