How was your October?
I’ve opened up the comments on this post to all free and paid subscribers because I would really like to know.
This pandemic has been really hard on many of us. I’ve been very privileged to be able to work from home, spend extra time with family, as well as start exploring the things I enjoy in more depth, like game development and writing.
There have also been times of anger, depression, and just general sadness about the world. Even though we live in one of the greatest eras, even with a pandemic, there’s nothing wrong with allowing yourself to feel sorrow. You don’t have to feel guilty for your experience, regardless of how much worse others may have it.
Can Tweets Measure Happiness? Exploring the Twitter Hedonometer
An absolutely fantastic episode of Reply All, a podcast from Gimlet Media, took one of the hosts, Alex Goldman, down an interesting rabbit hole of the Twitter Hedonometer. I hadn’t heard about the hedonometer, but a group of researchers, starting in 2007 wanted to see if they could find a way to measure global happiness by using what people tweet.
“as a person who has to experience the world like, you can't tell your unhappiness that other people have it worse really. Like I've never found that to be a particularly useful strategy”
The episode goes into much more detail, but basically, over the years they have been refining lists of words that are ranked from sad to happy. They take this list and parse tweet data to see what words are showing up more or less frequently and that gives a happiness score of the world.
A couple of the more interesting points that I found involved how after many major events, like the death of George Floyd, it took a day to see the collective sadness that hit as people began accepting what happened. And this is a common trend. After a major event, we tend to need some time to collectively feel what actually just happened. It seems the brain puts us on a bit of an auto-pilot until we have a chance to catch up with our emotions.
Unfortunately, a more depressing statistic is that 2020 has been the saddest year on record and since March, it has continued to break the sadness record. It appears that there is no bottom to how low 2020 is making us collectively feel. This is why I think when PJ, the other co-host, said, “as a person who has to experience the world like, you can't tell your unhappiness that other people have it worse really. Like I've never found that to be a particularly useful strategy” I couldn’t get this episode out of my head. It may be very true that we are collectively having a harder time and that many people are having a tougher time than we may be having individually, but that does not negate the feelings we have about what’s happening.
What does matter though, is doing what we can to help each other out.
Craving Connection
If you’ve been reading all of the newsletters, you might have noticed a theme that’s developed recently; connection. I’ve been craving the type of connection we used to take for granted. Though I have been able to spend more time with my kids and my partner, I miss the spontaneous, casual conversation with random strangers.
I’ve found myself spending more time connecting on Twitter because of this, and some really interesting conversations have come from it. In fact, after listening to the Reply All episode, I felt compelled to reach out to one of the hosts, Alex Goldman, because, as the episode laid out, he’s been having a hard time.
It was really difficult to hear someone (even someone I’ve never met), who brings me so much joy, talk about feeling defeated and depressed. Now, I’m not delusional or believe I can solve anyone’s problems (I have enough trouble with my own), but I do believe there’s a part in all of us that, when we hear someone having a hard time, we want to reach out. Maybe it will make a difference, maybe it won’t, but I think we’d all be better off if we listen to that little voice a little more often and make that extra connection.
This newsletter has really been my outlet for connection. It’s my way to reach out and hopefully spark something in someone that makes us feel connected. Since we can’t share in a pint and a great conversation at a pub, maybe we can share a few comments in the comment section or a couple of tweets.
Enjoying what you are reading? Help keep this newsletter going by becoming a subscriber. There are new experimental posts coming soon that will be available to subscribers only. Thanks for reading!
Bots for the Win
Any Mandolorian fans out there?
Did anyone happen to catch the Mandolorian bot on Twitter? It’s a fairly ingenious little bot that starts with a promoted tweet asking you to subscribe, then @mentions anyone who did in a weekly tweet reminder to catch the new episode.
I saw the original add, but completely ignored it, then happened to catch the above tweet and decided to give it a shot. "This is the way”.
This got me thinking about the uses of a bot like this, from the commercial…
Discounts on products. A reminder when sales are ending or beginning
Shows leaving streamings services. We are always gaining and losing shows, a reminder that a show is leaving a service like Netflix a week or two before it goes could be very useful.
Livestream reminders. Twitch has taken over the world, and this could be a great way to remind your subscribers that you are going live.
…to the non-commercial
Voting Registration and Deadline Reminders
There are a million other use cases, but ones that would seem to get old quickly. There was also some talk that bots like this in the past had been banned for spamming, but I can’t imagine it being reported or taken down when the use cases are useful and exciting.
Though, with any tactic that works, marketers tend to ruin it. If this became too popular of a thing, your Twitter feed would quickly go from interesting tweets to a public reminder board.
What do you think? Is this the way?
We Can Do This
We are going to get through this. The reality is that not everyone is going to make it. Whether that’s directly because of COVID or the plethora of side effects this pandemic has brought to our doorstep, but we can all help each other out. We can make time for connecting with the people we care about. We can smile at a stranger. We can take a few extra minutes every day to calm ourselves down and react to things in a more constructive way. Life is always going to hurl shit at us, but we really are stronger when we act together.
An Election Note
For my readers in the USA, whatever your political beliefs, do your best to respect the process and respect each other. And if you haven’t already VOTE. Voting is your right, your privilege, and more importantly your responsibility. I don’t have a direct dog in this race living in Canada, but I do have family still living in the USA, was a resident of Arizona for ten years, and I’m also not blind to the fact that America has a large say across the globe. Whether I agree with your political stance or not, I hope you all vote.
I need your help!
If you can’t already tell, Thoughtless Opinions needs an editor. If you have any interest in trying to make my opinions a little more thoughtful, send me an email contact@thoughtlessopinions.com for more details!