The Biggest Comedy Generating News Stories of 2016

These are the news stories that kept every comedian busy on Twitter, that kept the writers’ rooms for every daytime and late night show buzzing, kept Funny or Die and other digital sketch writers happy and kept the bloggers of the world busy. These 10 news stories generated the most comedy sketches, joke tweets, and digital shorts everywhere. They were the stories that seemed to never go away, the stories that generated Halloween costumes, and dominated Twitter.

In 2015, we obsessed on a liar (Brian Williams), a slaughtered animal (Cecil), the Kardashians (Cait and Khloe)  and Trump. This year it’s more of the same, but this time a different liar (Lochte), a different slaughtered beast (Harambe), a different Kardashian and her husband (Kimye), and Trump.

The ten biggest comedy-generating news stories of 2016.

The Year Of Trump

This one shouldn’t even have to be explained, the guy came in guns blazing on a Republican party ticket where he had to battle off a huge number of experienced candidates. Somehow though, Donald never went down. Not even for a second, whether  he was making fun of a disabled reporter, bragging about being able to shoot someone on 5th Avenue, the guy got away with murder basically, and the stories came in so fast and furious that we’ve forgotten most of them. The biggest mind-fuck of it all, when audio dropped of him and Billy Bush talking about women and grabbing of the pussy came up, one guy got fired from his job….the other guy, you ask? Was elected President! It is still completely unbelievable how this man won and 2017 will bring us our first year of a Donald Trump world.

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Hulk Hogan Kills Gawker With The Help Of Evil Billionaire

Hulk Hogan buried another opponent and this time it was Gawker. This sex tape issue was more dramatic than any other celebrity sex tape we have seen for multiple reasons. It was with Hogan and his buddy Bubba The Love Sponge’s wife, Bubba’s voice makes an appearance in the beginning of the video.

The release of the video brought on a lawsuit from Hogan vs Gawker for posting portions of the tape. Later, a part was leaked which included Hogan dropping a few N-bombs in a racial rant and then finally the big swerve…billionaire Peter Thiel bankrolled the whole thing because he was so mad at Gawker for previously outing him. Who knew the U.S. Justice system had a tag team division?

Kimye End 2016 With The Wheels Coming Off

Throughout 2016, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West were riding high on the hog. The Kardashian Empire was as strong as ever and Kanye released a new album – The Life of Pablo – that his fans absolutely loved. It all started to fall apart in October when Kim was bound and robbed in Paris where she had no security guards with her. It rocked the world’s tabloids and an arrest still hasn’t been made.

And apparently, due to the stress of that happening combined with an insane work schedule, Kim’s husband, Kanye, went on a manic, insane rant at a concert, canceled the rest of his tour and ended up in a hospital due to “exhaustion”. A week later he got out, but now it seems people finally think Kanye is crazy for real and the Kardashian clan has destroyed another dude. Who the hell knows what they’re gonna end up doing to each other in 2017?

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Ryan Lochte Concocts Ridiculous Lie During Rio Olympics

Although Michael Phelps’ goodbye tour was one of the highlights of the Olympic games, Ryan Lochte and his lie about being mugged in Rio stole all of the glory. Not only did he lie about the attack to police, he also went on air with Billy Bush to tell his story before fleeing the country. This would just end up resulting in an arrest for more people, not Lochte though. He got a spot on Dancing With The Stars with a 7th place finish.

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No One Saw Brexit Coming

When there was talk about Britain leaving the European Union everyone thought this was a stupid joke, that it was impossible. Britain would NEVER leave, who would vote for such a thing? Then when voting came around, guess what happened? Brexit won. It was over. Brexit was official. People said after they the voted, that they jokingly chose to leave, thinking it would never happen, others just said they didn’t vote because it was so crazy of a thought and then the final numbers were less than 3% apart. This sounds like another election that took place over here in the States…

Pokemon Go! Biggest Thing In The World For Exactly One Week

In a world where 15 minutes of fame has become 15 seconds of fame, did you really have any doubt what-so-ever that Pokemon Go! was going to die out just as quick as it started? When the game came out over the summer people were hooked, walking in the streets trying to catch imaginary Pokemon and it was weirdly bringing people together. There were riots in other countries and people out in the middle of the night trying to catch rare Pokemon. That lasted about 4 weeks and then everyone realized how much they hated being outside all day and went back to their other favorite app…Uber, because fuck walking anywhere!

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The Internet Loses Its Collective Shit Over Harambe

A little kid falls into a gorilla enclosure at the zoo, the gorilla (Harambe) then starts flinging the kid around, so zoo officials shoot Harambe and save the kid which seems like the right and easy choice. Well, almost 8 months later and we are still hearing about this gorilla almost every day because for some reason, millennials turned him into a meme. T-shirts, sweaters and the hashtag #DicksOutForHarambe have kept this gorilla alive in everyone’s eyes.Even Michael Che mentioned it briefly during his Netflix special.

 

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Colin Kaepernick Confuses The United States By Kneeling During National Anthem

When Colin Kaepernick came out and said he would not be standing for the National Anthem because of police brutality and racial injustices, all anyone could talk about was this decision. Yes, the whole world was talking about a shitty backup QB for a team that doesn’t win a whole lot of games anymore. At first, it was something to debate and brought attention to the issue, but instead of using that to his advantage Kaepernick just kind of stood (or kneeled) there. Other players were joining him throughout the league and something that could have been powerful just turned into something ESPN could fill 12 hours of their 24/7 coverage with.

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The World Thought It was Going To End In A Zika Outbreak

It seems like every few months there is a new giant panic about some virus outbreak. Zika picked up right where Ebola let off and leading up to the Olympics in Rio, it was all anyone could talk about (other than the U.S. Women’s Gymnastic team). Although Zika did end up showing its effect on some newborns this year, it fortunately was not the outbreak that people thought we were seeing. The rules turned out to be pretty simple, just don’t travel while you’re pregnant and you should be fine. Let’s just find out the virus of 2017 right now and get it over with.

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2016 Was The Worst Year Ever

Do we even need to describe why this year was so god awful? The meme takeover, the movies, the beloved celebrity deaths, it was all a disaster. This was the year where it feels like the bad guys won at every single level. The only people having good years in 2016 are Cleveland Cavs fans and Chicago Cubs fans and if that isn’t a sign of the end times being near, then who knows what is.

Here is a video from John Oliver if you didn’t quite get the picture!

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