And the Winner Is…! Looking at the Social Media Conversations Surrounding the Finale of RuPaul’s Drag Race!

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