For reasons that are not entirely clear as of this moment, an Amber Alert was released just before 4 a.m. this morning, causing perhaps millions of cell phones in the New York area to make a very loud, very jarring — and did we mention very loud — sound. (You can turn off the ability to receive Amber Alerts on your phone, something many people are probably doing today.) After awaking to a message about a baby who was kidnapped by his biological mother, many New Yorkers went back to sleep went on Twitter to express their emotions. As you can see in the word cloud above, which was compiled from literally thousands of tweets, people were scared and used expletives to emphasize how scared they were.
Terror was often mixed with confusion and panic, as many half-asleep New Yorkers instinctively assumed that the strange alarm they were hearing indicated impending disaster for themselves, their cats, and perhaps the entire city:
And a couple of people were just confused, sans panic.
