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This year, alcohol topped the list for the first time; it’s been hovering in the top five for the past few years, last year landing at a then-record #3. Possibly the recent popularity of Dry January (according to the article, 16% of British adults participated in 2016) is carrying over to Lent.

“Chips” cracked the top five this year largely because British Prime Minister Theresa May announced she was giving them up for Lent. This announcement had knock-on effects lower down the list, with “her favourite thing” and “live mice” both coming in at #88. The announcement of the potential closure of a U.K. chip factory the next day led to further jokes. For my U.K. readers, yes, I know you call them crisps (and your “chips” are U.S. “French fries”); I would now tell myself in 2009, when I first started compiling this list, not to combine “chips” and “crisps” into a single line, but it’s too late now.

Donald Trump is a big winner this year, landing at #22, just behind “Facebook” but ahead of “hope.” “The presidency” comes in at #52. In all, there are 1,002 tweets mentioning “Trump,” “President,” and “POTUS,” which is good enough for #10 on the list if we were to combine them all into a single line.

“The dirtiest thing” (#66) refers to a campaign to give up non-renewable energy.

This year, 73,334 tweets (excluding retweets) specifically mention giving up something. This total is up from last year’s 60,000 tweets; I used broader search terms this year (“lent” and “lent2017”) than I have in the past. In all, this year the analysis covers 694,244 tweets, up from 200,000 last year–again, largely because of the broader search terms.

Rank	Word	Count	Change from last year’s rank
1.	Alcohol	2,396	+2
2.	Social networking	2,148	0
3.	Chocolate	2,143	-2
4.	Twitter	2,064	0
5.	Chips	1,416	+15
6.	Swearing	1,395	0
7.	School	1,189	-2
8.	Soda	1,186	-1
9.	Fast food	1,092	+1
10.	Sweets	990	-2
11.	Coffee	969	-2
12.	Meat	909	-1
13.	Lent	906	0
14.	College	894	+5
15.	Beer	888	+8
16.	Bread	691	0
17.	Sugar	660	-5
18.	Life	645	+11
19.	Sex	612	-1
20.	You	609	-5
21.	Facebook	594	-7
22.	Donald Trump	520	+62
23.	Hope	456	+31
24.	Work	442	+3
25.	Boys	433	-1
26.	Religion	406	+4
27.	Junk food	401	-6
28.	Homework	393	-6
29.	Pizza	373	-12
30.	Smoking	296	+5
31.	Candy	288	-5
32.	Cheese	284	+4
33.	Marijuana	267	+6
34.	Starbucks	265	-6
35.	Catholicism	259	+12
36.	Ice cream	249	-5
37.	Cookies	227	+1
38.	F***boys	220	-13
39.	Wine	219	-2
40.	Being petty	212	+21
41.	Instagram	210	-8
41.	Breathing	210	+22
42.	Rice	209	0
43.	Carbs	202	+5
43.	Fried food	202	+6
44.	Makeup	201	+2
45.	Shopping	190	+3
46.	People	189	+4
47.	Virginity	185	+12
48.	Red meat	184	+3
49.	Stuff	180	-5
50.	Snapchat	168	-16
51.	French fries	166	-6
52.	The presidency	164	+82
53.	Procrastination	159	+3
54.	Men	158	+18
55.	Sobriety	156	+5
56.	Liquor	155	+6
57.	My will to live	154	+77
58.	Food	150	-15
58.	Negativity	150	-3
59.	Takeout	148	+7
60.	Dairy	144	+6
61.	McDonald’s	143	-8
62.	Booze	141	-4
63.	Masturbation	138	-8
64.	Netflix	136	-32
64.	Hot Cheetos	136	-1
65.	Eating out	133	+6
66.	The dirtiest thing	132	+28
67.	Complaining	130	-10
68.	Desserts	126	-16
69.	Caffeine	125	-19
70.	Coke	124	-9
71.	Lying	123	+15
72.	Sleep	115	-2
73.	Him	114	+3
74.	Feelings	108	-22
75.	Fizzy drinks	103	-12
76.	My job	99	+15
76.	Juice	99	+1
76.	Chick Fil A	99	-8
77.	Pasta	95	-12
78.	Pancakes	94	-7
79.	Nothing	91	+14
80.	Online shopping	89	-17
81.	Naps	88	+9
82.	Church	87	-1
83.	Living	86	+43
84.	Memes	83	+27
85.	Cake	82	-15
86.	My phone	79	-33
87.	Stress	78	-14
88.	Eating live mice	77
88.	My attitude	77	-10
88.	Caring	77	-24
88.	Her favourite treat	77
89.	Abbreviations	75	+41
90.	Politics	74	+3
90.	Sweet tea	74	-2
91.	Potatoes	72	0
91.	Classes	72	+10
92.	Boba	70	+10
93.	Christianity	69	-13
94.	TV	65	-11
94.	Sarcasm	65	-20
95.	Taco Bell	63	-20
95.	Donuts	63	+6
96.	Oxygen	62	+18
96.	Porn	62	-24
97.	Studying	60	-9
97.	My boyfriend	60	+3
97.	The gym	60	+8
97.	Diet coke	60	-30
98.	Everything	59	-11
98.	Anxiety	59	+13
99.	New Year’s resolutions	58	-20
100.	Chipotle	57	-31
100.	Pork	57	-16

