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At the end of every edition of the Inside Daily Brief, we post a little video for fun, but you have to click to find out what it is: Hence, we call it Click Roulette. It’s become our little way of sneaking in something goofy or silly or light-hearted or peculiar, that’s maybe not NEWSworthy but nonetheless merits inclusion.
So for our 2016 year-end round-up, Inside COULD have done the usual, expected thing, and summarized all the big news stories that mattered over the past 12 months. But you all remember that stuff: you were there. We told you about it at the time. And honestly… 2016 was kind of a downer. Who needs to relive all of that?
Instead, we’re going to look at the year through the lens of Click Roulette, singling out the best pop culture ephemera, internet jokes and just plain odd cool stuff that we saw, sending out a tumultuous period in history with a grin. Or, at least, a smirk.
We’ve divided everything into three categories for your convenience: Videos, Memes and Trends. Enjoy!
VIDEOS OF THE YEAR
Starting with music videos, nearly everyone went with Beyoncé’s strikingly personal, visionary, 65-minute “Lemonade” as the year’s best. (You can watch it in full on TIDAL or check out excerpt “Sorry” on YouTube.) Vulture and Stereogum went their own way, kinda, naming Beyoncé’s “Formation” as the top clip. (Vulture chickened out at the last second and added “Lemonade” as an addendum, though.)
Other popular clips that showed up on a lot of lists: Noted Beyoncé sister Solange’s “Cranes in the Sky,” Anohni’s “Drone Bomb Me,” Kanye’s “Fade,” PUP’s “Sleep in the Head” (the brainchild of “Stranger Things” star Finn Wolfhard!), Chance the Rapper’s “Angels,” Frank Ocean’s “Nikes” and David Bowie’s swan song, “Lazarus.”
As for the year’s breakout video hits, let’s just get it out of the way up top. The most popular Facebook Live broadcast of 2016, and almost inarguably the year’s top breakthrough viral moment, was 37-year-old Texas mom Candace Payne, who made history when she tried on a talking Chewbacca Mask in a Kohl’s parking lot on May 19. “Chewbacca Mom’s” 4 minute video, titled “It’s the simple joys in life…,” racked up over 160 million total views this year. That’s nearly double the amount as the next-most-watched FB Live clip, musician Ted Yoder covering Tears for Fears on a hammered dulcimer. She even got her own action figure!
Also hitting the lucrative “Ellen” circuit this year were 3-year-old gymnast Emma, and the teens of “Damn Daniel,” whose Twitter Video montage of Vans shoe-related compliments has scored over 330,000 retweets, and earned kudos from Vans themselves, who invited Daniel to appear in a commercial.
The year’s most popular and beloved sketch came from SNL’s Halloween special: Tom Hanks donned a ridiculous suit and wig, and teamed up with two b-boy skeletons to become David S. Pumpkins. USA Today called it “the best thing that’s happened this year” and comedian Sara Benincasa wrote this thought-provoking essay about how the sketch has made her a better person. ANY QUESTIONS?!?!
Three new “Challenge” trends gripped YouTube and other video platforms this year. Early in the year, a couple of teens from New Jersey started posting clips to Instagram of themselves doing a variation on the “Running Man” dance, set to the briefly-popular ’90s R&B song “My Boo” by Ghost Town DJs. These videos inspired three players for the University of Maryland Terps basketball team to post their own Running Man dance. And a massive global trend was born.
We’d also be remiss if we didn’t mention the “Water Bottle Flip” Challenge, inspired by 18-year-old Mike Senatore’s performance at his high school talent show back in May.
A number of imitators followed, including this remarkable compilation from YouTuber Atky and an impressive display from the dudes of Dude Perfect.
But Fall and Winter 2016 were all about the Mannequin Challenge, in which a camera moves around a room full of people who remain frozen in place, like the titular mannequins. (Traditionally, the song “Black Beatles” by Rae Sremmurd should be playing in the background. The group actually paused during a performance of the song in Denver to record a massive contribution of their own.)
