This Website Analyzes Texts From Your Ex

The first few weeks of dating someone are filled with MANY screenshots of conversations (usually sent to no less than three separate group chats). That's because texting has become part of the psychology of dating. A recent study revealed roughly 20% of teens who date text their person 30 times per hour. This number can be even higher during after-school hours. In another study, psychologists discovered that when forming romantic relationships, texting is a crucial part of modern courtship. In a typical scenario, once you meet someone, you'll have to engage in conversations over text before you ever go on a first date.

The problem is, you can't always convey how into someone you are via text. In fact, another study from earlier this year discovered that 58% of single people who made plans via text have no idea if they're on a date or not. Luckily, a new website that analyzes the tone of text messages is ready to help. Created within the IBM Watson Developer Cloud, the Watson Tone Analyzer Service assesses emotional, linguistic, and social tone, giving each feeling and social tendency a score between 0 and 1, with the highest score tallied as the most active feeling in the text.

The feelings are your most basic emotions, which you might recognize as the cast of Inside Out, but are truly the basis of every more specific feeling: joy, fear, sadness, anger, and disgust. Language is judged by style: analytical, confident, or tentative. The social tendencies of the texter are categorized by openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and emotional range.

This is all fascinating, and a great tool for "market research," “business communications,” and "self-branding," which is what the Tone Analyzer is supposedly built for, but absolutely not what I’m interesting in using it for. My question for the Tone Analyzer in almost every transaction is simple: Does this texter have a crush on me. Yes or no. That’s all I need to know. Thank you, robot.

Because science isn’t there yet, my research in this endeavor is fairly interpretive. I'm ignoring social tendencies, because I know I'm an easy person to engage with because I am fun and outgoing. I’m leaving language analysis out of it because some of my friends text in less than proper grammar, and I love that, so no need to tell me, I know. Basically, I'm looking at emotions. The more joyful the texter appears, the more I believe they are crushing on me. I personally feel like the opposite of a crush is disgust, so the higher that level, the less prevalent their romantic feelings for me are. Everything in between is up to my discretion, and yours, if you choose to perform a similar experiment.

Here's what I learned.