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This year, the usual trio of Twitter, alcohol, and social networking led the list. But current events influenced the list this year more than most. Radio personality Rush Limbaugh‘s death on Ash Wednesday led many to comment that they were giving him up for Lent, landing him at #7. A major winter storm (#62, snow and #77, winter) in Texas (#34) knocked out electricity (#5), water (#35), and heat (#68) for millions of people. Finally, the global pandemic (#23, covid) elevated topics like going to the pub (#24) and suppressed others, like eating out (#75). Zoom (#63), a videoconferencing service, appeared for the first time. “Executive orders” (#53) refers to a satirical tweet about U.S. President Biden.

This year’s list draws from 24,312 tweets out of 557,560 total tweets mentioning Lent.

COVID-19

The global coronavirus pandemic led to jumps in several topics, most notably “going to the pub,” which was almost as popular as “COVID,” and was followed closely by food pickup and delivery.

Social Media

In the battle of the social networks, TikTok has almost overtaken Instagram, while Snapchat fell below Tinder. Facebook, not shown on this chart because it makes the chart harder to read, was once dominant and is now only just above Instagram.

Fast Food

Fast food is down across the board.

Top 103 Things Twitterers Gave Up for Lent in 2021

1.	Twitter	911	+2
2.	Alcohol	895	-1
3.	Social networking	687	-1
4.	Lent	515	+2
5.	Chocolate	476	0
6.	Meat	337	-2
7.	Rush Limbaugh	306
8.	Swearing	250	+3
9.	Men	242	+4
10.	Sex	225	-2
11.	Coffee	214	-4
12.	Sweets	213	-2
13.	Giving up things	188	+14
14.	Catholicism	185	+9
15.	Electricity	178	+99
16.	Soda	174	-7
17.	Fast food	167	-5
18.	Religion	154	+6
19.	School	140	-2
20.	Marijuana	138	0
21.	Sugar	136	+1
22.	Chips	123	-3
23.	Covid	116
24.	Going to the pub	115
25.	Bread	115	-7
26.	Smoking	114	+5
27.	Facebook	113	+3
28.	You	111	-13
29.	Work	102	-13
30.	Life	99	-2
31.	Instagram	99	-2
32.	Tiktok	96	+1
33.	Booze	94	+12
34.	Texas	92
35.	Water	87	+61
36.	Masks	85
37.	Online shopping	85	+24
38.	Homework	83	+5
39.	Hope	82	+15
40.	Living	80	+36
41.	Takeout	77	+26
42.	Breathing	75	+17
43.	Beer	71	-22
44.	Wine	71	-4
45.	Power	61
46.	Candy	60	-12
47.	Food	59	-1
48.	Him	59	+6
49.	Depression	58	-14
50.	Shopping	55	+7
51.	Lying	53	-3
52.	Executive orders	53
53.	Virginity	51	-28
54.	Liquor	51	-16
55.	Cookies	51	-2
56.	Starbucks	51	-26
57.	Red meat	50	-18
58.	Christianity	49	+18
59.	Junk food	49	-17
60.	Procrastination	49	0
61.	Anxiety	47	-18
62.	Snow	46	+47
63.	Zoom	44
64.	Rice	44	-14
65.	College	42	-28
66.	Sobriety	41	-8
67.	Lockdown	41
68.	Heat	40	+44
69.	Carbs	40	-28
70.	Pancakes	40	+3
71.	Caffeine	40	-24
72.	Donald Trump	40	-22
73.	Masturbation	39	-24
74.	Desserts	38	-3
75.	Eating out	38	-22
76.	Simping	36	-34
77.	Winter	36	+28
78.	Ice cream	34	-14
79.	Lint	34	+1
80.	God	33	+5
81.	Cheese	33	-30
82.	Negativity	33	-22
83.	People	32	-34
84.	Complaining	32	-28
85.	Being alive	32	+19
86.	Church	31	-16
87.	Coke	29	-25
88.	Pussy	28	-22
89.	Boys	28	-57
90.	Pizza	28	-29
91.	Sleep	28	-8
92.	My will to live	28	-11
93.	Amazon	27	-1
94.	Sarcasm	26	-5
95.	Hate	26	+15
96.	Snacking	25	-15
97.	Sanity	24	0
98.	My job	24	-44
99.	Cake	23	-22
100.	Dairy	22	-56
101.	The pandemic	22
102.	Chick Fil A	22	-47
103.	Baseball	22	+9

Top Categories

1.	food	3,419
2.	technology	2,305
3.	smoking/drugs/alcohol	1,613
4.	irony	1,341
5.	habits	1,198
6.	relationship	804
7.	religion	528
8.	sex	476
9.	health/hygiene	442
10.	school/work	414
11.	celebrity	313
12.	politics	242
13.	weather	213
14.	shopping	172
15.	money	125
16.	entertainment	106
17.	sports	48
18.	clothes	15
19.	possessions	12

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 20th, 2021 at 1:15 pm and is filed under Lent. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.