Much like the Ice Bucket and Harlem Shake challenges of years past, Mannequin Challenge entries have almost become mandatory for socially aware celebrities. New York Giants, Milwaukee Bucks, Anaheim Ducks, Dallas Cowboys, Manchester United stars and Team USA gymnasts are among the athletes who have participated. The former members of Destiny’s Child, Garth Brooks, white Beatle Paul McCartney, Britney Spears and Taylor Swift have shot their own. Hillary Clinton even posted one on election day encouraging supporters not to “stand still” and vote. (It was… not entirely effective.) Check out this elaborate 2 and a half minute James Corden example, involving his entire crew and audience.
Corden’s “Carpool Karaoke” late night segment also proved consistently popular throughout the year, particularly this January appearance by Adele.
Turning to YouTube, here are some more 2016 highlights, in no particular order:
PIKOTARO — PPAP (Pen Pineapple Apple Pen)
Pikotaro is a fictional singer-songwriter played by Daimaou Kosaka, a comedian from Japan. This single, “PPAP,” actually hit #1 on the Billboard Japan Hot 100 chart this year.
Man punches a kangaroo in the face to rescue his dog
Footage shot in June during a boar-hunting trip in rural New South Wales shows 34-year-old Greig Tonkins rushing in to save his dog, who had been caught in a headlock by a kangaroo. (Like ya do…) Though the footage makes Tonkins look pretty badass, you should definitely not try this: had the kangaroo kicked Tonkins with its powerful clawed hind legs, “it could have disemboweled him,” according to kangaroo expert and biologist Marco Festa-Bianchat.
Brothers Convince Little Sister of Zombie Apocalypse
Like the above clip, the title gives you all the info you really need here. Cabot, Barrett and Hudson Phillips pranked their sister but good back in April, convincing 17-year-old Millicent that she had stumbled out of a dental appointment and into a zombie-filled dystopia. (I’m sure her coming out of an anesthesia fog helped them along.)
THE $21,000 FIRST CLASS AIRPLANE SEAT
Casey Neistat dominated the vlog game in 2016, right up until the moment he decided to stop making them and join CNN. In this wildly popular sample, a chance upgrade during a flight from New York to Dubai treated Casey, and by extension the rest of us, to a look at how the 1% flies.
What’s inside a Rattlesnake Rattle?
Lincoln Markham and his dad, Dan, host What’s Inside?, a channel that — yes — takes a look at what’s inside things. (They have great taste in titles.) Their journey to discover the mysteries lying within a rattlesnake’s rattle has over 61 million views to date.
Finally, a favorite 2016 clip from Team Inside comes from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo. “Hyper-Reality” looks at a (very realistic?) potential future where technology has allowed media to completely change the way we interact with the world.
INSIDE 2016’s DANKEST MEMES
If you can find a fully circumspect and thought-out thesis for why 2016’s social media landscape was so thoroughly dominated by frog memes, please send it to us or leave it in the comments below. But we saw no fewer than FOUR massive running internet trends pivoting entirely around fictional amphibians this year, and it’s decidedly STRANGE.
Pepe the Frog, of course, transitioned from a relatively obscure comic strip drawing to a controversial symbol for, among other things, support of Donald Trump, association with the “alt-right” and even neo-Nazism. (The Anti-Defamation League designated Pepe’s image as a hate symbol back in September.)
Then, of course, there’s Dat Boi, a poorly animated image of a frog somehow riding a unicycle. For clarity, the frog itself is known as “Dat Boi,” and is usually announced wth the phrase “here come dat boi,” and greeted with the phrase “o shit waddup.”
Typically, Dat Boi connotes pleasure in seeing someone or something. (So, “o shit waddup” indicates surprise and delight, not anger or skepticism.) After a bit of internet sleuthing, it appears that the image originated in a physics textbook.
