It looks like 2019 was already swear-heavy, with levels rising throughout the year. That would have been interesting enough, but 2020 really kicked things into gear.

Looking at the March to December period, the number of posts containing swear words increased by 50% in 2020 compared to 2019. We’re confident to say that’s a significant increase.

The rise didn’t end with 2020 though. This year has been swear-heavy too, with January recording a three-year high with 63m sweary mentions.

And if you’re wondering about the February drop, this happens every year. We’re not sure on the exact reason, but it’s possibly due to it being a shorter month, or it could be people giving up swearing for Lent.

As we mentioned above, cursing is often emotionally driven. We thought we would take a look into this in the data, specifically for the March 2020 to March 2021 period.

The data is very clear cut. Angry swearing made up 52% of the mentions we were able to emotionally categorize.

This may not be surprising as Covid-19 has obviously given us plenty of reasons to be angry. But it is even less surprising when we look at the days which saw the most swearing. US politics was a huge driver for swearing, in particular on election day, after the Presidential debates, and during the storming of the US Capitol. The latter event saw 3.3m swear-laden mentions on January 6 alone.

We can end a positive note though. Joyful cursing didn’t make up the biggest piece of the pie, but it wasn’t rare either. People turned the air blue with joy over 64m times since March last year.

The causes were many and varied, including seeing family and friends, videos and pictures people loved, and simply being a good mood. It’s proof, as always, that no matter what’s going on, there’s still joy to be found.

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Stay safe,

The Brandwatch React team