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Within an hour, Patriots fans move from anger to acceptance

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As Tom Brady and the New England Patriots wandered off the field in Indianapolis after Super Bowl XLVI, defeated again by the New York Giants, fans of the team vented on Twitter. Some even directed their anger at Brady, one of the league’s most accomplished, and popular, players.

But within an hour, many fans had completed their trek through the five stages of grief popularized by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, progressing to the final stop: acceptance.

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According to an analysis by Kanjoya, a San Francisco company that uses a computer algorithm to detect emotion in social media posts, the most common emotion surrounding the Patriots became calm soon after the game finished.

As the game wore on, bad feelings had been steadily rising toward the Patriots.

‘Brady’s disappointment peaked when he tossed that interception,’ Kanjoya founder Armen Berjikly said. ‘Anger then rose to become the dominant emotion by end of game. Interesting keywords were ‘lmfao’ and ‘concussion.’ ‘

Kanjoya officials caution that there are things to keep in mind when analyzing language for emotion. Berjikly said language can be difficult to interpret, with research finding that people agree about the intent of statements about 80% of the time. And not all tweets can be assigned an emotion -- roughly 40% captured by their algorithm qualify.

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