KYM Review: Internet Outrages of 2016

Editor’s Note: This article is part of Know Your Meme’s annual review series looking back at some of the most memorable and popular memes, events and people that defined internet culture in 2016 as we know it. For controversies and scandals related to the 2016 election, please refer to Election Memes of 2016.

---

his year was filled to the brim with so much drama, scandal and absurdity that by now, it seems like everyone is just waiting for 2016 to end already. Thanks to the climate set by the United States' historically polarizing presidential election, online tensions reached unimaginable heights, leading to explosions of outrage for even the most minor of controversies.

As the online culture wars heated up, several overzealous young activists were immortalized as internet memes after being captured on camera acting like how college students so often do. Two young men filmed a Trump rally in St. Louis were dubbed Carl the Cuck and AIDS Skrillex for their smug debate tactics and invocation of Godwin's Law. A young woman throwing a rather spectacular temper tantrum during a talk titled "The Triggering" at the University of Massachusetts Amherst earned herself the title "Trigglypuff". More recently, a yellow beanie-wearing student who told a police officer he "didn't see anything" immediately after witnessing an assault was nicknamed "Smugglypuff".

Other viral videos drew the internet's ire as well. A Texas-based mattress store released a "Twin Towers Sale" ad, featuring a tasteless September 11th joke. Meanwhile, a drunk Lyft passenger was widely derided after she foolishly filmed herself berating her driver as "racist" for having a Hawaiian bobblehead on his dashboard.

In the online media world, many were outraged by the verdict in Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker Media, effectively bankrupting the company and leading their acquisition by Univision. After it was discovered that Peter Thiel had been secretly funding Hogan's lawsuit, the Silicon Valley billionaire was widely blamed for destroying the controversial media empire.

Without further adieu, let's take a look back at what really rustled the internet's jimmies this year. And going forward, let's all try to calm down a little bit, shall we?

Fine Brothers' "React World" Controversy

The year started off with the Fine Brothers announcing their terribly misguided "React World" licensing plan, which many interpreted as an attempt to trademark the reaction video web series format. While they initially vehemently denied any wrongdoing, the brothers were met with a swift and brutal backlash from YouTube's passionate community, leading them to abandon the concept entirely.

Not to be outdone, YouTube managed to infuriate their user base several many additional times over the course of the year, with controversial copyright enforcement policies, new "advertiser friendly guildelines" and the widely unpopular YouTube Heroes program.

More recently, even the video-sharing site's most subscribed user PewDiePie joined in on the hate, claiming that he will delete his channel in protest of YouTube's policies once he hits 50 million subscribers.

Ghostbusters Reboot

In entertainment drama, an all-female reboot of the 1980s comedy film franchise Ghostbusters stirred up an online shitstorm of epic proportions. While the backlash started in early 2015, it really kicked into high gear with the release of the official trailer this March, which received an enormous amount of dislikes as it circulated across the web. Shortly after, James Rolfe (a.k.a. The Angry Video Game Nerd) stirred the pot even more by announcing he would not review the upcoming film in an act of protest.

In July, Twitter permanently suspended Milo Yiannopoulos for tweeting various insulting messages at Ghostbusters actress Leslie Jones, claiming he was inciting harassment. The following month, Jones' personal website was vandalized by an unknown hacker, who posted sexually explicit photographs of the actress stolen from her iCloud account.

Tracer's Pose in Overwatch

In March, Blizzard Entertainment's forums became the site of an enormous flame war after a user complained that a victory pose for the Overwatch character Tracer was gratuitously sexual in nature. After hundreds chimed in with their opinion on the absurd debate, a Blizzard staff member replied that the pose would be replaced and apologized for any offense. Over the next two weeks, many criticized Blizzard for succumbing to the demands of puritanical "social justice warriors", until the company released a revamped pose inspired by a classic pin-up poster.

#TheTriggering

If social media platforms held a contest for "Most Dramatic," Twitter would win in a landslide. As the web's #1 outlet for self-righteous sanctimony, vitriol and terrible jokes, it's no wonder the site hosted so many controversial incidents.

On March 9th, the conservative political commentator Lauren Southern launched the hashtag #TheTriggering for participants to share provocative or offensive messages in order to tease, aggravate and disturb radical members of the social justice movement, becoming a worldwide trending topic for much of the day.

The event seems to have inspired a slew of other trolling campaigns, which for some reason large numbers of people took the bait. In June, Twitter user @JackNForTweets launched t#HeteroSexualPrideDay, ostensibly in celebration of heterosexuality. The hashtag was subsequently circulated far and wide among those who took offense, falling right into @JackNForTweets' trap. At the end of the month, he revealed it was all just a satirical trolling scheme.

Most recently, the social media platform has received both criticism and praise for preemptively banning accounts associated with the alt-right, including white nationalist Richard Spencer and American hacker Andrew Auernheimer (a.k.a. Weev).

SFSU Dreadlocks Controversy

As one of the more intellectually incoherent debates in identity politics, the fight over what constitutes cultural appropriation continued along its frustrating course.

