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"We're getting progressively unhappier according to a recent University of Vermont study, which analyzed more than 46 billion words tweeted by 63 million users around the globe. 'We're at our lowest point now in four years as far as our measure of happiness through Twitter goes,' says Peter Dodds, an applied mathematician at UVM and the lead author of the study. The 46 billion words Dodds and his team analyzed varied widely—everything from 'pancakes' to 'suicide'—which they then compared to scores given to the most common 10,000 words in the English language. For instance, a word such as 'laughter' earned an average 'happiness score' of 8.5 out of 9, while the word 'terrorist' got 1.30."
This sounds faulty. Sometimes I tweet "suicide" when I'm quite happy, and I've never seen anyone tweet "laughter" because that wouldn't make any sense.
The results had to have been tainted by my "Free Blowjob Terrorist" and "Keeping the Laughter in 'Slaughter'" viral marketing campaigns.
@Moff Glad you're back, btw.
@dntsqzthchrmn: Aw, shucks, ma'am.
That's why I'm happy when it rains.
Don't think I've ever once paused during a blissful moment to rush to Twitter and remark about how awesome it is. But I've spent countless hours bitching and moaning about the postal service, bad customer experiences, and poor performances by sports teams. But I'm sure they controlled for all of that because they wouldn't want this very important research to be inaccurate.
"Pancake Suicide" = my new brunchcore band