Month: April 2024

This past Friday, April 19^th, was the premiere of the finale of season 16 of the hit reality competition television show RuPaul’s Drag Race. The show features drag queens from across the United States competing against one another for a grand prize of $200,000 and the title of America’s Next Drag Superstar. This year, queens Plane Jane, Sapphira Cristál, and Nymphia Wind were the top three of the competition who made it to the finale to compete for the crown. With any television show finale, fans took to social media to talk about the happenings and results of the night.

From last Thursday, April 18^th, to the time of writing this, #DragRace has been used almost 175 thousand times and these posts have reached almost 600 million social media users primarily on X. Further, the bulk of these conversation took place on Friday the 19^th and Saturday the 20^th with a steep drop off in volume on Sunday the 21^st. In terms of sentiment, posts that used #DragRace were rated at about 85% positive and 15% negative. This overwhelmingly positive response is largely thanks to the appearance from last year’s winner, Sasha Colby, and the fact that the winner of this season, Nymphia Wind, is the first Asian winner of the show in 13 years.

Most of the posts that were deemed “negative” had to do with the fact that the respective social media users’ choice of winner, mostly Sapphira Cristál, did not win.

Some top themes of discussion included hashtags that read #Team[respective finalist’s name here] which is where fans could show their support for their choice for winner. #TeamNymphia was the most used at over 10 thousand postss followed by #TeamSapphira at over 6 thousand posts and finally #TeamPlaneJane at over 1 thousand posts. 

Most countries around the world were contributing to the discourse around finale night, but the United States was far and away the most vocal with almost 30 thousand mentions due to the fact that this was the finale for the American Drag Race franchise. Additionally, men were twice as contributive to the conversations as women were. 

Lastly, when looking at influencers who participated in the Drag Race discourse, some notable names include Tsai Ing-wen, the president of Taiwan (Nymphia’s home country), Kylie Minogue, the singer whose song Padam Padam was used for the final lip sync of the night, and Morphine Love Dion, the queen who took 5^th place this season.

In the end, with the season over and Nymphia Wind being crowned America’s Nex Drag Superstar fans of the show can now turn their attention to the season 16 queens’ next creative endeavors while also getting ready for RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars season 9 which was officially announced during the finale. However, fans are not likely to forget this finale anytime soon as Nymphia has only started to make history with her reign in just a few short days.

Author: Ben Katarzynski

This past Thursday, April 11^th, social media erupted in chatter after the news of the latest celebrity death. Typically, social media users take to posting about how sad they are after a celebrity death or sharing their favorite memories of recently deceased celebrity. However, the conversations about this specific celebrity were a little different than the normal discourse. The celebrity that passed last week was the infamous Orenthal James “O. J.” Simpson. The former pro football, actor, and alleged murderer died of complications associated with prostate cancer at the age of 76. With the death of a figure as controversial as O. J., social media was exploding with discussions about him, his death, and, again, whether or not he killed his ex-wife, Nicole Brown.

From the morning of April 11^th to the time of writing this, across all social media platforms O.J. has been mentioned by social media users over 600 thousand times and these posts have been seen 9.5 billion times. This large volume of posts and reach is to be expected when any big celebrity dies, especially one as controversial as O. J. As of Sunday, April 14^th, however, the conversations have largely died down to only a few thousand posts. X was the most significant platform where these discussions took place, and the sentiment split of the discourse was exceptionally lopsided. About 23% of the posts were rated as being positive while 77% were rated as negative. This does make sense though as death can be rated as a negative topic on top of the fact that many people disliked O. J. Some of the top themes of the discussions about O. J. included rest, Heaven, and killer. However, as nice as “rest” and “Heaven” sound, many social media users were quick to make jokes about the polarizing figure.

Demographically speaking, twice as many men than women were posting about O. J., and conversations were exclusively had by American social media users. The top influencers in the conversation have mainly included new outlets such as The New York Times, ABC News, and TMZ, all of which helped spread the news of O. J.’s passing. 

Aside from the negative and joking aspects of these conversations, many of these metrics are common parts of discussions from when celebrities die, but because O. J. possibly killed his ex-wife, ran from the police, and then joked about being a killer for years afterwards social media users preferred to get the last laugh as opposed to celebrate his life. When the next controversial celebrity dies, it can be expected that the posts about their death will look similarly to the post about O. J, from the past few days. 

Author: Ben Katarzynski

On Monday, April 8^th, a total solar eclipse occurred with its path of totality crossing a large section of the North American continent. This was the second total solar eclipse that was visible in North America this century after the one in 2017. As this is such a rare occurrence where areas in the path of totality experience full darkness in the middle of the day, people are obviously going to talk about this unique phenomenon. Social media users did just that as #Eclipse2024 was one of the top trending topics on X this past Monday.

#Eclipse2024 was used over 100 thousand times and had a reach of almost 2 billion users on Monday alone, though the vast majority of these conversations took place on X. The sentiment of these discussions was overwhelmingly positive at about 85% positive and 15% negative. This makes sense as for many people this was their first time experiencing a total solar eclipse. Looking at the volume trend of the hashtag use across the day, there was a steady increase of the use of the hashtag which then exponentially increased the closer it got to the time of totality around 3:00 PM. Use of the hashtag then significantly dropped off for the rest of the day. Some of the top themes associated with the hashtag included totality, which referenced the fact that the moon fully covered the sun, clouds, which referred to the fact that many areas in the path of totality had some form of cloud coverage, and glasses, which referenced the special glasses needed to view the eclipse as it happened.