Beloved icon Kermit the Frog is at the center of not one but TWO breakout 2016 memes. The image of Kermit sipping tea, accompanied with a caption that’s snarky or throwing shade at a well-known target — often called the “But That’s None Of My Business” meme — first broke out in 2014, but had a huge resurgence this year after LeBron James referenced it on Instagram.
More recently, a still of Kermit speaking to his “dark” alter-ego (wearing the black hoodie), exploded back in November, as a way for people to explore and/or confront their own evil nature. (The still itself comes from the 2014 film “Muppets Most Wanted.”)
And speaking of big animal stories… we have to talk about Harambe. Back in May, after a three-year-old boy managed to climb into his enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden, the 17-year-old Western lowland gorilla was shot and killed. For some reason, an initially shocked and angry populace eventually turned the gorilla into a comedy icon. The joking got so intense, a post-Election Day rumor claimed 14,000 Americans wrote in Harambe to be the next US president, and was legitimately spread and widely believed.
To some, the jokes seemed to arise as a backlash to the proliferation of tributes and memorials to Harambe. For example, the concept of tributes that involved men taking their, and I quote, “Dicks Out” for Harambe, clearly mocks genuine and sincere outpourings of grief. The Atlantic called Harambe the “perfect meme” and argued that it reflects a “post-everything world,” a cultural signifier that spread so fast because it doesn’t have any root meaning. Fusion, comedian Kumail Nanjiani and others, however, argued Harambe’s popularity as a joke was essentially racist in nature, an excuse to publicly ridicule an African-sounding name and mock black people more generally.
A less controversial but still completely pervasive and also semi-absurd 2016 meme featured a close-up on the closed fist of precocious children’s book and cartoon character, Arthur the Aardvark.
It all started with an innocent-enough tweet from @AlmostJT back in July. He noted that the simple shot of Arthur’s fist was “so relatable” and expressed “so many emotions.”
He was not kidding. A flood of Arthur’s Fist jokes followed, using the simple image to stand in for anything that causes us concealed, inner rage.
More memes we enjoyed (or at least observed) this year:
Animal vs. Food
Well, which is it?
Birdman’s Interview on The Breakfast Club
Watch rapper/producer Birdman threaten and accost hosts Charlamange Tha God, DJ Envy and Angela Yee, then check out the reactions.
Michael Phelps’ Face
Before his 200 meter butterfly semi-final race during the Summer Games, Phelps made a weird face at rival Chad Le Clos. Turns out, it was the face that launched 1000 tweets (or probably a lot more).
Me At the Beginning of 2016 vs. Me Now
The bit: Side-by-side pop culture images conveying the strain that 2016 took on many (with the vast number of celebrity deaths and disappointments at the ballot box being the primary culprits).
This is the Ideal Male Body…
A personal favorite of this blog post’s author, the “This is the Ideal Male Body” meme was born out of a weird tweet from conservative radio hot Steven Crowder, way way back in January of 2016. Here it is:
That’s not Crowder, but Russian MMA heavyweight Fedor Vladimirovich Emelianenko in the photo. This tweet was followed by many, many, many jokes using alternate photos in place of Emelianenko (many of them retaining his misspelling of “male” as “make”).
Confused Mr. Krabs
A simple image of Mr. Krabs from the “Patty Hype” episode of “Spongebob Squarepants” became online shorthand for the concept of being disoriented, caught off guard or confused.
Name a More Iconic Duo
A now-deleted tweet from user @negansvoid on Twitter featured a photo of Kendall and Kylie Jenner and asked readers to “name a more iconic duo.” As if issuing a direct challenge, “Emma” included the phrase “I’ll wait.” And the web responded, mocking the original concept (plus Kendall and Kylie themselves) with images of different pop culture duos. (Kenan & Kel were an extremely popular option.)
