by Jacqueline Alexander

IT’S a question that we probably ask, and answer, several times a day but, when answering, lie. Most of the time we lie because we know the question is borne out of politeness and social nicety so we deliver the same in our response. Other times we lie to save time, which is understandable when you realise there are more than 5,000 different possible responses to what seems a fairly innocuous enquiry.

In our quest to be polite or time efficient, we probably use one of five or six responses to describe our mood. “Fine” is the most popular of the non-descript replies, “well” is another favourite together with “okay”, “good” and “not bad”. These are all terms designed to answer the question without actually giving any insight into how we are feeling.

More accurate descriptions might involve words such as tired, fantastic, stupid, lucky, awful, guilty, ecstatic, weird and uncomfortable. Unfortunately, each one invites further conversation in order to give an explanation as to why we are feeling so specific about our mood and further conversation takes time — time that few of us have to spend talking about the way we feel, even if we wanted to share those details in the first place.

That’s what happens in the real world. In the virtual world it’s a different story. People are falling over themselves to divulge the details of how they are feeling. Bloggers use all 5,000 responses to give details of their emotional well-being but, most of the time, we don’t actually want to know. There’s one site that’s paying attention for unexpected reasons.

As I write, Wefeelfine.org is busily studying the various blogs across the world with the aim of collecting all the sentences that include the phrase “I feel” or “I am feeling”. So far, more than 1,894,610 words have been used to describe feelings. The good news is that more than 128,155 people are feeling better, the bad news is another 31,000 are feeling guilty.

The reasons for the creation of this site have less to do with filling a bored five minutes and far more to do with anthropological studies. Jonathan Harris, one of the creators of the project, designs systems to measure and explore the human world. He is the brains behind several online studies of human life as depicted online but, interestingly, does not write a blog.

The idea behind Wefeelfine.org is to accurately report how the online world is feeling. The system reports the emotion, applies a colour to it and reports the age, gender and geographical location of the author. Then, instead of simply delivering a huge range of facts and figures, the site presents you with thousands of coloured dots moving over the page. Each dot represents a feeling — all you do is move your mouse over the dots to find out who is feeling what, when and where.

To date, more than 11 million feelings have been collected from more than two million people. Men account for approximately one quarter of the total — a figure which could be used to support the argument that men don’t like to talk about their feelings. Those that do divulge their emotions may not have learned the art of stopping — although only a quarter of the authors are men, they are responsible for more than half of the feelings expressed.

Continuing the analysis of established stereotypes, Americans are responsible for more than one million of the posts, suggesting that they have no trouble talking about their feelings, but we knew that already. The UK is not making a bad account of itself with nearly 300,000 contributions attributed to Brits.

When looking at the feelings of the world, you can filter the information and view only information from your own neck of the woods. In the UK, apparently, a chap from Leeds is “feeling the absence of Rachel”. A female from London “feels the hackles rise on the back of her neck when foreign journalists report on events in South Africa”. A 22-year-old “can’t help but feel things are going to get better” and another Londoner reports that he feels like hugging his mum, “the one person who can drive me raging mad”. But the last word has to go to a 32-year-old Brit who “has a definite feeling that he wants to go and have a few drinks after work”. We can all relate to that.

MOVERS AND SHAKERS

It seems that we are worried about our cholesterol this week and Red yeast rice may be the answer to many prayers. This red-purple fermented rice, which has long been used as a supplement in China, is reported to help lower cholesterol levels and the online community is taking notice with searches up by 2,145 per cent.

Grace Kelly, the late Hollywood actress and Princess of Monaco, has appeared from nowhere to find a place in the top searches this week though it has less to do with films and more to do with drama. It seems that the retrial of her son-in-law, Prince Ernst August of Hannover, for assault on a hotel owner in Kenya, is causing an online stir. Searches for Ms Kelly increased by more than 1,000 per cent and her daughter, Princess Caroline has taken the top spot overall as the Prince, found guilty in 2004, fights to have the conviction and sentence reduced.