Twitter’s Top 10 Global Conversations will remind you just how bad 2016 was

If, like me, you think the whole “2016 has been unremittingly awful” sentiment is a touch overblown, Twitter is doing its level best to dispossess you of that notion. Last year they went with #YearOnTwitter, but this time around they’ve gone with the considerably more corporate “Top 10 Global Conversations”, which sounds like the kind of awful marketing seminar you’d be sensible to avoid.

Still, most marketing seminars at least have free pastries, which makes reviewing the year in tweet form demonstrably worse. Strap in, masochists, here we go.

At number ten, we have #GameOfThrones. George RR Martin’s bleak, cruel world of death and political scheming offer a little light relief for the list ahead.

In at number nine, like a punch to the head, is #RIP. Y’know, for all the brilliant people we’ve lost this year. Here’s a refresher for those who had just gotten over their grief: David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Garry Shandling, Leonard Cohen, Prince, Muhammad Ali, Anton Yelchin, Gene Wilder, Victoria Wood, Robert Vaughn, Pete Burns, Caroline Aherne, Terry Wogan and Ronnie Corbett. To name but a few.

Number eight is #Trump. I think I’ve already written enough on that particular topic, so let’s move on. Seven is #BlackLivesMatter, covering the protests around the USA against systemic racism.

#Brexit comes in at number six. I would expect that to continue trending into 2017, 2018 and in fact it may well outlive Twitter. You can see how the fateful night unfolded in tweet form here.

But wait! 2016 wasn’t all doom and gloom, as positions five, four and three show us. There were the #Oscars, where Leonardo Dicaprio finally won; #Euro2016 where Iceland and Wales’ heroics made us almost as happy as that Icelandic commentator; and #PokemonGo brought colour to a pretty gloomy September.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Nka7R_JMrgs

….and let’s Trump again. Like we did last summer. In this case, with #Election2016. That hashtag may have been relatively shortlived, but its fallout will continue until #Election2020.

And finally, there’s #Rio2016. Like the cool, refreshing slice of lime in the world’s roughest Tequila Slammer.

You can revisit the whole year via Twitter here. But I’d suggest you don’t.