Many youngsters have been opining and clearly demonstrating what recency bias looks like, and as a veteran of breaking my brain on the internet, I figured I was well-suited to come up with examples that didn’t unfold in the last few years. You will not agree with every event’s place on this list, and this is all obviously subjective to a degree, but everything below deserves to be on this list. “Best” doesn’t necessarily mean good, as there are plenty of bad days on this list and it includes days some notable people died, but the whole point of this is to try to rank the days we all had fun collectively losing our minds on social media. My initial intent was to try to keep this at 10 but honestly keeping it under 50 was a struggle, we’ve had so many fun days online.
Fun is a relative term here, as this is perhaps the most unique day on this list. It started like many others, with a zany event sparking a discourse that became increasingly unhinged. The problem with this day is that the event evolved into something actually unhinged, robbing us of an all-time great internet day where ultimately, the joy and fun we expressed in the morning felt trite by the afternoon after learning about zip ties and targets in Congress.
This was one of the last wholesome days on the internet, and I firmly believe that we entered some sort of different dimension on November 2nd, 2016. The Chicago Cubs were trying to break their dramatic century-long winless streak against the Cleveland Indians (now Guardians) who were also trying to break a three quarters of a century-long winless streak, and you could feel the weight of history on every pitch of that series. But since Bill Murray roots for the Cubs and not Cleveland, people cared more about the Cubs’ drought, and when the Cubs emerged out of that shockingly dramatic Game 7 9th inning rain delay that transported us to a new, darker realm, their win provided perhaps the last wholesome viral moment filled with an avalanche of heartwarming videos of older folks getting emotional at expunging a century of anguish.
I know we’re really zigzagging all over the place here as far as vibes are concerned, but we’re sticking the flawed examples down on the list. January 6th gets docked because it was a grim harbinger of the future, the Cubs get docked because wholesomeness on the internet has a firm ceiling, and this gets docked because the avalanche of online speculation trying to help the cops in this weeklong manhunt I lived through in Boston (I used to walk by the bombers’ house every day on my way to work) resulted in a New York Post cover based off a Reddit thread that identified the wrong people. It’s a cautionary tale of how this posting hysteria that usually is just fun and harmless can actually ruin people’s lives if you take it too far.
The best golfer in the world being arrested and wrongly charged with a felony on the way to the second round of the PGA Championship is a doozy on its own, but the symbolism of the cops doing what a lot of cops do in even the most country club context imaginable was not lost on the internet, and the memes that day were plentiful and on point. In a way, it was a wholesome day where people of all socioeconomic backgrounds could get together for a good ACAB laugh.
46. Dating Advice for Dell Curry
Steph Curry’s mom Sonya and his dad, former NBA player Dell Curry, got divorced in 2021, and it inspired one of the most riffed-on threads in Twitter’s history. A modern literary marvel, @solomonmissouri, started by writing “Let me tell y’all something…You don’t wanna be out here,” before detailing some current day dating horrors like “You don’t wanna be out here learning tiktok dances and falling off milk crates.” This Rodney Dangerfield-esque ‘please take my wife’ thread for the internet age spread across the web like wildfire, as Steph Curry’s dad received a wave of unsolicited advice in how to deal with the modern dating game.
45. “That Motherfucker Back There Is Not Real”
Tiffany Gomas famously told everyone on a plane that “there’s a reason why I’m getting the fuck off and everyone can either believe it or they can not believe it…that motherfucker back there is NOT real.” Police reports indicate that this began as a dispute over headphones, but when a video of someone seemingly tripping out on a plane and seeing ghosts hits the web, truthiness takes over. The debates and memes over what that motherfucker was will endure to the end of time.
44. Harambe
I’ll admit I never got into the Harambe memes, and this is going to be way too low for some people pining for the innocence of a world where President Trump Inaugurated was not a headline yet. It is a story of tragedy, as a three-year old child fell into a gorilla pen at the Cincinnati Zoo and was dragged around by a gorilla named Harambe. Fearing for the child’s life, a zoo worker killed Harambe and it was captured on YouTube. This touched off a heated debate about zoos that’s much too serious for a silly list like this, but the litany of tributes to a gorilla who captured the internet’s heart continue to dot the landscape to this day.
