Twitter Stays Silent During World Cup Penalty Kicks [DATA]

World Cup fans have reached fever pitch when cheering on their favorite teams these past few weeks, sending 16.4 million tweets during the Brazil vs. Chile game alone. But sometimes silence can be just as powerful, as new stats from Twitter show.

Just like a stadium’s pregnant pause when a penalty kick is launched, so too did Twitter fans take a sharp inhale – and stopped tweeting – each time a contender stepped up.

Data from Twitter shows that each time a player took a penalty shot, Twitter reacted by going silent.

In the graph above, you can see a zoomed-in section depicting the first penalty shot by Brazil’s David Luiz.