Saddest day ever

I can’t get over this graph.

Friday, 29 May 2020 was the saddest day ever on Twitter. Click to enlarge. No seriously, click to enlarge. You really have to see it enlarged to feel what is going on in this data.

This is an amazing visualization of data. It is so rich. It shows a big picture (hm, why might there have been a downward trend in happiness since 2016?), but the details are so rich, both the highs and the lows.It reminds me a little of Charles Minard’s visualization of Napolean’s Russian campaign, which Edward Tufte has made famous.

And when you see what the lows were reactions to, in the labels of the data, it pushes home just how bad things have to be to create the saddest day ever on Twitter. And not just “saddest” by a little, but by a lot.

In a sense, this graph is helpful because it shows, “It’s not just you.” And it shows that anyone who does not acknowledge the pain that people are in now is not reading the room. People are hurting, badly.

I’m scared to see the data from Saturday and Sunday and the week to come.

Update, 2 June 2020: Friday’s record has already been broken. The last day of May, 2020, is now the saddest day ever on Twitter.

Spotted on the Hedonomter Twitter account. Data here.