Analyzing Tweets To Identify Psychopaths

nonprofiteer writes "Researchers presenting at Defcon next week have developed a psychopathy prediction model for Twitter. It analyzes linguistic tells to rate users' levels of narcissism, machiavellianism and other similarities to Patrick Bateman. 'The FBI could use this to flag potential wrongdoers, but I think it's much more compelling for psychologists to use to understand large communities of people,' says Chris Sumner of the Online Privacy Foundation. Some of the Twitter clues: Curse words. Angry responses to other people, including swearing and use of the word "hate." Using the word "we." Using periods. Using filler words such as 'blah' and 'I mean' and 'um.' So, um, yeah."

Comments

Re:Using Periods?

[cheekyjohnson]

What are you, some sort of psychopath? Flag him!

Re:Analyzing myself

[WrongSizeGlass]

So, you mean, is there any hope for me?

Sure there is. First, you'll seek twitter therapy and twitter assimilation resistance resistance. If that succeeds your tweets will be indistinguishable from 99% of the population (and most of your followers will finally be able to understand them).

If your TT&TARR fails you'll have to go to twitter court (most trials are very short) or simply go to twitter confessions and throw yourself on the mercy of 12 randomly selected twitter addicts. Once you're sentenced to twitter prison (where all you say and read are tweets) you'll be able to start paying your debt to the twitterverse. When the time comes for your parole review they'll analyze your tweets during your sentence to determine if you're ready for early tweetlease or if you need to try harder.

So yes, there is hope for you ... though not much hope for society at large if we're making DSM-V quality diagnoses based on twitter (unless we're determining that those who use twitter really have too much time on their hands).

Re:Really?

[WrongSizeGlass]

Lets see, one of the most well known trait of psychopaths is their tendency to lie.

Is that true ... or are you just a psychopath?

Re:There's a rumor going around

[ivoras]

Of course, the real insight is Reverse Phrenology! Kicking people in the head to make them better people!

Re:There's a rumor going around

[Maxo-Texas]

I've been using a lot of voice recognition to IM lately.

SO I called someone and got voice mail.. and I said...

"Okay, I got your call and I'll see you later today PERIOD".

I was face slapping as soon as i hung up.

Oh and for the benefit of NSA and twitter type scanners...

I don't know what this shit is. Fuck that. I HATE it when they scan my posts. Period.
I mean blah blah blah, yada, yada. I mean, I don't give a flying fuck, um, what they think.

Thanks--- I was, ah, feeling psychopathic, and um, didn't want to put that in a separate post.