43. Trump Nearly Gets Assassinated
This is another “way too real to be funny” internet moment, but the surrealism of it as well as the timing really drove home how much our reality had become hysteric. Joe Biden was just forced out of the race in a shocking drama that unfolded across days, weeks, months and years, and we were just recovering from a coconut-pilled introduction to his successor. I came in from doing some yardwork that day, saw another Aaron Rupar video from a Trump rally, and watched it expecting to chuckle at something stupid. I’ll admit I did laugh when Trump grabbed his ear, not because it made me happy, but because I thought I had been tricked by a fake Rupar account and my reality couldn’t have possibly been altered like that. But as Trump displayed what my human instincts registered as true pain and confusion as he fell to the floor, my jaw followed. The next 48 hours of internet activity were some of the most unhinged in memory. Also, the conspiracy theories it spawned on the left are stupid and don’t make any sense.
42. Elon Shuts Trading Down and Posts Himself Out of a Job
“I am taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured” is probably the first shitpost in history to shut down trading on the stock exchange. This post led to Musk losing his role as chairman of Tesla’s board, and he had to pay a $20 million fine to the SEC for market manipulation. As yesterday demonstrated yet again, no one has lost more money posting than Elon Musk has, and that was the day we were introduced to his future.
41. “Tentacle Porn”
Kids these days may not believe it, but Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald used to be a person of note. Sure, it was because he was one of many whose brains were destroyed by Twitter and had an amplified presence because of it, but also because as the A.V. Club noted in 2017, Eichenwald posted a screenshot of his internet tabs, one of which was a search for “B-Chiku,” a very hardcore form of hentai porn (I echo their suggestion to please not Google it, just trust us on this). A good PR person would understand that this was the time to practice shut the fuck up Friday, but that’s not how ‘ol Kurt is wired. He wrote a thread explaining how “sigh, OK, I’m a dumbass” and entered “tentacle porn” into the lore of the internet.
40. 1 Gorilla vs. 100 Men
I think this is pretty wholesome honestly. I know some folks are annoyed at the dudebroy-ness of it, but I think this is a classic case of guys being guys and gals being gals. Mankind evolved from apes, and our brains are more wired for the conflict of old than our digital world, and sometimes you just gotta wrack your noodle with strategies of how an army of men could battle one mighty beast. It’s even inspired a pretty good shtick from the WWE Tag Team Champion Street Profits, who claim that “the gorilla fears us.” It’s fun, it’s harmless, and it hearkens back to a more wholesome time of the web where we just debated stupid things instead of the most existential anxiety imaginable.
39. Steph’s Olympic Moment
This was more good wholesome internet fun, as everyone in America except for us traitors in Colorado were overjoyed to watch perhaps the most beloved NBA player of the modern era get his career moment on the global stage. Steph Curry rescued the United States Olympic basketball team from Nikola Jokic’s attempt to fully immortalize himself atop the NBA’s all-time greats, as if it weren’t for Steph doing Steph things to get the United States the lead over Serbia in crunch time of the Gold Medal Game after being down 13 to start the 4th quarter, I might be annoying you with even more Nikola Jokic blogs right now. But alas, a man who was making his long-awaited Olympic debut cashed in on it, making those Olympics that served as a generational going away party for he, LeBron and Durant his own moment. As Sports Illustrated noted, everyone made the same Steph Curry joke because that’s just how aligned our internet brains are these days to sniff out these moments.
38. Left Shark
Another event that evokes the wholesomeness of the internet, the Left Shark mystery at the 2015 Super Bowl halftime show was peak Twitter. The greatness of the website Elon destroyed was the ability to see even the most mundane thoughts from the world’s most famous celebrities, and at that point, people like Snoop Dogg were playing into it claiming to be the Left Shark dancing horribly behind Katy Perry. He wasn’t, but this set off a firestorm of speculation across the web that was not solved until a few years later when NPR’s Morning Edition interviewed Los Angeles-based hairstylist Bryan Gaw, who identified himself as the famed Left Shark and detailed his “unique” dance moves.