On March 28th, 2016, a video of a white student at San Francisco State University being confronted by another student for wearing dreadlocks widely circulated online, with many expressing outrage over the young man being bullied for his hairstyle. Even Tay Zonday chimed in on Twitter, stating that the agitator exuded "profound intellectually poverty" in confronting the student about his hair.

The following month, the woman spoke out about the video in a post on Facebook, saying she had receiving numerous "death threats, rape threats, sexual harassment and anti-Black speech," and claiming the video didn't provide the full context of the incident.

Harambe the Gorilla's Death

Coming off of last year's tragic killing of Cecil the Lion, an unfortunate circumstance led another animal to fall into internet martyrdom.

In May, the 17-year-old Western lowland gorilla Harambe was shot and killed after he was seen dragging a child who fell into his enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo. The incident was endlessly discussed on social media, with many expressing outrage over the killing and demanding the child's parents be punished.

Two months later, Harambe underwent a bizarre transformation from viral outrage story to ironic internet meme when comedian Brandon Wardell popularized the slogan "dicks out for Harambe." Jokes about the deceased gorilla were suddenly ubiquitous, confusing many of those unacquainted with the internet's obsession with irony. Some have speculated Harambe's shift was actually a form of social commentary about the absurdity of online outrage culture, while others claim it was just for the lulz.

And along with the overflowing salt following the election of Donald Trump, an unsubstantiated rumor that "thousands" voted for the gorilla as a write-in candidate lead many distraught voters to curse the shitposting electorate.

#LochteGate

Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte never had a reputation for being very bright. In previous years, videos of the athlete making a fool out of himself spread far and wide across the web, leading many to think of him as a bit of a goof.

At the Summer Olympics in Brazil this August, Lochte found himself at the center of a huge scandal after he foolishly told his mother he had been robbed at gun point following a drunk altercation at a local gas station. After Lochte's mother told the lie to a shocked news reporter in a hilarious twist of fate, Lochte doubled down on the falsehood. It didn't take long for his story to unravel, with his fellow teammates admitting to the story's fabrication. Lochte has since apologized for the mess, but his reputation may never recover.

Hugh Mungus

Every once in awhile, an internet outrage controversy actually ends up doing some good. In August, a video began circulating in which activist Zarna Joshi aggressively accuses a man of "sexual harassment" for identifying himself as "Hugh Mungus". Joshi was widely derided as an emotionally unhinged bully, drawing criticism from notable YouTubers H3h3productions and Anthony Fantano. In October, she launched a crowdfunding campaign in attempt to capitalize on her newfound infamy, along with a series of videos discussing various feminist theories. The following month, H3h3productions launched a competing crowdfunding campaign to help Hugh Mungus pay for his rapidly accumulating healthcare costs, which gathered an impressive $148,000 in donations.

Nazi Pepe

All the way back in October 2015, Trump famously tweeted a Pepe the Frog-themed illustration of himself, causing the character to surge in popularity in pro-Trump communities like the /r/The_Donald subreddit.

In May this year, The Daily Beast wrote an article titled "How Pepe the Frog Became a Nazi Trump Supporter and Alt Right Symbol," which interviewed the creators of two anonymous Twitter accounts who revealed their nefarious plot to "reclaim Pepe from normies" by spreading distasteful and offensive variations of the character.

In September, Donald Trump Jr. reblogged a photoshopped movie poster featuring various prominent conservatives standing next to Pepe the Frog with the title "The Deplorables," mocking a gaffe made by Hillary Clinton. Shortly after, Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center began calling Pepe a "white nationalist symbol" in interviews with various news media publications. Then, not to let the political opportunity go to waste, the Clinton campaign published an "explainer" about Pepe, labeling the character as "sinister" and a "symbol associated with white supremacy." What followed can only be described as pure media hysteria, eventually leading to the Anti-Defamation League adding Pepe to their list of hate symbols.

Pepe's creator Matt Furie has since launched the #SavePepe campaign in an attempt to repair the character's reputation on line, but, unfortunately, the formerly beloved green frog may be forever branded as a meme pariah.

Censorship of /r/The_Donald

Over the course of this year's presidential election, Reddit's /r/The_Donald subreddit rapidly grew to become one of the site's most active, and controversial, communities of all time. The passionate Donald Trump supporters', affectionately referring to themselves as "centipedes,"
had their first wave of controversy in February, when stickied posts on the subreddit kept reaching Reddit's /r/all front page. In June, following accusations that Reddit staff prevented /r/The_Donald posts regarding the Orlando nightclub shooting from reaching the front page, CEO Steven Huffman (a.k.a. "Spez") announced new algorithm changes that would provide "more variety in /r/all."

Then came the news media coverage. In July, Vice's tech news site Motherboard published an article referring to the subreddit as a "melting pot of frustration and hate." Later that same month, the left-leaning news site Slate referred to the community as a "hate speech forum."

More recently, things got extra dicey when Huffman modified comments by /r/The_Donald users, editing insulting messages to be directed at /r/The_Donald moderators, rather than himself. In the aftermath, Huffman apologized for the incident, blaming frustration brought on by the recent Pizzagate debacle.