We also found another 11k people discussing the Lyrid shower – a meteor shower caused by the debris from Hayley’s comet – and how it seemed to be suspiciously timed with the release of the UFO videos. FYI, it happens every 72 years.

News, memes, and breathtaking pictures aside, during the pandemic we have found an increase in reported UFO sightings. Curiously, 174k social users in March and April posted about a sighting of a UFO, up 23% compared to January and February.

Mentions of UFO sightings increased 62% on the day of the Pentagon’s video release. Many people felt compelled to share their own extraterrestrial experiences because of the video, and Blink-182 guitarist and alien enthusiast Tom DeLonge encouraged people to share their stories, which added to the influx of sighting mentions.

Being stuck indoors might just be making us wonder what’s out there even more than we did pre-lockdown.

The worrying side effects of lockdown

This week we’ve reported on how more people are talking about neck and back pain since lockdowns began. But those are not the only health issues people are suffering from.

Using Qriously, we surveyed 8k adults from Australia, China, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK, and the US through their smartphones and tablets. We gave them a list of health issues and asked if they’d experienced any due to pandemic-related restrictions.

It’s not looking good. Just 27% of respondents said they’d not experienced any of the issues we listed.

Sleep issues, something we’ve reported on previously too, and weight gain top the list. With people adjusting to new schedules, some eating more junk food, and many taking less exercise, this makes sense.

Back pain ranks highly, and we can also see other complaints that could be related to working from home with poor setups. Over 20% of respondents reported headaches, eye-strain, and stiff joints.

We then looked at if any of the nations we studied were seeing more problems than others.

There isn’t a huge disparity here. Italy sits at the top with 83% of respondents reporting health issues, while Germany saw 66% at the other end of the table. But it’s still a worrying number of people reporting problems in every country.

When looking at specific issues by country, we noticed something odd.

Italian respondents reported far more accidents than any other country, specifically those related to home improvement and gardening. No other country even comes close.

We can’t say for sure what the cause is, but this tallies with EU data on injuries. In the most recent dataset that includes Italy (2013), the country has one of the highest incident rates for injuries sustained at home, at 69 incidents per 1,000 people. For Spain, it was just 12.

To any Italians looking to do some decorating or digging this weekend, please be careful.

Feel-good content

No matter what the situation is like out there, people will still seek out the good – particularly when they need something to brighten their day.

There are a number of subreddits that cater to this need, so we had a look to see how their activity has changed over the last few months.

We looked at /r/wholesomememes, dedicated to happy and cheerful memes; /r/UpliftingNews, where people post news coverage of positive events; and /r/MadeMeSmile, where people submit content that makes them feel good.

Despite, or maybe because of, the pandemic, posts are up in the last few weeks. In April, submissions and comments were up 29% compared to February. Clearly people are looking for a bit of escape.

To get a better idea of what people are after, we’ve broken the data down by subreddit as well.

We get a slightly different picture here. We can see that /r/UpliftingNews started to climb earlier than the others. Rising at the start of March, it started to fall as lockdowns were put in place around the world.

The other two subreddits follow a similar trajectory as each other, remaining fairly stable and then climbing towards the end of March. It’s worth noting /r/wholesomememes banned any Covid-19 memes on March 14.

It seems like in lockdown people became less interested in news, even if it was positive. Instead they turned to the more creative and diverse subreddits for their dose of cheerfulness to get by.

So what kind of posts have been most popular in the last couple of weeks?

On /r/UpliftingNews, it’s reports on use of renewable energy, foodbank donations, and falling death rates in Italy. Over on /r/wholesomememes, there are lots of animal, family, and motivational posts.

On /r/MadeMeSmile, it’s this:

Make of that what you will.

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Thanks for reading

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Stay safe,

Brandwatch Response Team