37. Antonin Scalia Dies
My own bias is showing in this list by ranking the cynicism higher than the wholesomeness, but as a seasoned internet curator, I am of the belief that the internet is at its best when there’s at least a tinge of hostility to the proceedings. The memes are danker and darker, especially when an immensely powerful asshole who has helped to immiserate millions of Americans’ lives dies. These days are fueled by the anticipation of them, as every day it does not happen, more murmurs across the internet of “imagine if it did happen” build. Sometimes it builds to a perfectly timed crescendo where a Democratic president has the ability to replace a hated and influential Republican Supreme Court justice, and the internet rejoices over a death that could genuinely advance society forward. Sometimes that crescendo falls flat when that replacement somehow becomes Neil Gorsuch. I wonder why people are so disillusioned with the Democrats!
36. The Australian Olympic Breakdancer
This is a recency bias that I think is deserved, as breakdancing at the 2024 Olympics alone is worth some internet debates and memes. But having the absurdity of that event alongside longstanding sporting contests compounded by someone who looks like you or I competing? Oh man, that’s the sweet spot between low-stakes wholesome fun and biting cynicism and mean tweets.
35. Nancy Reagan Throat GOAT
Of the phrases my decissitated brain will filter through when it processes the end of my life, “Nancy Reagan Throat GOAT” will undoubtedly be one of them. In 2021, one of those retvrn-style tweets was posted, saying “this is Madonna at 63. This is Nancy Reagan at 64. Trashy living vs. Classic Living. Which version of yourself do you want to be?” Comedian and writer Zach Heltzel responded to the post with a link to a 1998 article about how Nancy Reagan was “renowned in Hollywood for performing oral sex” before she married Ronald. You can take a guess where that viral post went, and the titular phrase for #35 on this list is the tl;dr of the internet’s discussion the rest of that day.
34. Arizona’s High-Speed Llama Chase
Man the 2015 internet was so wholesome. People were out here living their best lives, posting about dancing sharks and high-speed llama chases. Two llamas escaped their owner in a West Valley retirement community, and the delicate chase to capture them captivated the nation. This was such an impactful moment it even launched its own Buzzfeed “which runaway llama are you?” quiz. It may be hard to understand for kids these days, but Twitter used to actually be good.
33. Yevgeny Prigozhin Threatens to March on Moscow
Because the world moves at a million miles an hour now, it can be easy to forget how big a story the Russian invasion of Ukraine was when it happened all the way back in the before times in 2022. By 2023 it was clear this was becoming something akin to Russia’s Iraq War, and everyone was waiting for something to happen. That something came in the form of the Wagner Group rebellion on June 23rd, where a Russian private military company led by the oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin publicly expressed his anger with Putin’s minister of defense Sergei Shoigu, and Wagner Group seized Rostov-on-Don and threatened a “march of justice” to Moscow to bring their complaints directly to Putin. This was a banner day for Russiagate libs, as their Putin fantasies ran wild and built an additional world of lore around a pretty shocking development where everyone was waiting with bated breath to see what kind of posts may change the world next.
32. Michael Jackson Dies
I’m going to have to do this one in my Abe Simpson voice, because on a relative basis, that’s what 2009 internet is compared to today: Back in my day, when a problematic celebrity died, we didn’t yell at celebrities for not being woke enough, we just made fun of them!
This was one of the first real moments you knew that Twitter had the juice, as a litany of statements like “I truly hope he is memorialized as the ’83 moonwalking, MTV owning, mesmerizing, unstoppable, invincible Michael Jackson” from celebrities like John Mayer emerged, and this was where many of us first realized you could make fun of these wealthy and powerful people to their faces. This day will live in internet infamy as one of the first real digital schisms between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, as celebrities were all talking about one kind of very specific Michael Jackson, while everyone in their mentions was asking them about the other Michael Jackson we are all familiar with too.
31. Fyre Festival
The Fyre Festival was promoted as a glamorous party in the Bahamas with celebrities like Kendall Jenner. Few events have been hyped up like this, and tickets for it cost up to $100,000. Upon arriving, one attendee posted a picture of a dinner that is “literally bread, cheese, and salad with dressing.” The event is a world-historic clusterfuck, and we all got to watch it get exposed in real time and point and laugh at it. What a day.
