Republican primaries. Donald Trump. Youtube's commentary community. The great meme wars. 2016's memes were so dank that the elites had to put the clamp on free speech online as to prevent memes from ever becoming that dank again. Free speech was a mirage, it's just that up to the point they tolerated. But just like anything too edgy, cranky power hungry elitists had to shit on the fun. So boom, adpocalypse on youtube, bannings and censorship, media propaganda on overdrive. It happened gradually, but crisis after crisis and banning after banning, the media apparatus made it impossible to have fun with free expression. Come 2021, and the 2016 magic has completely died. Trump is out, big tech and the pro censorship elites have won, and the memes are boring. The same people who once enjoyed the dank memes as Trump ascended to president are now raiding the capitol because the censorship and bullshit went so far.
2016 was the last year before internet censorship really began to take off, because the memes and shitposts pushed the envelope of free speech so far that the elites couldn't handle it. It represents a peak because they have actually made it a bannable offense to meme like we memed in 2016.
And that's why it was the peak in my book.
