Brits Whine About the Weather on Twitter More Than Any Other Nation

Anyone who lives in Great Britain or has British friends has likely encountered a culture cliche: The British love griping about the weather. Now, however, even people with no direct contact Great Britain’s subjects can bask in its citizen’s propensity for weather-related complaint. A new analysis shows that Twitter users from Great Britain whine about the weather more often and more negatively than any other country, The Telegraph reports.

More than 300,000 tweets posted in 16 languages from 20 countries went into this analysis. The findings, conducted by the social media monitor Brandwatch, showed that around 20 percent of all discussions about the weather in an average week originate from Britain. Greeks came in second, accounting for about 15 percent. The British musings tended to be more negative, however, with nearly 9 percent of those tweets designated as complaints.

And the British legacy of negativity lives on, it seems, in its former colonies. New Zealand came in second for negativity (8.1 percent), Canada third (7.6 percent) and the U.S. fifth (6.6 percent). The Netherlands came in third, but that country has seen unseasonable snowfall in the past few weeks, excusing the fed-up Dutch tweeters for slipping into complain mode.

To give you an idea of how a negative Brit tweets, here are a few examples:

From lil_angi: It’s sooooooooo cold outside!! All we’re missing is the snow. WHERE’S THE SNOW??? Has the beast from the east been tamed? #uksnow

From RobWilliams1973: #uksnow #snowtweet ominous looking clouds gathering over P’boro. It’s snow or the end of the world is nearly two weeks early.

From MillsMc07: Fog… Fog…. Fog…. Cold…. Fog…. Cold…. but no #uksnow

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Rachel Nuwer | | READ MORE

Rachel Nuwer is a freelance science writer based in Brooklyn.