30. Biden’s Last Debate
I really feel like there is a distinct dividing line between pre-summer 2024 and post-summer 2024. COVID definitely broke our brains to an irrevocable degree, but it took time to set in, and it feels like the summer of 2024 is where our general sanity came crumbling down. It was all sparked by a stubborn old man putting himself before the country and ensuring that the digital record of that night is millions of people recoiling in varying degrees of amused horror at our declining empire manifesting itself within one declining man.
29. Large Boulder the Size of a Small Boulder
This is how you knew we were cracking even before the pandemic really hit. In late January 2020, a nondescript Colorado Sheriff posted a phrase that will also pass in front of my brain when I die, writing that “Large boulder the size of a small boulder is completely blocking east-bound lane Highway 145 mm78 at Silverpick Rd.” This juxtaposition of contradictory words broke my brain and the brains of at least 287,000 other people who liked that tweet, and weakened us all for the much more predatory internet to come in the coming months.
28. NYT Asks if You Would Kill Baby Hitler
Again, we see that the 2015 internet was where discourse peaked, as the New York Times Magazine did something cool and polled their readers: “If you could go back and kill Hitler as a baby, would you do it?” This is S-tier internet discourse, as it combines the right kind of variables to really set it off on an unhinged course, and this achieved escape velocity as it reached all the way to Jeb Bush, who peaked as a politician when he said “Hell yeah I would! You gotta step up, man.”
27. The Clippers Kidnap DeAndre Jordan
If you don’t know what this image is, I frankly question your dedication to internet poisoning.
After LeBron James’ Decision rocked the league in 2010, everyone tried to go build their own super team, turning the NBA offseason into the most dramatic TV show in sports. In 2015, reports surfaced that center DeAndre Jordan was having second thoughts about his agreed-upon contract with the Dallas Mavericks, and this sparked a literal race to steal him away within NBA player circles. Blake Griffin, the Los Angeles Clippers’ young superstar, helped mobilize a group to recruit Jordan to come to LA, posting a series of transportation-themed emojis, and a picture of him barricading the door at what was presumably DeAndre Jordan’s residence. Paul Pierce, the wily vet, responded to the growing emoji war of the youths on Twitter with one of his own, the aforementioned “if you know, you know” blurry image above that is still funnier than the wave of comedy it unleashed across the web.
26. The Queen Dies
Of all the “famous and powerful person dies” ones on this list, this may have been the most unhinged response. Americans were exposed to the utter insanity of British royal culture, while an infinite number of debates about the crimes of the British crown and an old lady’s complicity in it encroached on the “do not speak ill of the dead” caucus. It was a true universal day of the internet where everyone played a part, and it helped to combine a truly bonkers spectacle with some of the wildest takes the internet has ever seen.
25. Ted Cruz Likes a Porn Tweet
Ted Cruz liked a porn tweet! We all saw it! This kind of stuff is why Elon took likes private! Ted Criz liked a porn tweet! Don’t ever forget!
24. Epstein Dies in Jail
As soon as Jeffrey Epstein’s legal troubles mounted, many people were waiting for this day, and it did not exactly detract from the evidence around this conspiracy theory. This poured gasoline on it, as “Epstein didn’t kill himself” became one of the internet’s most enduring memes since that day, and given that Gawker reported in 2015 that the current president was one of Epstein’s clients, this meme is guaranteed to persist at least as long as Trump will. Elon’s seemingly threatening to ensure that it happens.
23. Double Rainbow
The most wholesome viral video in internet history came from a user named Hungrybear9562 in 2010. Paul “Bear” Vasquez filmed a video of a double rainbow, and words cannot do his level of genuine excitement justice, you simply have to hear and see what he saw for yourself. This is my retvrn-style content, as I wish we all could go back to posting wholesome excitement about the wonders of the world instead of cynicism about our fascist hellscape.
22. Batkid
This is the most wholesome day in internet history, and if Batkid didn’t bring some level of joy and warmth to your life, you are truly well and dead inside. Thousands of volunteers, city officials, business and other supporters turned San Francisco into Gotham City for a day for Miles Scott, a child who was diagnosed with lymphoblastic leukemia at 18 months old and battled it into remission. He celebrated with the Make-A-Wish foundation by becoming Batkid, with the whole city set up Batman-style with headlines written for him in the San Francisco Chronicle-turned-Gotham City Chronicle like “Batkid Saves City: Hooded hero nabs Riddler, rescues damsel in distress.” If anyone ever tells you the internet is bad, tell them about November 15th, 2013, as proof that it can be good.
