The 2016 List of Lists

The best and worst things that happened this year, in 87 lists

December 30, 2016 9:00 am
The 2016 List of Lists
Getty Images for MTV

Our post-Christmas gift to you: About three days of reflection. And good reading.

To wit: InsideHook’s Third Annual Lists of Lists, compiling everything that made 2016, well, what it was.

For those who like to celebrate human achievement — be it scientific breakthroughs, great design or Instagram model popularity (NSFW) — we have the Best of 2016.

For those who looked at 2016 and threw up a middle finger — or just threw up — we have the Worst of 2016. Wallow in the folly of man. Sad!

And because you were wondering, yes, Emily Ratajkowski makes an appearance.

Go find her.

THE BEST 

99 Reasons 2016 Was a Good Year
Turns out global health is on a major uptick.

2016’s 10 Most Followed Models on Instagram

Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2016

The Best Book Covers of 2016

Bill Gates’s Favorite Books of 2016

52 Things I Learned in 2016
“#12 Pork scratchings are good for you.”

The Best Stocks of 2016
Best Buy … seriously?

Spotify’s Most Streamed Artists

Time’s Top 100 Photos of the Year

National Geographic’s Best Photos of 2016

The New York Times Year in Pictures 2016

Hex Keys to Bond Villain Chic: The Best Houses of 2016

Atisha Paulson’s Best of 2016 (NSFW)
Any of Live FAST’s 2016 photo lists, actually.

The Best Drones of 2016

The Best New Spirits of 2016
Drink up.

10 Breakthrough Technologies via MIT Technology Review

The Most WTF?!-Inducing Human Achievements of 2016
Starting with that lunatic who skydived into a trapeze net

2016: The Year in Digg

Longreads Best of 2016

16 Best TV Shows of 2016

The Most Admirable Everyday Women of 2016
The 8th grader who wrote up a relationship contract wins the year

Prince’s Closest Friends Share Their Best Prince Stories
Lifting the pain from a sad passing

The Best Sports Writing of the Year

The 10 Best Esports Moments of 2016
Get used to it.

The New York Times Best Movies of 2016
Hooray, Sausage Party!

Cahiers Cinema’s Top Ten Movies of 2016
Hooray, Le Bois dont les rêves sont faits!

The Most Instagrammed Hotels of 2016

Product Hunt’s 2016 Golden Kitty Awards
The Tesla Model S P100D won “sexiest product.”

Top 10 Cover Songs of 2016

A Breakdown of the Speech That Won the 2016 World Championship of Public Speaking

The 100 Greatest Innovations of 2016
Lots of VR. And an A.I.-powered beer.

Everything We Learned About Hangover Cures This Year

The Best Movie Posters of 2016

The 50 Best Music Videos of 2016

The Best Cosplay of 2016

The 10 Biggest Trends of 2016
Style-wise. And how they’ll fare next year.

Bloomberg’s Jealousy List 2016
The best stories they didn’t write, including “The AVengers Should Be Placed Under UN Supervision.”

The 100 Best Songs of the Year

Sleepy Skunk’s 2016 Movie Trailer Mashup
Remember when we were all excited about Suicide Squad?

The Biggest Scientific Discoveries of 2016

The 11 Best Video Games of 2016

The 13 Best Horror Movies of 2016

The 10 Most Important Late-Night TV Moments of 2016

20 Best TV Characters of 2016

The 20 Best Comics of 2016

Netted’s Best Apps and Services of 2016

The Year in Memes

The Oddest Inventions of 2016
Hey, we liked the floating turntable!

Whisky Advocate’s 23rd Annual Distiller of the Year Award

The Breakout Movie Performances of 2016

The Best Watches of 2016

THE WORST 

Poynter’s Best of Media Corrections 2016
These are the “fun” mistakes the media made

Google’s Year in Search 2016
Pokemon Go. It’s all Pokemon Go.

The Onion’s Our Annual Year 2016
April: “Universe Feels Zero Connection to Guy Tripping on Mushrooms.”

The Celebrity Breakups of 2016 That Hit Harder Than Expected
Wait, Kat Dennings and Josh Groban were a thing?

The Weirdest Things the TSA Confiscated in 2016

Best and Worst Ads of 2016
Constipation was an issue.

The Worst Gadgets of 2016

What Did We Get Stuck in Our Rectums Last Year?

From Train to Star Wars Electronica, The Least Essential Music of 2016

The 11 Worst People of 2016

In Memoriam: Bands We Lost in 2016

5 of the Biggest Fake News Stories From 2016
That kangaroo is f*cking evil.

Why Did Some of 2016’s Weirdest Moments Involve Beer?
If it involves beer it can’t be all bad.

Biggest Tech Failures of 2016
And, admittedly, some successes, so not all bad.

Pitchfork’s The Year in Disappointment

The Most Awkward Celebrity Interview of the Year
Jerry Lewis is a dick.

The Most Edited Wikipedia Pages of 2016
Nothing is certain but death and Trump.

Amazing Quotes That Sum Up 2016
“Delete your account.”

The 15 Worst Movie Posters of 2016

The Worst Album Covers of 2016

The 15 Most Disappointing TV Shows of 2016

Here Are the Worst Travelers of 2016
Don’t take nude selfies at Angkor Wat, people.

The Worst Stocks of 2016
Screw you, Endo International!

The Year in Ted Cruz Humiliations

The Worst Cars and Trucks Jalopnik Drove in 2016
Sorry, Buick.

Meet the Worst Restaurant Customers of 2016

The Biggest Science Setbacks of 2016

69 Viral Images From 2016 That Were Totally Fake

The Worst Tweets of 2016

The Worst CEO Screw-Ups of 2016

The 10 Worst Tax Policy Ideas of the Year
And those ideas are about to come true…

9 Fictional Disasters That Were Less Horrible Than the Reality of 2016
“Hey, you know what sounds like a great idea? Robots that can f*ck us to death. Thanks to Dr. Ford for bringing on the robotic uprising against the plague of humanity and, what’s worse, making us actually cool with it.”

The Top 10 Worst Songs
Meghan Trainor got on here twice.

2016 Lie of the Year

How Aleppo Has Changed Over the Last Year

The Worst Year Ever, Until Next Year
Some well-needed perspective.

Main image via Mike Windle

 



 

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