Monday, April 7, 2014

You'll Be Sadly Angry At This



Scientists have identified, but not named, 15 new emotions.  Get on that, Internet!


Contrary to what Jeremy would have you believe, they all have titles associated with them.  They're just not pithy and clever.  Either way, the Internet should still see this as a challenge and come up with names for all of them.


Up until recently, there were apparently only six emotions.  You could be Angry, Disgusted, Fearful, Happy, Sad, or Surprised.  That was it.  Now, because of Science, we've come to realize that combinations of these emotions exist and are perfectly valid as well.  So, we get ridiculous constructs like "Disgustedly Surprised" for when somebody Smacks You With A Handful Of Eggs, though I can't imagine a little anger not being mixed in there too. 

This is all well and good, but there are at least two problems with this new system.  The first is that the names aren't new names.  If you combine the colors red and yellow, you get orange, not "Red-Yellow."  These new emotional combinations need names.  I'm not creative enough to do this for more than "surpewed" (the aforementioned Surprised/Disgusted combination), but the Internets, if absolutely nothing else, are full of people who make up words and phrases, though usually by accident or ignorance.  It seems a shame to let a resource like that go to waste.

Secondly, there are emotional combinations that are still left out of this list.  You can be Happily Angry when somebody plays a really funny prank and you just happen to be the victim.  Pride is nowhere to be found.  Neither is Frightfully Amused, such as when you whip your head around because you forgot to check for people behind you before farting.  These are problems, people!  Sadly, I'm forced to Call Bunk on the new emotion study for the National Academy of Science.  Try again, Science! 

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