21. Family Matters and Meet the Grahams Are Released
Now back to our regularly scheduled unhinged schadenfreude. A lot of people making these lists say Kendrick Lamar’s and Drake’s feud should be on this list, but we are trying to narrow this down to specific days where internet culture went supernova. This day was the climax of the Drake-Kendrick feud, as Drake released Family Matters, his best diss track in the feud and in my book, one of his best songs ever. He got to celebrate this triumph for roughly 20 minutes before Lamar released a song with lyrics like “and we gotta raise our daughters knowin’ there’s predators like him lurkin’, fuck a rap battle, he should die so all of these women can live with a purpose,” along with cover art with photos of Drake’s medication. God what a night for posting that was.
20. “Meet Me in Temecula”
Anyone who ever says the internet isn’t real life clearly has never heard this phrase or understands its meaning. This saga hits the sweet spot between dudes rock and people taking the internet way too seriously, as NBA Twitter commandeered 2014 Christmas. A fight between a basketblogger that goes by Snottie Drippen and @MyTweetsRealAF began as an argument over Russell Westbrook that eventually led to Snottie Drippen saying “meet me in Temecula” to throw some fisticuffs. Funny enough, @MyTweetsRealAF actually drove about 50 minutes to fight him over NBA Twitter beef on Christmas. Snottie Drippen did not meet him for this fight and we all had a good laugh over eggnog that night.
19. Bernie Wins Nevada
In retrospect, this was the peak of lefty Twitter and it’s been all downhill ever since. That was also the last good day in politics. Bernie Sanders won the Nevada primary and struck a kind of fear into the Democratic establishment we have never seen before. Chris Matthews was going on TV and fantasizing about being dragged into Central Park and shot. The content on MSNBC and CNN was unhinged even by internet standards, and it was like catnip for us on the left. I can only think of one other day ranked much higher on this list where I’ve laughed that hard. The Democratic Party meltdown that day was genuinely one of the funniest things I have ever seen in my life, and probably the last day a lot of us lefties felt true happiness.
18. #HasJustineLandedYet
You can always tell the age of the person making these lists as to whether they are aware of “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” That 2013 racist tweet alone is enough to set the internet ablaze, but posting it and then detaching yourself from the internet on an 11-hour flight as the dogpile piled up? Enough so that it inspired #HasJustineLandedYet to trend worldwide? Now this is primo internet stuff. Those 11 hours of Justine silence are internet legend, and the insanity they induced help shape the web that distorts our world today.
17. Will Smith Slaps Chris Rock at the Oscars
Shock value? Check. Celebrities? Check. Violence? Check. Memeability? Double check. Relationship drama? Oh boy, this moment had everything. Coming at the Oscars made it exponentially more unhinged, as more people probably saw this moment than most others in the last five years. Like the queen’s death, any time we get all elements of society into a good moment for memes, the more chaos it induces and the better the internet day gets.
16. Henry Kissinger Dies
I would argue the anticipation for Kissinger’s death was thirstier than Epstein’s. Henry Kissinger lived a very long and horrible life filled with endless slaughter across the world that made him an enemy of Anthony Bourdain, and every time some evil asshole died, people got their hopes up that it may be the final boss of evil assholes. Nope, sorry, just some other schlub deeply involved in America’s 20th century war crimes. The pure elation that erupted when Kissinger finally died is difficult to articulate, but it was so powerful that the “respect the dead” scolds could barely get a word off before the whole world told them to shut the fuck up and enjoy the planet getting a little less evil.
15. The Rich Guy Submarine Goes Missing
The Fyre Fest of submarines, Oceangate promised to do things other subs couldn’t do, and when it went missing, the schadenfreude across the web became contagious. A perfect example of the hubris of the modern wealthy was captured in this tiny capsule that killed its entire crew after a “catastrophic implosion.” In hindsight, this was a preview of the Luigi discourse to come.
