Between March and September 2020, we found 2.2m “over the year” mentions, with August and September seeing the most. Compared to 2019, these types of mentions were up 195% meaning there’s no denying a significant shift – people are flat-out over this year.

What makes 2020 the worst year in years?

To figure this out we looked at the biggest topics in our “over the year” conversation to see what was driving people’s urge to reach the end of December these past years.

First, we’ll check out the negative topics from January 2016 to December 2019.

“People” was the biggest negative topic with 193k mentions during this period. This refers to users finding other people annoying, whether from being disrespectful or acting in ways they didn’t like. Enough so for them to want the year to end.

“Time” was the next biggest topic with 145k negative mentions. People reflected that they had wasted time, or that it was time for personal or political change, or for a fresh start, and that’s why they were “done” with the year.

Trump (103k mentions) clocked in as the third biggest topic. With this period obviously coinciding with his term as president, it’s clear a lot of people found him and his actions despairing.

Now let’s turn to 2020 so far.

We found that the “over it” conversation had become more focused, moving away from the more general topics of previous years. Instead the 2020 presidential election (188k mentions) and the Covid-19 pandemic (162k mentions) dominated the negative conversation.

Trump, again, was a big topic, with 108k mentions (that’s more mentions in just nine months, than in the four years we previously mentioned). He wasn’t alone, however. We also picked up “over the year” mentions of Biden (41k mentions), Bernie Sanders (39k mentions) and Hillary Clinton (28k mentions).

Emotion check

2020 is clearly taking its toll — and that’s before we’ve even looked at how people on social media actually feel.

According to our analysis, sentiment-segmented online conversation was 77% negative over the last nine months, while emotion-categorized conversation was revealed to be 43% angry, 27% sad and 7% disgusted. This tells us that people are taking to social media in droves to vent, complain, and despair.

What’s clear is that people are stressed and upset with this year. With three months still to go, let’s hope the world finds solace in something to turn things around.

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Brandwatch React