Fast Food

Chipotle now lands behind even Taco Bell.

Snack Food

Hot Cheetos continue their snack-food dominance.

Adulting

It’s a verb now. Or at least a gerund.

Emojis

Just over 14,000 tweets (19%) included an emoji this year. I haven’t tracked emoji usage before, so I can’t say how that compares to previous years.

Here are the top five emojis used this year, along with the most-popular items given up:

Emoji	Tweets	Most-popular Given Up
😂	2,428	chocolate, alcohol, twitter
😭	1,154	chocolate, sweets, fast food
😩	889	chocolate, sweets, fast food
🙃	875	chocolate, coffee, fast food
🙄	640	chocolate, alcohol, social media

Conversely, here are the most-popular things given up with tweets that include emojis:

Given up	Tweets	Most-popular Emojis*
chocolate	793	🍫 🙈 😫
social media	549	✌ 👋 🙏
alcohol	537	😅 ♀ 😬
twitter	482	✌ 👋 🙏
sweets	355	😅 🍬 🍫

* Excluding the top-ten emojis for the year.

Retweets

The rest of this data excludes retweets, but here are the three tweets mentioning Lent that drew the most retweets. I feel that this list encapsulates Twitter; not many other top-three lists would include college humor, the pope, and Rick “Never Gonna Give You Up” Astley.

*gives up college for Lent*

— College Student (@ColIegeStudent) March 1, 2017

Lent is a new beginning, a path leading to the certain goal of Easter, Christ’s victory over death.

— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) March 1, 2017

I hear Rick Astley really struggles with Lent

— Martin (@martin466004) March 1, 2017

Categories

Here are my categories for the top 740 things people gave up:

Rank	Category	Number of Tweets
1.	food	17,017
2.	technology	5,659
3.	habits	4,962
4.	smoking/drugs/alcohol	4,880
5.	irony	3,495
6.	school/work	3,470
7.	relationship	2,541
8.	sex	1,179
9.	religion	1,055
10.	politics	911
11.	generic	679
12.	entertainment	447
13.	shopping	407
14.	health/hygiene	328
15.	money	279
16.	sports	152
17.	possessions	103
18.	clothes	64
19.	weather	28
20.	celebrity	20

Media Coverage

The Lent Tracker received some media attention this year:

1. Christianity Today
2. International Business Times
3. The Sun
4. Daily Herald
5. Baptist News
6. Cleveland.com
7. Pajamas Media
8. Catholic News Service

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 5th, 2017 at 12:15 am and is filed under Lent, Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.