14. Balloon Boy
I gotta get back into my Abe Simpson voice for this one, as “balloon boy” itself evokes an old-timey ‘back in my day’ harumph. This is another early internet day of wholesomeness, but it came with a warning for our increasingly confusing and distorted future. After a homemade helium-filled gas balloon was released in Fort Collins, Colorado, Richard and Mayumi Heene claimed that their six-year-old son was trapped inside it and every camera in America soon became trained on the balloon. This captured the attention of the nation, as the internet decided that nothing was more important than getting that boy to safety through sheer force of posts. It turns out there was no boy in that balloon, and he was found hiding in the attic of his home, providing us with an early internet example of literal fake news.
13. The American Pope
This one is too new to get a firm grip on its relative virality, but man was that a fun day. The memes about Catholics banning ketchup and incorporating Malört into holy rituals were fantastic, as the surprise of a Chicago pope was tailor made for the American internet. I don’t know what the web looked like in other countries, but I can confirm that over here, we had a lot of fun with Pope Villanova.
12. Philadelphia Beheads a Hitchhiking Robot
There are certain cities that naturally lend itself to this kind of fun and chaotic discourse, and Philadelphia might be the epicenter of this dynamic. HitchBOT was a cheery hitchhiking robot that survived cross-country trips in Canada, the Netherlands and Germany, but it only lived for 300 miles in America’s Thunderdome in 2015. As soon as hitchBOT hit the Philadelphia city limits, that was the end of the experiment, as Philly vandals decapitated it and the internet became Philly-fied for a day. Frauke Zeller, one of hitchBOT’s creators said, “we didn’t really expect it,” which is how you know he had never been to Philadelphia before.
11. The Big Ship Gets Stuck
The ship has a name, the Ever Given, and so does where it got stuck too, the Suez Canal, but it doesn’t matter as it became the avatar for early COVID-era anxiety. “The big ship gets stuck” was how all our brains were feeling during that harrowing year, and rarely has life imitated society’s collective mindset so accurately as the Ever Given did. The memes that day hit a little too hard to be honest.
10. Tom Hanks and Rudy Gobert Shut the World Down
If you’re looking for where America’s real descent into madness began, this is it. This is the moment we all took COVID seriously and sent ourselves down the path we find today. If Tom Hanks has COVID, well then anyone could get it! Former Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert crystallized how serious the moment had become, as he had mockingly touched all the microphones in a bizarre anti-vax crusade, and two days later, he tested positive for COVID alongside Hanks as the NBA suspended the season. The internet has never let Gobert live this down and it never will.
9. The Luka Doncic Trade
This may be recency bias but it also is the craziest trade in NBA history, so I think it deserves to be in the top ten. When NBA oracle Shams Charania tweeted that the Los Angeles Lakers had swapped Anthony Davis and a few players for a generational 25-year-old superstar off his first NBA Finals appearance, Luka Doncic, literally no one believed him. There’s video of Steph Curry convinced it couldn’t be real and Shams was hacked. Everyone thought Shams was hacked. This is the type of fake trade NBA Twitter makes up all the time. Except Shams tweeted he was not hacked, the Mavericks had done something no one could wrap their heads around, and the section of Twitter that inspired the phrase “meet me in Temecula” went into an all-timer of a meltdown that to this day shows no signs of letting up.
8. The Dress
This moment is so viral I don’t even need to say anything else about it and anyone who was on the internet in 2015 knows exactly what I’m talking about. You can close your eyes and see that white and gold dress clear as day a decade later. It is not blue and black like people with non-working eyes have and I’m done arguing about this. You’re wrong.
Post-edit note: A follower pointed out that the dress and the llamas happened on the same day, so you’ll have to forgive my internet poisoned brain from remembering each of them as distinct days unto their own, and technically this list is at 49 days.
7. 30-50 Feral Hogs
Another phrase I will hear before I die is the most unique event on this list, as it was spurred by a post that looked trollishly designed to uncork the most unhinged parts of the internet, but the post had real fears to it. Willie McNabb asked “legit question for rural Americans – How do I kill the 30-50 feral hogs that run into my yard within 3-5 mins while my small kids play?” and was subsequently dogpiled. This might be the best example of how us cityfolk do not truly understand the lives of rural Americans, as in reality, this is a big problem! Willie was right, and I hope someone more knowledgeable than us edgelord city dwellers was able to help him with his very real 30-50 feral hogs issue that my subconscious will never let me stop thinking about.