#Eplipse2024 was also far and away the most used eclipse hashtag where it was used tens of thousands of more times than other related hashtags. Additionally, the most used emojis in posts that used the hashtag were, of course, ones that depicted the sun, moon, and sunglasses. Also, as the eclipse happened primarily over the United States, the hashtag was exclusively used by American users on X. One other interesting point of demographic information is the fact that men used the hashtag almost twice as much as women. Looking at the conversation stream, it appears that organizational accounts, like NOAA Satellites and Texas Football, seem to be classified as “male.” This is further reflected in the influencers who participated in conversations about the eclipse. Some of the top influencers included Jimmy Fallon, Ryan Seacrest, and Elmo.

This story shows that no matter how fractured and divided the internet and social media can get with all the discourse that goes on, a very rare event like this can bring everyone together to talk about it for a moment. Things like politics and celebrity events can be divisive, but everyone can take some time to stop and look at the sun (with the proper eyewear).

Author: Ben Katarzynski

American television producer and screenwriter, Dan Schneider, has come under scrutiny following the release of a new Nickelodeon Documentary, Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV. Popularly known for his work on several big hit shows like iCarly, Zoey 101, Drake and Josh, Victorious, and many more, Schneider has faced many accusations of misconduct and curating uncomfortable work environments for kid actors in his time in the industry. The documentary highlights the aspects of toxic culture and abuse that went on behind the scenes of some of Nickelodeon’s hit shows. Former stars of the shows were extensively interviewed in the documentary series and numerous actors shared their experiences with sexism, racism, and verbal abuse that were all occurring during production. The series is set to be a limited five-part series.

The topic on social media continued to increase following the series release on March 17th, 2024. The topic reached its peak of conversation on Tuesday, March 19, 2024. Overall, there was a reach of 3 billion and 324.29 k mentions across social media channels. The most popular social media channels that hosted conversation on the documentary were X, Reddit, and News Sources. 

Dan Schneider has spoken out following the release of the series and the responses from viewers have largely been negative. 

The cause of another peak in conversation on March 21st, 2024 came from a post by Steve Burns, former actor on Blue’s Clues, when he posted a video following the release of the series and his abrupt departure from the show. 

An additional topic of conversation on social media is pertaining to Drake Bell and his involvement in the series. During the third episode, Bell announced for the first time that he was the suspect involved in the Brian Peck trial for child sexual abuse that ultimately sent Peck to prison in 2004. Peck was a dialogue and acting coach for Nickelodeon. Further commentary came when fans took to Bell’s side defending him or ridiculing him for his more recent behavior of pleading guilty to attempted child endangerment. 

Additional commentary occurred with Matthew Underwood when he spoke out following the docuseries. Viewers are criticizing those asking for victims to come forward, indicating how difficult it is for the actors to share their stories. 

The fifth episode of the docuseries is set to be released on April 7th, 2024. Many viewers are awaiting the episode as it has created so much commentary and awareness on the difficult topics. 

Author: Lexi Merriman

On April 1^st, the day known as April Fools’ Day where many people commit to pulling pranks, making jokes, and other hijinks, many people took pause when they logged in The New York Times website to play the daily Connections game. The game which is premised around grouping 16 seemingly unrelated words into four groups of four based on some unifying theme has been a hit online for some time now thanks to the success of other word games like The New York Time’s Wordle. On Monday, however, fans of the game were thrown for a loop when they opened the day’s Connections puzzle to see 16 emojis on the board instead of the usual 16 words. This change in format, likely linked to April Fool’s Day, got users on social media talking about what the game editors had done.

Across the day of April 1^st “Connections” was mentioned 22.67 thousand times and these posts reached over 117 million social media users across all platforms, though X was far and away the most used platform for these conversations. Throughout the day there were five significant peaks in discussion at 1:00 AM, 8:00 AM, 10:00 AM, 12:00 PM, and 6 PM which are also typical times when people like to fit the puzzle into their daily routines. As more and more opened this surprise from the editors they took to social media to share their feelings. While this was a large shake up to the typical format, the sentiment of the Connections related posts was split at about 71% positive and 29% negative. Seemingly more people enjoyed this change than not. 

Some of the top themes and subthemes of these conversations include “opening up connections,” “Connections for April Fools’ Day is evil, and “hell.” While these do seem to skew negatively, as X users like to do, users took to making jokes about one of the latest trending topics.

The most frequently used emoji when discussing the day’s Connections was the small smile emoji which is often associated with the concept of “smiling through the pain” or saying things are “fine” when they are not, in fact, fine. Further, these conversations were exclusively held between social media users in the United States which makes sense as the puzzle is hosted by and American news outlet. Additionally, the users discussing the Connections were split about evenly gender wise with a slight skew towards women being more verbal. Lastly, according to Sprinklr’s data, those that can be identified as advocates, detractors, and prolific users for this conversation are all small everyday accounts, and the influencers are mainly news related accounts. Overall, this shows that not every topic discussed on social media needs to be a big headline news story picked up by countless influencers and the like online. Often times trending topics can just be by the average social media user and for the average social media user. The occasional news outlet may chime in, but the bulk of the discussion can be credited to the everyday people who use social media to be social and talk about the everyday things that happen in their lives.

Author: Ben Katarzynski