Last week, the world was at the edge of their seats as they watched in horror, a giant balloon a drift in the sky. This giant balloon was thought to be holding 6 year old Falcon Heene. Thankfully, the story turned out to be complete nonsense. The opinions that people in social media have on the Heene family are not. This is a look at digital repercussions of this sad, sad, cry for attention.

Here’s a pretty picture of general topics of conversation. Looking at this word cloud, you get the jist of the story without ever having read or heard about Balloon Boy. Text highlighted in red appear with negative instances.

48% of all related posts about the “Balloon Boy” incident were not good. What do you expect when you get the entire state of Colorado riled up on the possibility that a child is drifting hundreds of feet in the air, unprotected.

And once again, microblogs take reign in traffic. If only Balloon Boy was old enough to have a Twitter account….