If we got a nickel for every time something in 2016 sucked, we would be millionaires. Seriously, 2016 was the worst year to be alive. Reason? The following words, which all start with T:

Terrorism: Where do we begin? Outside of the many, many, many attacks seen in the Middle East, terrorist attacks have ravaged the world, most notably with the bombing of Brussels Airport in March, the Orlando shooting in June, the Nice attack on Bastille Day, and most recently, the attack on a market in Berlin. A total of 1,785 attacks and counting this year have claimed the lives of nearly 15,000 people. Also, our strategy by which we fight terrorism has been poor. We have not focused our attention on the root cause of terrorism: religious/ethnic disputes. Our government, along with many previous governments, has failed to recognize that the Sunni-Shia split has caused much instability in the region. Our poor intervention in countries, such as Syria, has resulted in many AVOIDABLE humanitarian crises. By trying to bring democracy to a land that does not want or NEED democracy, we have caused more trouble for ourselves than we thought we could get into. Thus, for 2017, our goals should be to lead the world to a more plausible way to fight terrorism.

Trump: Ah, yes. Donald J. Trump, our newest president of the United States that will take office at the start of next year.  If we got a penny for each time he spewed out something stupid during his election campaign, we would each get a million dollars just off of that. Between promising to “build a wall” across the southern border of America, his comments against Muslims in general, and his anti-offshore company policies, he has angered quite a few individuals across the country (and by quite a few, we mean over 100 million). Trump has also stirred up a melting pot of political instability in the United States. This pot includes the members of the alt-right movement, social justice “warriors,” socialists, moral conservatives, and others less desirable in the political spectrum. Although Trump’s victory could be calculated as the biggest political upset of our time — which it was — America will have another further upset: a lack of acceptance for all people.

Tackiness: Excluding the over 200,000 comments made by Trump, we have Pizzagate as the best example of what people without good taste can do this year. For the few of you who don’t know, Pizzagate was a conspiracy involving the usage of a Washington D.C pizzeria called Comet Ping Pong as a child sex ring, with the offenders including Hillary Clinton and her campaign manager: John Podesta. After a period of investigation, the conspiracy was proven false, meaning that all this accomplished was even more division among the Democratic and Republican Parties, Comet Ping Pong’s reputation going down (to the point where a shooting took place in the pizzeria), and everyone’s time being wasted in general. Furthermore, we have had many people listening to alt-right conspiracy networks (i.e. Breitbart and InfoWars) and liberal media outlets (i.e. The Young Turks, MSNBC). These networks, most of the time, do NOT base their reporting on real facts, but rather take scraps of information to fabricate false narratives. It seems as though many people lack an appetite for the truth.

Trademarks: Who can forget the infamous Fine Brothers case back in February? Trademarking the word “React” caused an uproar throughout the internet, to the point where the Fine Brothers’ reputation was permanently damaged: just look at the like/dislike ratio of their videos shortly after the announcement, and compare this with the like/dislike ratio before React World was announced. Even after they decided to apologize and repeal their decision to trademark the word, the brothers still received tens of thousands of dislikes on their videos for months. Who can also remember Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again!” ?  That was also a trademark that Trump acquired. Let us remind you, however, that Ronald Reagan basically used the same slogan. However, it seems as though the voters were not as upset with Trump as they were with Fine Brothers.

Tragedies: Quite a few celebrities died in 2016, with the latest examples being Debbie Reynolds and her daughter Carrie Fisher, both of whom died within a day of each other in the past 48 hours. Music stars David Bowie, Prince, and George Michael also left us this year. Other deaths include Harper Lee: Author of To Kill a Mockingbird, Muhammad Ali: the legend in boxing, and Alan Rickman, known among Pottermore fans as Severus Snape. Along with celebrities, thousands have died in the wars that have ravaged our little planet. In addition to the thousands that were murdered in terrorist attacks, thousands of Syrians were killed in the battle for Aleppo. The heartbreaking messages they sent through Twitter represented a true tragedy: how, like the Holocaust, the world stood by and watched.