Here’s why some people just hate ‘Wordle’

nme.com:

Wordle with a passion.Writing in The Independent, Dr Pragya Agarwal – a behavioural and data scientist – has explained what makes certain people get so irritated by seeing others share their Wordle results.According to Agarwal, there are “many reasons” that some people might not enjoy Wordle in general, and mentions some people simply finding it too hard.Agarwal also identifies that outside of people who find Wordle too tough to crack, there are also certain behavioural reasons as to why people dislike the game.

Agarwal says that “it is inevitable that some people will hate things that become popular,” and notes that social media heightens the feeling of being on an opposing side of something.This means that for people who dislike Wordle, they find “a secure sense of identity” by associating themselves with Wordle, even if that association involves vocally criticising it with others.Agarwal also pounds out that we as humans are more prejudiced against people who aren’t in the same “group” as us, meaning that “people are also carving out a stronger affiliation to their group by attacking the popular group.”Earlier in the week, NME reported on someone who disliked people sharing their Wordle results so much that they built an automated bot to spoil the next day’s word.

The bot was quickly banned by Twitter, but not before it used a reverse-engineering trick to predict Wordle‘s future word of the day for many.In brighter news, Wordle has done some real good for charity.

When the developer of another app called Wordle discovered people were accidentally downloading his app in search of the free browser-based game, he donated his surprise proceeds to charity.