Record Scratch/Freeze Frame
The joke: Tweets featuring a random or surprising image, often with someone or something looking into the camera, that mock those common moments in film trailers when the action freezes and a character breaks the fourth wall, addressing the viewer in voice-over. (Often, these images are accompanied by the cliche movie-type phrase: “Yup, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation.”)
Get You a Man Who Can Do Both
Tweeter @MichaelHannahJr started a huge worldwide trend with this tweet from February, featuring side by side images of Drake dressed down and then cleaned up in a suit and the caption “Get you a man who can do both.” Many jokes followed, always borrowing the same format but often substituting less suave and/or dignified celebrities or characters. (Guy Fieri was a common target.)
You vs. The Guy She Told You Not To Worry About
Another Twitter “copypasta” meme with a similar concept: Side by side photos of two dudes, one of whom is obviously going to look more appealing or attractive. (It seems likely this was first tweeted in October of 2015, but the meme didn’t explode until Q1 2016 so I’m counting it.)
Confused Math Lady
A clip of Brazilian actress Renata Sorrah looking confused, taken from the soap opera “Senhora do Destino,” has become the internet’s go-to image for expressing befuddlement. The original clip does not include math symbols, which were added later to express the extreme nature of the woman’s confusion and to make the joke more specifically about doing calculations in your head.
Conceited Reaction GIF
A clip from a 2009 rap battle, in which newcomer Conceited made a funny expression to the camera while his opponent tripped over some words, became arguably the year’s most popular reaction GIF, expressing the state of being dubious.
THE YEAR IN POP CULTURE AND SOCIAL TRENDS
That’s a big fancy-sounding title but we’ll try to keep this section as lean and concise as possible.
But first up, we do have to talk about that little US election that happened last month. But rather than get into the proliferation of “fake news” and WikiLeaks and faithless electors and all of that, we’ll keep it light, and zero in on the jokes.
Election years always bring with them a number of new personalities whom we all get to know, but few people in US history have rocketed to overnight fame quite as swiftly or decidedly as one Mr. Ken Bone of St. Louis, Missouri. The red sweater-clad everyman asked a simple question during a town hall debate, was celebrated as an American Hero and all around “huggable, likable guy,” only to be ripped apart soon after, a consequence of his questionable Reddit user history and the inevitable backlash to his sudden rise in visibility. But we’ll always have the memes.
A few other big tropes came out of the political debates: There was that time a fly landed on Hillary Clinton’s face. Or that time Donald Trump called her a “nasty woman.” But let’s move on.
The friendship (or, if you prefer, “bromance”) between President Barack Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden provided a welcome respite from the anger and competitiveness of the main contest.
An off-handed remark on MSNBC from a Trump surrogate threatening that a Hilly win meant “taco trucks on every corner” was too delicious a set-up for the web to refuse.
Before the general election even started, political memes were flying around social media. In February, humorous charts comparing Hillary Clinton to primary opponent Bernie Sanders were all you’d sometimes see on Democrats’ Twitter accounts. (Some, including Amanda Hess in Slate, found the entire trend sexist, and argued that it didn’t actually bear any relation to Sanders’ responses when presented with softball pop culture questions.)
Also, for some reason, many in 2016 theorized that Republican primary candidate Ted Cruz may, in fact, have been the Zodiac Killer. The meme became SO widespread, a March 2016 poll indicated 10% of Floridian voters believed Cruz actually committed the Zodiac murders, with an additional 28% responding they were “not sure.” (Just for the record, the ages don’t really line up. The first crime tied to the Zodiac happened in Benicia, California, in December of 1968. Cruz would have been 2 years old at the time, and still living in Canada.)
OK, we did it, gang. We’re through the election stuff. Here were some other big trending stories this year that captured America’s attention.
