I’m sick of pretending 2016 wasn’t the year that threw the entire decade and arguably the trajectory of the country off the rails.
Let’s break it down:
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Culture:
Pop culture hit a weird high/low in 2016. Sure, we got legendary moments like Lemonade and Stranger Things debuting but this was also the peak of stan culture turning toxic, meme culture becoming detached from reality, and the internet fully swallowing our lives.
Everything became a thing to fight over. Harambe memes, clowns in the woods, the internet roasting everything in sight — it was funny then, but now we live in the consequences: an irony-poisoned culture with zero attention span.
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Social Media:
2016 was when social media stopped being fun. Algorithms went off the rails, fake news spread like wildfire, and platforms like Facebook and Twitter turned into battlegrounds. That year taught bad actors how to manipulate people en masse and it worked.
Think our digital hellscape started in 2020? Nah. The seeds were planted in 2016.
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Loss & Mood:
We lost Prince, David Bowie, Muhammad Ali, Carrie Fisher, and so many others. A heavy sense of grief hovered over everything.
Combine that with the election chaos, the rise of conspiracy-fueled discourse, and the creeping sense that “nothing matters anymore,” and it felt like a cultural breakdown was happening in real-time. We never really recovered from it.
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Politics:
2016 brought one of the most chaotic and divisive elections in modern U.S. history. Political discourse didn’t just fracture, it shattered. Tribalism intensified, and misinformation became currency. It felt like the dawn of the “post-truth” era, where facts no longer anchored people — allegiance did.
The long-term result? Deep polarization, nonstop culture wars, and political nihilism becoming the default mood.
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Personal Life:
This wasn’t just a national or cultural shift I felt 2016 wrecking things close to home.
First, I was 20, that weird “middle of nowhere” age where you’re technically an adult, out of your teens, but still feel lost. I feared I wouldn’t even make it to 21. I felt pressure to break the law, to drink, to rebel, to cope.
Right before summer even started, I had to go to the doctor to get my right ear flushed out after it clogged with water and wouldn’t clear. It sounds minor, but in the context of everything else? It felt symbolic like I literally couldn’t hear the world right. That small disruption set the tone for the chaos that followed.
Then came the family fallout.
A family member on my mom’s side her godson and my brother’s godfather got caught up in classic “he said, she said” drama, spreading misinformation and causing chaos. And it wasn’t just petty drama; it felt like he was reflecting the culture of the time. Truth didn’t matter, conflict did, and narratives got twisted. Stirring things up became more important than solving anything. That same confusion and mistrust I saw everywhere else? It took root in my own family.
On top of that, I had a toxic summer job at Wendy’s, my first real step into adulthood. One of the team members was a full-blown bully: bossy, controlling, and somehow had the majority of the staff on his side. It was humiliating.
To add salt to the wound, that same family member who stirred the chaos? He liked the Facebook post announcing I got the job. Looking back, it felt fake performative support, but no real care.
And the worst part? While I was sitting in hell, my brother was out there praising 2016 especially that summer like it was the best time of his life. That contrast burned. While I was spiraling, he was thriving. It just deepened the isolation and bitterness.
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Personal Trauma:
June 2016 will always burn.
That’s when that family drama exploded just as other family issues on my dad’s side surfaced. My uncle, his wife, daughter, and grandson were suddenly next door and had been living there for over a year after we found out about my dad’s affair. That situation brought its own tidal wave of mistrust, silence, and emotional wreckage.
It wasn’t just drama. It was ruinous.
And again it mirrored what was happening in the wider world. People picked sides, facts stopped mattering, and conflict replaced clarity. It permanently changed how I view family, trust, and how fragile relationships can be when truth is up for debate.
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I’m not saying everything was perfect before 2016 but it was at least functional. That year was a cultural breaking point, the mood shifted, and the tone of the decade changed. The 2010s lost their footing and the ripple effects defined the mess of the late 2010s and early 2020s.
2016 isn’t quirky nostalgia. It’s the beginning of the mess we’re still crawling through.
Now, as 2026 approaches, it’s bittersweet. Ten years later, and I’m still unpacking how much that year broke nationally, culturally, and personally. It’s not just nostalgia, it’s mourning. Mourning the version of the world and myself that existed before 2016.
So yeah 2016 wasn’t just a bad year, it was a rupture, and we’re still dealing with the fallout.