I am a big burly guy with a beard - and I get overwhelmed and cry regularly. Not even from sadness, just from general emotion.<p>For example last night I watched the trailer for Overwatch[1] and got so excited I started tearing up. I don't know why, anything that triggers ANY sort of strong emotion in me brings it on. Always has.<p>My wife makes fun of me for it. I don't see anything wrong with it.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqnKB22pOC0" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqnKB22pOC0</a>
For anyone else who was surprised, like me, that there was so much crying recorded in this article, you might find [a certain Reddit thread][1] interesting. I had been under the impression that basically no-one cried ever, but it turns out that some hormones just seem to make it happen.<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4g1pgu/serious_trans_people_of_reddit_what_was_something/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4g1pgu/serious_t...</a>
I'm really glad someone had the courage to share this data.. Growing up I was always under the impression that it was wrong to cry, and it probably exasperated some of my depressive episodes.<p>Strangely, after becoming a father, I feel like I'm even more sensitive and can cry at the drop of a seemingly innocent comment. I bet I cry almost daily.. But after it occurs, it's refreshing. I feel stronger.
This is awesome. I think so much study goes into anger management and trying to understand why we get angry, but it seems that other emotional outburts are often shunned in discussion.<p>As someone who comes from a family of people (read: Chinese and Southern) who house an intense stigma around crying, it's been a struggle for me to better empathize and understand crying for other people.<p>I think the author nailed the use of personal logging here - it's not about extrapolating onto others, it's just another form of self-reflection.
Incredibly interesting, and waaaay more data than I expected. The fancy d3 weighted tree/forking chart was fascinating.<p>> I tried to categorize cries as they were happening (because I wanted to create a real-time crying dashboard)<p>Sure, who hasn't wanted to create a real-time crying dashboard?
I love this thread. I've been a long time HN lurker, but only fairly recently did I create an account and start contributing.<p>See the honesty and emotion on these comments really makes me feel I'm hanging out with a good bunch of people. It's so refreshing compared to the toxic communities of the other large social sites.<p>I'm a cryer. I cry a lot, I'm also clinically depressed with social anxiety, which makes social interaction difficult, so my emotional are mostly on the surface anyway. Crying for me is the best form of emotional release. I cry at the big ending in films, I cry at the end of amazing books (The Green Mile totally destroyed me, I was in business class on a plane at the time, blubbering my eyes out...).<p>On balance though, I also get very angry often. I guess you can't have one without the other...
I almost never cry. Some of my friends joke that I cry once a decade, but honestly that is pretty close to the truth. I'm not ashamed to cry, and I don't try to not cry, or anything like that, I just almost never want to cry...
Everyone is an emotional being; whether they show it to the world regularly or not. I'm normally a very stoic, "serious", sometimes up-tight and irritable person. I know I've turned off many people from the way I interact. But get me in-front of someone I can truly connect with, and I'm a whole different soul - I laugh, smile, my heart flutters, I'll cuddle up to a partner, the works. It all depends how comfortable the other person makes me feel.<p>I'm very into personality typing and identify as INTJ for Myers Brigg (Which is the smallest subset at ~1-2% of the population). I met a girl the other week that I found out was INTJ as well and we connected instantly on a whole new level - still blows my mind when I talk to her; and we were both able to share that very quickly. But we're both very stoic and have our guards up in public until we click well with someone and can relax.
Fascinating dataset. I think ending a long term, long distance relationship (and then finding out he was married all along), probabaly skewed this dataset upwards.<p>Last time I cried was watching the most recent episode of Game of Thrones. And then watching YouTube reaction videos of that episode, a little less crying with each video. Hodor...
Disney movies.<p>Literally every single Disney movie gets me to cry. Usually towards the end, around the climax when the soundtrack let the harps and violins kick in.<p>Not sure if it's me or Disney has some special Crying Department which meticulously orchestrates a crying storyboard.
It's amazing how much variability there is in how much people cry. Also, the intensity obviously varies a lot: I've never cried for longer than maybe 5 minutes.<p>Personally, I'm tempted to start a similar log but for the exact opposite reason: I cry so little that I don't remember the last time I did, and I would like to.
Since everyone is talking about their crying habits - I have this very annoying tendency to get teary eyed/cry when having intense discussions with some people. Especially if there's any hint of negativity in it. Awkward for obvoius reasons. So I just tend to avoid these.
I dunno... I find the notion of crying as a reaction to fictional (or even non-fictional) media... foreign. I find this notion foreign. (Man, just a goatee, almost 33). I do consume fiction, but I just don't 'suspend disbelief', as it is called. Call me a fiction grinch, but it's just the way my brain works.<p>I recently changed jobs and moved to a new city. When, after a long hiring process I was given the job, I cried a little (like 10 seconds), out of joy. Then, once I arrived in the city, it was hard to find a new home but I faced it without victimism: <i>I</i> decided to move, so I had the obligation to face whatever hardships would emerge along the way. But the day I finally found a home and everything started to settle, when I finally had the keys, I sat down on one of the rooms and, beer in hand, cried, but out of relief and joy also.<p>When I was younger I used to cry easily, but as I'm getting older I just don't cry often anymore. Somewhat it has become a reaction reserved for existential highlights, so to speak.
This is super interesting, I've found that as I've aged I cry a lot less than when I was younger. If gender makes any difference, I'm a woman. I found that when I was younger I cried a lot, at all sort of things. Now I find it difficult to cry, and I kind of miss that emotion, because I think it's an important part of what makes us human :(
Can anyone explain how the visualization with the header '? -> ?? -> ???' (a little past the middle on the right hand side) was generated?<p>I'd really like to know how spreadsheet data gets turned into that awesome D3 diagram!
