More than a few months ago, I got an email from a young lady in Illinois about this website. It was very flattering and it ended with a vague request for “Any advice for my blog?” So I checked out her blog, which turned out to be an online diary of anguished emotion and teenaged narcissism. Each day featured no less than 1000 words about how she was feeling. Literally, it was like “I am feeling incredibly sad. I feel sadder today than yesterday. I thought I’d feel better if I talked to Tara. So I called Tara but she made me feel upset. Maybe I will feel happy if I smiled more. I feel scared about how I will feel tomorrow.”
And on and on. I wanted to advise her “Don’t torture the reader with daily updates on your mundane activities and emotions. Don’t write a lot if you’re not saying anything.” But being blunt to strangers isn’t my thing, so I said instead “Wow you’re really prolific and sincere. Try re-reading what you write, and imagine how what your readers are feeling.”
I never heard back from the young lady and her blog wasn’t updated the last time I checked, but I thought of her as I played around with We Feel Fine (here), a Java applet that “harvests human feelings,” which sounds creepy in a City of the Lost Children sort of way. We Feel Fine searches millions of blogs for statements containing the phrases “I feel” and “I am feeling” and compiles a database of these statements. When you go to the website, you can explore recent feelings, which are rendered as color-coded particles on a series of six aesthetically-pleasing user interfaces.
At first, I admired We Feel Fine more for its technical and artistic coolness than for its mission, which is to “make the world seem a little smaller… help people see beauty in the everyday ups and downs of life.” Yeah, mushy gushy feelings, whatever. But as I played around with We Feel Fine, I gradually saw the strange poignancy in a single statement that declares a feeling. Stripped of context and identity, it suddenly has the potential to be universal. I find myself relating to a surprising number of the feelings that I probably would not have picked up on from reading the entire blog. Here are just a sampling of feelings that I found today (really, go try it yourself)
i feel so conflicted about harry potter because I want it so badly but i dont because then it will be over (from someone)
i feel it is an act of extreme chutzpah for apple to ask me to pay 2200 (from
someone)
i cant deny that i feel somewhat nostalgic and sad of those great teenage and college years but i guess thats life and we need to try to get the best out of every age (from someone)
i feel like puking when i see such a stupid talentless asshole advocating social darwinism (from someone)
i feel like a caged bird in this town (from someone in tennessee)
i had some difficulty with my right knee in the beginning but it feels much better since i switched shoes. (from someone)
i feel like garbage (from someone in ontario canada)
i feel like a doll (from somone in warsaw poland when it was sunny)
i feel at ease (from someone)
i feel so alive this morning (from someone)
i feel the drink vouchers were free shots that tasted like christmas (from a 20 year old in bristol england when it was rainy)
i feel like someone punched me in the face (from someone in hightstown new jersey)
i feel like prancing around in the rain barefoot (from someone)
