I know James Ball hates word clouds more than anything else on earth (besides the City computers, maybe), but in the US media, a story has come up that has actually taken the spotlight off of the Boston bombings. This is a story for the ages, and, frankly, I can only visualise terrorism/mass shooting data so many times before I go slightly insane.
This is a tale of anger, passion, frustration, and drive.
This is a dale of the Deranged Sorority Girl Email.
A girl at a sorority at the University of Maryland wrote a hilarious, profane, Mamet-esque email to her chapter about Greek Week. Non-Americans might have no idea what’s going on in this email, but it is funny. Read it in your best Regina George voice.
Because this text cloud contains quite a bit of profanity, I’m putting it behind a cut. Peruse at your own risk, and don’t blame me if you snort coffee onto your keyboard.
First, let’s talk about word clouds. We never played with them in class as James really seems to hate word clouds, but sometimes, a brilliant bit of text like the State of the Union, or, say a Deranged Sorority Girl Email, lends itself to the medium. This is what Many Eyes has to say on the subject: “A “Word Cloud Generator” enables you to see how frequently words appear in a given text, or see the relationship between a column of words and a column of numbers. You can tweak your word “clouds” with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.”
Unlike the other, more important, forms of visualisation, Many Eyes says that word clouds were simply meant to “give pleasure” (author’s note: anyone who derives pleasure from these is sad) and not provide reliable analytical insight. So here you are: Deranged Sorority Girl Email, analysed for your analytical pleasure.