Forums / Discussion / Meme Research

While the bar for what qualifies as needing a meme entry is fairly low [which is why I normally don't bother making meme research threads anymore], this one is a bit different than the others.

While many people dislike certain years because of various different things, this year (2016) seems to have garnered a particular amount of hate, to the point if someone just posted an image of the numbers "2016" in the cringeworthy gallery would likely be one of the most highly upvoted image of the week. This is also evident offsite, where saying this year was really bad doesn't even require an explanation "why", it's seen as "just is".

Gallery would need certain rules though. It's about the hate of the year So just listing particular things that people dislike (popular celebrities dying) or just something that's just polarizing (ie screen cap of Donald Trump's victory) or just objectively bad things that just happened to take place in 2016 would not qualify. This is exactly what made us have to lock the cringeworthy gallery. People posting the previous with a caption of "this year really is the worst year" or something in that vein would qualify as documentation. Likewise, just normal images that respond to the literal year (but not directly referencing anything that took place in it) with hate/disdain/despair, etc. would be relevant (see above image).

The [current year] part is that, well, I would not be surprised if people respond with events that take place in future years in a similar ways. There is some stuff similar to this in previous years, but I would not think there's enough to merit an entry on it for just pre-2016.

Again, emphasis is not not documenting the event "the year of and things that took place in 2016", it's the meme "people hating the year 2016"

Is something like this a thing that others feel like needs a page?

Can be done, but iirc for the last 2 to 3 years i hear a lot of people saying that [a year that is not 2016 was the wort ever] ,so that can be subjective but if there is a big spread of this meme just do it

A subreddit for research on this matter.

I think it should just be one "everyone hates the current year by the end" meme. Same thing happened in 2015, 2014, etc. Everyone seems to hate [current year] by December because of natural disasters that happened (the Japanese earthquake and Fukushima) or celebrity deaths (Robin Williams) or elections. I remember watching the old JibJab yearly roundup videos--which started in 2005--which sang about how much the year sucked and how things might get better next year, only for next year's video to show off how badly things went again.