Five Secrets of Humanity Uncovered By Data Mining
No matter how anonymous we feel, we all reveal more of ourselves online than we mean to: who our friends are, when we’re only pretending to work, the porn we accidentally like, etc. But the more time we spend online, the more we reveal about ourselves as an entire friggin’ species as well. For example…
When We’re Most Likely to Break Up
After compiling information from Facebook statuses, data journalist David McCandless found that the most popular times to break up with someone were early March, which he attributes to a potential “spring clean,” and two weeks before Christmas, which we attribute to gift-buying avoidance.
We’re also more likely to break up, or at least tell everyone about it, on Mondays, as “people (are) coming out of terrible weekends, posting their bad news,” and April Fool’s Day, possibly as a result of “some kind of terrible joke.” The day we’re least likely to break up is Christmas, as it would be “too cruel,” so they’ll never see it coming.
When We’re Most and Least Happy
Meanwhile, researchers from the University of Neuchâtel and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology found that they could track the mood cycles of entire countries based on how often they tweet about wanting or not wanting to do things, and perhaps unsurprisingly, it relates mostly to when they have to work. People are happiest in the late afternoons and evenings as well as Thursdays and Fridays, as the weekend approaches. We maintain that level of happiness throughout the weekend until Sunday afternoon, when happiness levels start dipping, possibly because our girlfriends just dumped us.
When We’re Most Suicidal
You would think rates of suicidality would track closely with mood, but according to Google search trends analyzed by researchers at San Diego State University, it’s more seasonal. They found that all kinds of searches related to mental health soared in the wintertime and dipped during the summer, especially those related to suicide, probably due to seasonal affective disorder, aka not seeing the sun for three months.
How We Stereotype Different Minorities
Our Google searches are generally scary places full of darkness, and we’re not just talking about ours personally. Data scientist Seth Stephens-Davidowitz found that, unsurprisingly, a lot more people Google racist things than admit to holding racist views, but it’s how they Google them that’s surprising. For example, it’s fairly common to Google why Jews, Muslims and gay people are evil, but not Black, Christian, Mexican or Asian people. On the other hand, people ask why all of those people except Jews and Muslims are stupid. Most shockingly, “n-word jokes” (they don’t say “n-word”) are 17 times more common than all other “(slur) jokes” combined. Not only are people racist, they’re not even coming up with their own racist jokes.
We Secretly Hate Our Spouses
Stephens-Davidowitz also found that, for as much as they hate gay people, the straights are not okay. Men are three times more likely to Google “my wife is crazy” than “my wife is boring,” but the numbers are almost exactly the opposite for women. This is troubling enough, that men and women want such fundamentally different things from each other, but the differences in what they — or at least women — think about them publicly and privately is where it gets really interesting. When women post “My husband is…” on social media, it’s most commonly followed by “the best,” but in their Google searches, it’s “a jerk, so annoying, mean, obnoxious, cheating on me.”
Maybe that’s why they’re “crazy.”