There’s no other way around it: the internet was a very scary place in 2016. At times all we wanted to do was take out our internet cable and throw it away. Maybe that’s why it was also the year countless weird social media trends and memes rose to fame. Let’s recall 10 of the most remarkable things that broke the internet this year.
Mannequin Challenge
The world got so lazy in 2016 that the biggest meme required the participants to literally do nothing and freeze like a bunch of mannequins while Rae Sremmurd was blasting in the background. This looked appealing to everyone, from Hillary Clinton to Blac Chyna, who decided to freeze for a moment of social media glory while in labor. Gotta respect her patient womb.
Running Man Challenge
A less celebrated yet still infectious meme required you to run while never leaving your spot. Although the original running man hip-hop move is slightly more complicated, the trend is indeed based on hip-hop mid-90s culture, since the preferred soundtrack was Ghost Town DJs’ 1996’s banger “My Boo.” Thanks to the likes of Ciara and Chris Brown, the 20-year-old tune even returned to the charts.
Clowns Sightings
There were a lot of moments during 2016 when we double-checked whether we got stuck in some nightmarish circus. No wonder everyone got so bothered when a series of reports confirmed the ongoing clown craze across United States (and eventually across the globe). We’ve still yet to find out if all of it was just an elaborate hoax promoting the upcoming adaptation of Stephen King’s It, but one thing is certain: 2016 was especially hard on the actual clowns.
Singing Trump
A lot of people wished the microphone would get turned off whenever Donald Trump stepped onto the stage with another one of his speeches during the election. Yet a lot of people found hilarious similarities with what the president-elect was saying and some forgotten feel-good tunes from the likes of Backstreet Boys and Blink-182. Oh and that Dirty Dancing-inspired hoax duet between Trump and Hilary Clinton? We’d pay to see it happen in real life!
Evil Kermit
It’s easy to feel like you’re suffering from split personality whenever you engage in social media activity, since everyone wants to create a better, more presentable version of themselves to share with the cyber world. And nothing captured the struggle of that duality better than the Evil Kermit meme. To be honest, the internet kind of failed itself this time around, since the photo of two Kermits was taken from 2014’s Muppets Most Wanted movie. What took you so long?!
Grumpy Phelps
Don’t mess with Michael Phelps. His face on the meme-friendly snap said it all, although the web was quick to pitch their own versions of what was going through the Olympic champion’s head that day. Phelps would later reveal during MTV VMA’s that he simply got a little too affected by the talent of Future: "I was in the zone with Future's track 'Stick Talk' blaring through my headphones. There’s no rapper more inspiring today than Future — it's right there in his name."
Who Is She?
For some memes we didn’t have to rely on the Future, since we could always go back to the happy days of the '80s and borrow a tune as care-free as A-Ha’s “Take On Me.” That’s what the girl behind the famous Vine video did, creating a whole new meme titled “Who Is She?”. It’s all simple: just dance a little with your back to the camera and then make a dramatic turn. Even Jeff Goldblum couldn’t resist the urge to give in to the '80s magic.
Justice for Barb
Talking about the '80s, back in the summer of 2016 the whole world seemed to relocate to a sleepy suburban American town of the Reagan era and follow a bunch of middle-school kids on their quest to find a missing friend and potentially save the world from a monster from another dimension. Yes, we’re talking about Netflix' hit series Stranger Things. One of the strangest things happened when people started voicing their concerns regarding the fate of the charming sidekick character of Barb, who [as the internet concluded] deserved a much better ending.
Pokemon Go
The internet also got obsessed with the mid-90s Pokemon craze all over again thanks to the arrival of the Pokemon Go app, which caused some serious rumblings all over the world and even got a poor Pokemon fan arrested in Russia, when he decided to hunt some Pikachus inside a church. PokeSpots would get removed, people would get killed for paying too much attention to their phones’ screens and governments of many countries would get very concerned about the safety of the game. But let’s not forget the good: all the '90s kids surely appreciated the return of their childhood heroes to the spotlight.
Harambe
The story of a gorilla named Harambe is a pretty daunting one. Back in May 17-year-old Harambe was fatally shot at the Cincinnati Zoo when a 3-year-old boy fell into his enclosure and was grabbed by the animal. The video of the incident became a viral sensation, with some voicing their disapproval of the murder while others commenting that the zoo workers had no other choice. Harambe became the web’s legend and it was even reported that some clueless Americans scribbled the gorilla’s name on their ballot papers in November. And let’s not even start with all the Harambe-related social media memes...
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