6. The Internet Learns Luigi Is Hot
The days after the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson were tense, as the bubbling rage at America’s fundamentally evil healthcare system boiled over as callousness towards the murder was the most common reaction. Those of us trying to be more circumspect with our words we are paid for tried to thread a needle between these justified feelings and the fact that no healthy society encourages extrajudicial murder, but as soon as Luigi’s heart-stopping smile was revealed on a security camera at a hostel, those efforts felt hopeless as all nuance went out the window. I have never seen such hornyposting on main in my entire life, and I don’t think I ever will. I am afraid to say anything about this anymore because of the pressure coming from all sides of this very delicate subject.
Luigi is smoking hot though.
5. Four Seasons Total Landscaping
Four days after the 2020 presidential election, the president’s chief attorney promised a historic press conference filled with salacious details about how the election had been stolen from him. Such serious allegations deserve a similarly serious environment to make them in, and Rudy Giuliani had a reservation at the Four Seasons. The problem is it was Four Seasons Total Landscaping, and this utterly surreal moment where someone clearly fucked up a basic set of instructions to reserve a hotel summarized the shambolic nature of the president’s defense and entire oeuvre. I have never pointed and laughed harder in my entire life than this day, and I know many others who joined me in nearly overdosing on schadenfreude also remember it as a seminal moment in their internet careers.
4. Musk v. Trump
Recency bias again, but it’s hard to place the “Drake vs. Kendrick feud if both guys were Drake” any lower than the top five. What unfolded yesterday was one of the most astonishing days in my career, and the glee which spread across the liberal web was heartwarming. It’s been a tough year, don’t listen to anyone scolding you for laughing at two petty assholes being unfathomably petty and passive aggressive in public. I know this bill is bad, but The Emperors Have No Clothes and I want to keep watching damnit.
3. Montgomery Riverfront Brawl
I’ll admit I’m doing this ranking by proxy. I had it in my top ten on my initial list, but not this high, and after digging into the discourse on the internet around this, I have found America’s digital racial divide. You can find a lot of dissenters in the replies of every list that does not have this day, as many self-described members of Black Twitter rank this fight number one. Montgomery’s racially problematic history set the stage for this WWE-style brawl including chair shots that took place between a group of white people and a group of Black people. This brawl toed the line of dangerous enough to be a shocking spectacle while not being dangerous enough to worry we were witnessing murder, and it fell into an internet sweet spot where jokes about things like “Black Aquaman” abounded, many of which I am unqualified to make, but I assure you, they exist in droves and they are terrific.
2. Osama bin Laden Is “Compromised to a Permanent End”
If you’re wondering why I am the way that I am, part of it is because John Cena informed me that America killed Osama bin Laden. My Joker origin story of internet brain poisoning was hopping on Twitter on a nondescript night in 2011 and seeing a man who spent his life in kayfabe telling people after a Pay-Per-View that “we have caught and compromised to a permanent end Osama bin Laden,” a phrase that runs on a loop in the back of my internet poisoned brain. When President Obama confirmed it from the White House shortly afterwards, this fractured my sense of reality in an irrevocable way, merging the seriousness of the news and unseriousness of how it was delivered into a terminal case of internet poisoning. I was hooked, and from that point forward, I knew I could never look at the news the same way again.
1. Trump gets COVID
This is the funniest day in the history of the internet, bar-none. It was October 2020, still six months away from vaccines being made available to everyone over the age of 16, and roughly seven months into a pandemic that was driving all of us insane. You cannot look at this moment through any other lens than the context of an exhausted and mentally frayed populace on the precipice of voting out this asshole finally snapping on the news that hubris still exists. Trump mismanaged COVID that entire year, left states on their own to gather life-saving equipment, and America was at the peak of being done with Trump’s shit (at least temporarily). As soon as news broke on October 2nd that Trump contracted the virus he had spent all year trying to give to all of us, the last shred of decorum in American politics disappeared. This was the Super Bowl for schadenfreude, as the entire internet posted cruel memes and jokes through tears of laughter, and for my book, gave us the greatest day of posting ever.
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