Virtual Reality
Though the promise of virtual reality has been seemingly on the horizon for decades, 2016 was likely the year you or someone you know actually got a chance to try it out, and as the holiday season wraps up, a lot of US households can now boast their own virtual reality platform. It remains to be seen if this is going to become ubiquitous technology (or even if there’s a huge demand for it among consumers), but it was undeniably on everyone’s mind this year, and made some huge strides, from much-hyped Hollywood “VR experiences” to the buzz and blowback around Wired’s Magic Leap “mixed reality” demo to the New York Times publishing 15 VR films to the actual release of numerous VR headsets and systems, including the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Sony PlayStation VR.
Pokemon Go
The first big breakthrough AR mobile game surged out of the gate when it hit the iOS and Android stores this July, boosting Nintendo shares as high as 50%, even though the company only owns a 32% stake in the game. It’s been downloaded over 500 million times to date, inspired dozens of parodies and imitators, and remains one of the year’s most used and profitable mobile apps.
Having said all of that, the honeymoon didn’t necessarily last very long. Many complained about the lack of depth, particularly once you’ve really started to fill up your Pokédex. Others found the multiplayer angle, built around neighborhood “gyms,” to be unfortunately restrictive, or dominated by a few incredibly active players. Forbes has called the game both the year’s greatest success and biggest disappointment. (Don’t count it totally out, though. Developer Niantic is hoping that some holiday updates can breathe new life into the game and win back fans.)
Team USA’s “Final Five”
The women’s gymnastics team, who called themselves the Final Five as a tribute to legendary, retiring coach Martha Karolyi, became international superstars after a dominant performance at this summer’s Rio Games. At the team finals, Aly Raisman, Gabby Douglas, Madison Kocian, Laurie Hernandez and Simone Biles finished the with the largest margin of victory since the current scoring system was established in 2006, and secured their place on any responsible “Best of 2016” list.
Double Dutch Braids
Also known as “boxer braids,” because of the athletes with which they’re associated, they became the year’s signature look after the Kardashians, Hailey Baldwin, Katy Perry and other celebrities were seen sporting them.
AND SPEAKING OF THE KARDASHIAN’S: Kim’s sharing of the “receipts” — revealing a transcript of a private conversation about Kanye’s song “Famous” with Taylor Swift on Snapchat — was arguably the year’s breakout celebrity gossip storyline.
Emoji
Yes, it was still a HUGE year for the little pictures and doodles that populate not just your favorite social media comments, but blog posts, press releases and basically every other form of written communication. This was the year marketers got fully 100% on board. In 2016, “Emoji translator” became an actual job. Emoji caused a rift between the Trump campaign and Twitter that apparently continues to this day. Sir Paul McCartney contributed a set of “audible emoji” to Skype. And Apple’s redrawing of the peach emoji to look more like the actual fruit and less like a human butt drew stinging criticism, prompting them to revert to the classic look.
And fear not. The emoji craze doesn’t end just because 2016 does. Look out for “The Emoji Movie,” hitting theaters in August.
Athleisure
Wearing yoga pants in place of actual clothing started before this year, of course, but 2016 is when we decided to coin it “athleisure” rather than just, you know, “wearing workout clothes in place of actual clothing.” Is this a fad or just the way we all live now? Major publications can’t seem to decide.
Snapchat Spectacles
The first hardware product from Snapchat was sort of the 2016 variation on Google Glass, except less widespread and also less ridiculous-looking. (In fact, Snapchat seems intent on pushing the glasses as a hot fashion item, rather than focusing on functionality.)
Hoping to create more buzz around the release, Snapchat started selling the $130 wearable gadget exclusively through Snapbots, playful vending machines that show up in random (sometimes hard-to-find) spots across the country.
WHEW. That’s a lot of round-up. I’m spent.
But if you want EVEN MORE of the latest headlines, news, trends, memes, things to click on, and things to avoid clicking on, why not subscribe to the Inside Daily Brief? We’ll throw a (massively condensed compared to this post) curated email twice a day, directly into your inbox, so you won’t ever have to brave the web all by yourself again.
See you in 2017!
