Blog / February 2013

This year saw a lot of churn in the top 100 things people were giving up for Lent.

The pope announced his resignation on Monday, leading many to say that he was giving up “being pope” for Lent. It came in at #1. (Related, at #18, people said they were giving up “the pope” for Lent.)

Specific social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook generally dropped this year, with the generic term “social networking” (#4) taking over as a catchall. Instagram (#10), Pinterest (#52), and Snapchat (#78) were all new to the top 100.

With Valentine’s Day falling on the day after Ash Wednesday this year, it came in at #13. My wife suggests that the timing may also have contributed to the drop in “chocolate” from #2 last year to #17 this year. “Valentines” is #97.

“Horse meat” (#20) refers to the ongoing European scandal.

The only celebrity to make the list was British boy band One Direction, up substantially at #41.

I learned several new words this year: “twerking” (#34), a type of dance move, “selfies” (#46), or self-shot photos taken with a phone, “subtweeting” (#57), or tweeting about someone without mentioning them by name, “oomf” (#71), or “one of my [Twitter] followers,” and “Nando’s” (#76), a chicken restaurant.

This list draws from 263,000 tweets from February 10-15, 2013, and excludes most retweets.

Rank	Word	Count	Change from last year’s rank
1.	Being pope	5,654
2.	Swearing	4,944	+1
3.	Soda	2,648	+2
4.	Social networking	2,264	+19
5.	Alcohol	2,217	-1
6.	Chips	1,690	+8
7.	Virginity	933	+23
8.	Marijuana	784	+17
9.	Fast food	776	-2
10.	Instagram	755	+270
11.	Twitter	672	-10
12.	Cookies	643	+19
13.	Valentine's day	514
14.	Masturbation	510	+18
15.	Takeout	465	+59
16.	Sweets	444	-7
17.	Chocolate	417	-15
18.	The pope	394	+10,224
19.	Facebook	380	-13
20.	Horse meat	375
21.	Junk food	362	-8
22.	Smoking	355	-3
23.	My swag	331	+373
24.	Desserts	325	+21
25.	Life	325	+40
26.	New year's resolutions	313	+47
27.	My boyfriend	309	+99
28.	Catholicism	255	+11
29.	Straightening my hair	228	+89
30.	Fried food	225	+5
31.	Netflix	216	+255
32.	Work	216	-5
33.	Sobriety	213	+4
34.	Twerking	185	+698
35.	The playoffs	184	+3,556
36.	French fries	173	+19
37.	Coke	168	+1
38.	Feelings	168	+207
39.	Laziness	160	+28
40.	Meat	158	-30
41.	Onedirection	155	+103
42.	You	154	-24
43.	Procrastination	153	+1
44.	Makeup	150	+16
45.	Internet	149	+61
46.	Selfies	149	+2,328
47.	Exercise	144	+58
48.	School	141	-36
49.	My phone	135	+15
50.	Classes	129	+84
51.	Dip	127	+132
52.	Pinterest	125	+133
53.	Church	124	+33
54.	Emotions	122	+397
55.	Going to school	119	+163
56.	My girlfriend	111	+207
57.	Subtweeting	110	+253
58.	College	106	+5
59.	My face	106	+4,168
60.	Ice cream	106	-27
61.	McDonald's	102	-32
62.	Being ugly	101	+256
63.	Snacking	99	+19
64.	Spending	96	+89
65.	Dunkin Donuts	96	+475
66.	Chew	95	+418
67.	Eating out	94	+28
68.	Elevators	94	+99
69.	Food	93	-47
70.	Moaning	93	+123
71.	Oomf	93	+78
72.	Chick Fil A	90	+135
73.	Healthy food	88	+180
74.	Football	87	+145
75.	Swimming	87	+200
76.	Nando's	86	+72
77.	DVDs	84	+1,326
78.	Snapchat	84
79.	Broccoli	83	+206
80.	Ranch	81	+250
81.	The snooze button	80	+176
82.	Crystal meth	80	+219
83.	Dignity	79	+116
84.	Cake	77	-13
85.	Unhealthy food	77	+34
86.	Homework	76	-65
87.	Busyness	75
88.	Schoolwork	74	+88
89.	Chemistry	74	+34,949
90.	Frozen yogurt	72	+480
91.	iPhone	72	+100
92.	FIFA	71	+143
93.	Betting	70	+315
94.	Doing homework	69	+158
95.	Myself	68	+267
96.	Supermarkets	67	+1,797
97.	Valentines	66
98.	Domino's	63	+323
99.	Being negative	63	+212
100.	Hookah	63	+340

Categories

Rank	Category	Number of Tweets
1.	food	11,642
2.	habits	8,083
3.	religion	6,519
4.	technology	4,782
5.	smoking/drugs/alcohol	3,928
6.	sex	1,771
7.	relationship	1,399
8.	health/hygiene	1,270
9.	school work	1,095
10.	irony	792
11.	sports	648
12.	entertainment	392
13.	celebrity	246
14.	clothes	235
15.	money	133
16.	shopping	111

The image is a Wordle.

See the top 100 things people are giving up in 2013 for Lent on Twitter, continually updated until February 15, 2013.

As I write this post, with about 5,000 tweets analyzed, the new hot topics so far this year are: meowing, Valentine’s Day, and Snapchat.

Look for the usual post-mortem on February 16, 2013.