To put it bluntly, a lot has happened this year.
From adland to the world at large, the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. presidential election, the Black Lives Matter movement and countless other history-shaping events have been inserted into most every aspect of our lives.
And where else but Twitter could an armchair historian look to for an up-to-the-second timeline of 2020 as we, the body politic, lived it? The social media platform has occupied a unique place in our society’s consciousness for the past few years, becoming the stage where headline-making news and deep-seated misinformation and viral memes live side by side.
Here are nine tweets that, as a collection, concisely sum up the fears, dramas, triumphs and quirks that defined this year—all in 280 characters or less.