The Olympics are for many an inspiring time. To see the world come together, united for a little while to simply enjoy our competitive nature in a productive way. It’s heartwarming.
Obviously 2WC’s on the Olympic bandwagon (we are on our third day of Olympic blogs, and you can expect more), but while the Olympics mean a lot of camaraderie, unity, and athletic prowess, it also means a lot of people in one city, where some people actually live.
You can imagine the range of emotions, but thanks to some students from MIT, you don’t have to. These technologically inclined scholars have transformed the London Eye into a social media mood ring for the citizens of London.
Every evening at 9 pm, the London Eye lights up and take the emotional temperature of Great Britain.
The emotions of London are being monitored by pulling key emotionally driven words from tweets. The reflected colors range from yellow (right as rain) to green (ambiguity) to purple (more than slightly put-off).
Yellow, the color of the smiley-face (traditionally), is an obvious happy choice and purple just happens to be opposite it on the color wheel.
Which puts this cheery color in a not so happy position. It’s already feeling left out on account of the Olympic rings, and now it has to deal with the “Debby Downer” label.
It’s a happy color, that happened to land on the wrong side of the color wheel. Plus, it happens to be the color of nobility and royalty (whoops). And much like “orange” it’s really hard to find a common word that rhymes with it.
So, people of London, don’t think of purple as an angry/peeved/generally upsetting color, but a bit of a bright spot as you make your way through the chaos and excitement of hosting the Summer Olympics.
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“Hidden Message in London Eye”: WSJ
…bi-daily smile…