This is _so_ well done!<p>Could you talk about how you kept track of this when you were away from your computer? Any app etc?
did you make a record right then? or just a mental note and then trancribed later?<p>I apologize for focusing on the logistics part of it :-)
My crying is triggered by positive stories. Most of the times, specifically by solidarity demonstrations.<p>Sports, natural disasters, simple day-to-day actions. Whenever i feel there is real and genuine altruism.<p>I rarely cry by sad or melancholy reasons.
I read somewhere the author of Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein, wrote that when he realized he couldn't cry he took steps to learn to do so. I am a man still learning.<p>In my self help group for recovery from abuse even some of the women could not cry. We thought this was from bigger people saying, "If you don't stop crying I'll give you something to cry about" and also we thought they were bloody liars, unable to admit to us that our crying upset them and they didn't want to feel (just as they took substances to avoid feeling)
So many people here admitting they cry with an undertone that they feel various levels of bad for doing it. @donatj even said his wife makes fun of him when he cries.<p>We have got to make this a non-issue. Its so insane to me that in Western culture someone isn't allowed to express a perfectly normal aspect of their physiology. Its like shaming someone for puking. It may not be pleasant but not doing it is way worse.<p>I sincerely believe we should be pushing back and HARD when we're shamed for crying. "We" being anyone because, lets face it, women are shamed for it too.
Looking at the "heat map", it looks like the OP needs to start going to bed on time, like 10pm, on a regular basis. It seems she is staying up late and crying a lot during that time, perhaps because emotional things and overwork are getting her at that time. Put the phone on Do Not Disturb and check out at 10pm.
What a great study! We engineers and rational-thinking oriented people tend to disregard how our emotions affect us on a daily basis.<p>Makes me wonder...
Would I want a emotion tracker (app or hardware) which lets me study ME? Yes<p>Do I want it in the cloud or to be made money from? Not at all. An opening up of emotions opens me up to a lot of abuse.
During allergy season my eyes are always on the verge of tearing up. Then even mildly enthusiastic conversations will cause my eyes to fully tear and that makes me feel emotional. It is embarrassing and often leads me to abruptly end conversations.<p>There have been numerous studies where facial expressions can affect emotion. It is a positive feedback loop [1]. The situation I described above isn't a facial expression per se, but does anyone else feels like eye strain or irritants (soldering?), makes them more emotional.<p>[1] <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2010/04/16/botox-may-diminish-the-experience-of-emotions/" rel="nofollow">http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2010/04/16/botox-may...</a>
i read this and sent my wife a link. she wanted to know why i was analyzing her crying. i told her i just wanted to run a neuralnet on her crying data.....<p><a href="http://i.imgur.com/NE380tW.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/NE380tW.png</a>
This is such a wonderful blending of genres. We techies often can seem (or be?) detached from emotion. The rigor with which analytics were applied here ("real-time crying dashboard"!) is genius. So funny and so true.
I don't cry often. But a common types of cry I have is in narratives when someone achieves something.<p>For example, I cried reading The Devil in the White City when the Ferris wheel started moving for the first time.
Weird anecdote. Grief can lead to health damaging anger, when sometimes you need to cry. Pardon the metaphor but it really feels like leaking the pain out instead of keeping it rotting inside your head.
I haven't cried for years, and I don't wear that as a badge of honour either, it's just never been a thing for me.<p>I've had the 'lump in the throat' moments, sure, but not breached the wall to have the dam burst in quite some time. In fact I think the last time I properly cried was when my dog was euthanised and that was 12 or so years ago. That was the first time I'd seen my Dad completely broken too.
Is anywhere near this amount of crying normal? I have never tracked but I would suspect it would be more like 1x every year or two if we remove allergies.
Hey, girls cry more (typically) than guys.<p>As noted in the article, different people have different sensitivity levels that their emotions must meet before the waterworks start. Just because you cry less than the author does not mean that her amount of crying is abnormal.<p>Personally, I cry just as much as her if not more.
For me, crying was mostly related to lack of eating and working out, lack of sleep or from too much work. The triggers were real, relationship problems, work related issues, you name it. But as long as I eat well and work out, I can take on a lot of personal problems without crying.
Holy wow, I am genuinely surprised. I would never have imagined that it's possible for grown-up people to cry more than one or two times per year, let alone cry enough times to gather stats about it!
I cry, maybe 3 times a year, and tear up maybe 10 times a year. Last year was really rough, so it was a bit more, but I have no idea how someone could cry -that- much and still have a livable life.
Well executed analysis. It takes real commitment to follow through and track these results, then actually do something with the data. Better than a lot of TEDx talks I've seen lately.
Edit: I have retracted this post; it came across in a way that I did not intend it to. Thank you to those of you who explained the response I received.
> <i>I've always considered myself to be a bit of a crybaby</i><p>No, that's some ridiculous amount of crying. I wonder if it's severe depression or Pseudobulbar affect or some hormonal disorder.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudobulbar_affect" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudobulbar_affect</a>
Notice how many cries are due to relationship-based issues.<p>You are putting yourself at serious emotional risk if you allow your happiness to be driven by another person, regardless of who it is.<p>IMHO, your emotional success should be based upon things you can control, and if it's not, then you need to make more rapid decisions as to who or what is allowed to take part in your life.