Massive Nick Thread on fMh

So my loving wif has been describing to me an EPIC (or epic-esque) thread on feminist Mormon housewives. It was dominated by a guy named Nick who had some issues. Big ones. And it captured both our attention (honeypie’s and mine). I made word clouds of Nick’s comments and the general thread, for some kind of comparison. I don’t think this exercise really illuminated anything, but it was fun. What I would really love to do, though I don’t want to take the time away from real research to do it, is to look at the functional or other kinds of patterns in Nick’s communication with the fMh crowd, and theirs with him. I personally found his comments to be low in insight (as would be expected from someone wrapped up in his own problems), occasionally sexist, and frequently patronizing. But my heart went out to the guy, anyway; he has a very, very long row to hoe.

Here’s Nick’s word cloud, made of only his comments (with quotes excised).

Here’s everyone else’s comments (Nick’s not included). I wasn’t gonna do this b/c it’s 1am and dude, I’m tired. But this is fun/compelling quasi-analysis. Sorry it’s a different style. I know that makes it a bit harder to compare.

Finally, Here’s the word cloud for the general thread, nick’s comments mixed with everyone else’s.

Not sure I see any deep meaning here, but make of it what you will. It was a fun exercise. For my job I may eventually have need of some very-smart text analysis software; I think I’ve found something to test it on :)

Update: Because this is so much fun (and preferable to the other work I need to be doing this weekend), I did one more thing: a word difference cloud, if you will. The hacked-together list of words in colors (below) represent the magnitude in relative frequency difference between Not-Nick and Nick in word usage. That is, words used a greater percentage of the time by people besides Nick are blue, and if they are used a lot more frequently than Nick uses them, they’re really big. I made the more-frequently-Nickish words green.

I combined several groups of similar word forms. Those are represented between curly brackets {}.

sexless {woman} listening it’s sex {try} {feel} like out {say} {thing} {want} change even great home must mutual really {sexual} statement {way} {word} what around being better did didn’t each find {get} having {he} herself how {intimate} life lot love may month mormon {need} now often own part patriarchy people person physical please problem same situation something that’s then through whether wow advice again agree always back before best between both can’t case certainly come common community {control} culture day different discussion {do} duty either enough ever every experience express fact family feminist few first form general {go} hard help here hope just kids kind know level long maybe much neglect off others pressure pretty probably put raise rather read relationship responsibility right see simply someone sometimes spouse still subject suggest temple thank these though thought {time} too two understand us {use} we’ve week where while why without work world wrong yet {don’t} abusive address anything care comment desire {give} good hear {husband} man {mean} never notion once point reason seems sense {sensitive} sexuality she’s should sure take together very years yes another blog church etc {marriage} our possible tell {them} comments {issue} least let many men nothing {obligation} well think {wife} believe {make} idea important might matter

Method notes/examples: this method will show a more head-to-head comparison, though it has disadvantages, such as possibly exaggerating small differences in relative frequency. To illustrate what I have done, consider the forms of “you” (you/your/you’re). These are predictably dominant in comments by people besides Nick (a full 5% of wordage!), while Nick used this word group less (1.9%). The difference between those (3.1%) is one of the largest in the word collection, and not-Nick used it much more frequently than Nick did, so it would be big and blue. By contrast, forms of “I/me” (I/I’m/I’ll/I’ve/me/my/myself) were used more often by Nick (5.8% versus 3.4%) so {I} is in big, green font. All quibbles with the method are probably accurate, but I probably won’t have time to go back and revisit this. Oh, and I left out {I} and {you} because they were just massively disproportionate, as well as very predictable, in relative frequency difference.