The State Of Our Open Threads: After Minnesota

In the full expectation that there might be a little blowback for posting this right now, I feel that the results are interesting enough that they are worth sharing even in weeks like this. If nothing else, they will tell you that you are definitely not alone in how you feel, and I find these a bit of a personal catharsis to deal with my own frustrations about the season. 

So, what did we find? 

Well, I will start by saying that something that has not happened in the year that I have been doing this happened yesterday - not a single tracked word reached the 100-instance plateau after adjustments for usage, context, etc...A thread which was the second largest of the ones we've had this season at 1,729 posts generated the second least amount of tracked instances, which now of course go beyond swearing and are into certain buzzwords. The top three words, in order, were "shit", "fuck" and "Morris", with the latter two actually being tied at 53 instances to 58 for "shit". This is the second week in a row we went to "shit" over "fuck", but it is easy to see indifference setting in right now. 

Still, on a cumulative basis, "fuck" is comfortably in the lead:

On the normalized chart, which still uses the main words from last year but still provides a good visual of how strong our feelings are, you can see the decline:

Yeah, the look of this graph is largely a product of shifting means and standard deviations, but after a passionate of "fuck", "damn" and "shit" at ND, calls for "fire" (mainly Hoke) against Miami (OH) and a lot of "shit" against Utah, we only managed to get "suck" and "ass" above the mean of their normal usage. Actually, one of the more active dynamics - The Fuck-Fire Relationship - went nerly flat this week:

A lot of displeasure was voiced early, and then....well...

The efficiency trend shows the "curve into indifference", which is what I fear this becomes if on-field performance continues as it has. 

It says exactly what the story of the board has been for a few weeks - we were really pissed during the ND game in relative terms and for many good reasons, but the slide into relative indifference has started, it seems, when a home loss to Minnesota doesn't reach the relative level of measure rage of a less-than-impressive win against a MAC opponent. It's not a good sign at all for our psychological well-being, I would think.

The mood chart is interesting with respect to Minnesota:

Minnesota fell into "Mildly Irritated", which might indicate lowered expectations are now a reality among those here - someone can correct me on that, but my own experience and the data made it a good guess.