What is the saddest, angriest city in Arizona? Your tweets may hold the answer

Angel Mendoza
The Republic | azcentral.com

If Arizona cities could boast a collective mood based on their Twitter feeds alone, it seems that Gilbert's would be all smiles and Tucson, not so much. 

At least according to one company's new study.

Byte, a dental aligner company, analyzed about 12 million tweets nationwide over the course of about a year to see which regions were sending out the most tweets with #Happy, #Sad or #Angry.

Here's what they found after looking at nearly 130,000 tweets from Arizona, according to spokesperson Karina Tissnés: 

  • Tucson is the saddest and angriest city in the state, tweeting #sad and #angry more frequently than any other city. (531 angry tweets, 4,071 sad tweets)
  • Gilbert is the happiest city in the state, tweeting #happy more frequently than any other city. (9,186 tweets)
  • Sunday is the happiest day of the week with users averaging 5 #happy tweets for every sad tweet; 2 p.m. is the happiest hour — users average 7.1 happy tweets for every sad tweet.
  • Arizona sees a ration of roughly four happy tweets for every three sad tweets.
  • Meh: Chandler and Scottsdale placed in the median in for emotions in general.

How Arizona compares nationwide

Arizona ranked in the middle of the road when it came to users wearing their hearts on their Twitter accounts — at least as far as hashtags were concerned. We didn't appear in lists of states with the most happy, sad or angry tweets, according to Byte.

But for those still curious, here's what was found:

  • Nebraska tweeted #Happy most often, and Hawaii the least often.
  • West Virginia tweeted #Sad most often, and Kentucky the least often.
  • New Hampshire tweeted #Angry most often, and Kentucky the least often.

But to anyone reading these results who didn't like where their city or state placed, Byte's website warns it's good to take them with a grain of salt. 

"While it’s easy to look at stats from Twitter to figure out how people really feel, it’s probably not completely accurate, as not everyone uses Twitter – and people don’t tweet out every single emotion they feel every single day," the website states. 

Reach reporter Angel Mendoza at amendoza@gannett.com or on Twitter @angelmendozaAZC.

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