What are people sharing their ‘unpopular opinions’ on? First, we used Consumer Research to look at trending topics across all our online data sources.

In the last six months, debates about characters in pop culture hit 63k mentions. This conversation was driven by quite a few different characters, but perhaps most controversial was the debate over the best incarnation of the Doctor in Doctor Who.

TV shows were also in the spotlight, with 55k mentions in the last six months. But we found the conversation went deeper than just talking about whether a show is bad or good. Consumers talked about how some shows have become outdated. Friends (34k mentions) was called out for being hugely popular, despite some aspects (like a lack of diversity and homophobic and transphobic ‘jokes’) not being acceptable today.

Dislike of fandoms has also been picking up steam (45k mentions) because of how they tend to dominate newsfeeds. 7.5k mentions complained about BTS’ “Army” of fans because of this.

Other notable gripes from the last six months were:

• Book opinions: 44k mentions
• Movie opinions: 38k mentions
• Calls are better than texts: 32k mentions
• Pop culture character relationships: 28k mentions
• Football and soccer players: 25k mentions
• Being single is the best: 24k mentions
• Music opinions: 22k mentions

Having found out about popular unpopular opinion topics generally, we wanted to know how they differed across platforms. Next, we’ll break the data down by looking at posts on Reddit and posts on Twitter.

Reddit users’ most popular unpopular opinions

There were 958k mentions of unpopular opinions on Reddit from January 1 to June 30 2020.

Just like on other platforms, Reddit users got particularly fired up during lockdown. Posts to r/unpopularopinions increased 105% in the last four months (while many were in lockdown) compared to the four months prior.

For Reddit users, the most popular topic of unpopular opinions was gaming, including board games, video games, and consoles (24k mentions).

Reddit users’ unpopular opinions were fascinating because they not only touched on lighter topics like pop culture, but also things which happened on the platform.

20k mentions were focused on sports players, which is pretty standard across social media, but 19k were focused on subreddits themselves. Other topics that were unique to the Reddit list included change not being good (19k mentions), and other people’s unsolicited opinions (15k mentions). It’s pretty meta.x

Twitter’s most popular unpopular opinions

There were 554k mentions of unpopular opinions on Twitter from January 1 to June 30 2020. Again, mentions peaked during lockdown months when people didn’t have much to do but air their complaints online.

Movie and TV show unpopular opinions topped the Twitter list with 15k mentions, with many divisive conversations about streaming platform originals. Meanwhile, 7k mentions focused on sports (Liverpool F.C was a key topic in this conversation). This was followed by music (7k mentions) and pop culture characters (6k mentions).

Although Twitter is normally considered a home to fandoms, in the last six months we picked up 5k mentions of people sharing their unpopular opinions on them. For many, the big fandoms make too much noise.

Twitter users also had some unique unpopular opinions that didn’t appear on the general list across social media. There were 4k mentions of money equating to happiness, and 2k mentions of both chocolate and ice being disgusting.

Unpopular opinions are more than just a fun way for consumers to air their complaints. They help build communities of people on social media and can spark interesting debates. Some topics also offer brands a chance to interact with consumers in a lighthearted way, despite the difficult times.

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Brandwatch Response Team