there’s this really cool website called the hedonometer, which measures “internet happiness” by looking at over 10,000 words across 9 languages and tracking them over time, and it’s been running since 2008 and has recorded the “happiest” and “saddest” days for over a decade based on the prevalence of those thousands of key words
words like laughter, win, hope, love, etc make the score go up, while words like shooting, death, terrorism, pandemic, etc make the score go down. different words have different “weights” of how happy or sad they are, essentially, with something like “exams” not affecting the score as much as “murder,” if that makes sense
the happiest days annually are always holdiays — with christmas, christmas eve, new year’s, mother’s day, valentine’s day, and, interestingly, international women’s day always being the top happiest days of the year. additionally, saturdays are consistently the happiest days of the week, while tuesdays are consistently the saddest.
excluding holidays, a few celebrities birthdays always have a big rise in happiness levels — particularly beyoncé, serena williams, j*stin b*eber, t*ylor sw*ft, ar*ana gr*nde, and most especially members of 1D and BTS (though a few of these celebrities have birthdays that fall on holidays, such as one member of BTS, whose birthday is international women’s day. i theorize that IWD always being so happy could potentially be connected to that, especially with the top words that day being “happy” and “birthday,” lol)
an example of the hedonometer from 2018:
additionally, every year, the internet gets consistently sadder, with even the happiest days of the year having a lower average over time. 6.0 is considered a neutral day, higher than that is a happy day, and lower than that is a sad day. before 2016, a normal day had an average score just below 6.1, but now in the last few years it averages around 5.9 or lower. in 2020, only three days were above 6.1 (christmas, christmas eve, and the one mentioned below at #2). essentially: the happiest days of the year in the last few years had the same scores as normal days before ~2016
the website is kinda hard to navigate and not very user-friendly, so i went through and tried to find the happiest and saddest days since the chart was first created, to share on here. here’s what i found:
here are the top ten happiest days on social media since 2008, excluding holidays and major celebrity birthdays:
October 16, 2015 — 1D’s song “Perfect” is released (6.13)
December 6, 2020 — BTS wins all major awards at the Mnet Asian Music Awards (6.12)
September 25, 2015 — Caitlyn Jenner comes out as transgender (6.12)
May 21, 2017 — Billboard Music Awards (the top words this day were “top,” “social,” “artist,” and “award,” and BTS became the first kpop group to win a Western award with their award for Top Social Artist) (6.11)
November 11, 2014 — 1D’s song “18” is released (6.11)
May 23, 2015 — BTS perform at their “Dream Concert” (6.11)
January 31, 2015 — Mitt Romney announces he won’t run for president again (6.11)
June 26, 2015 — Gay marriage legalized in the US (6.10)
February 1, 2015 — Super Bowl Sunday, “left shark” meme, Missy Elliot’s surprise Super Bowl performance (6.09)
April 29, 2011 — Kate Middleton and Prince William’s wedding (6.09)
(i excluded holidays and celebrity birthdays bc i didn’t want a list that was only christmases 2008-2018 or “jimin’s birthday 2018, harry styles’ birthday 2015, jungkook’s birthday 2019,” ya know?)
and here are the top twenty saddest days on social media since 2008:
May 31, 2020 — George Floyd’s murder and the 2020 global Black Lives Matter protests (5.63)
May 29, 2020 — BLM protests (5.66)
June 1, 2020 — BLM protests (5.66)
May 30, 2020 — BLM protests (5.67)
June 2, 2020 — BLM protests (5.67)
June 3, 2020 — BLM protests (5.69)
March 12, 2020 — Covid shutdowns (5.71)
March 13, 2020 — Covid shutdowns (5.72)
June 4, 2020 — BLM protests (5.72)
January 6, 2021 — US Capitol insurrection (5.73)
March 18, 2020 — Covid shutdowns (5.73)
June 5, 2020 — BLM protests (5.75)
October 2, 2017 — Las Vegas music festival mass shooting (5.75)
May 28, 2020 — BLM protests (5.76)
January 7, 2021 — US Capitol insurrection fallout (5.76)
August 4, 2019 — Mass shootings in both Dayton Ohio and El Paso Texas (5.76)
October 20, 2020 — Mass shooting of protestors in Nigeria (5.78)
January 3, 2020 — Murder of Irani general Qasem Soleimani and fears about WWIII starting (5.78)
June 12, 2014 — Pulse nightclub mass shooting (5.83)
March 15, 2019 — New Zealand mosque mass shooting (5.84)
that’s 14 out of 20 being in 2020, for those keeping count
additionally, i find this “sad” day kinda funny, like the terms with it and everything. it was the #1 saddest day in 2015, but has a higher score (5.99) than almost every day in 2020:
(also: i didn’t link the website bc tumblr hides posts with links, but you can easily find it if you google “hedonometer”)
