meme-review

KYM Review: The Wackiest Stories Of 2023

By Phillip Hamilton
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Published about a year ago

This year sure has been a silly, goofy little time, hasn't it? Some might even say it was a real "wacky" year, with emphasis on the "wack." All within the span of 12 long months, we had a seemingly endless string of UFO stories, people freaking out about "woke" things, crypto-bro shenanigans and even a surprise appearance from the Pinkertons.

It's going to be hard for the 2024 news cycle to top all the wackiness that went down this year, but somehow, they're going to do it — granted some government goober doesn't finally wipe us out when they spill their $14 coffee on the big red button (an event that would inevitably take the top spot in our wackiest story of 2024 list).

Anyhow, here are 10 of the absolute wackiest stories from 2023 to either give you an instant headache or take you down a stroll through memory lane.

Tiffany Gomas 'TMFINR' Plane Incident

July gave us one of the most bizarre and memorable viral videos maybe of all time when Tiffany Gomas, a business professional in every sense of the word, was filmed accusing someone on a jam-packed airplane of being "not real."

What exactly did she mean by this? Nobody knew, but everyone was intrigued, starting a lengthy internet-wide hunt for the identity of not only Gomas but also the "not-real" person in question.

As the story evolved, we learned that comedian Carrot Top was randomly on the plane too, which isn't really important to know but it's definitely funny. A rumor also surfaced that Gomas was being racist and stole an earbud from a Black passenger beside her.

Gomas later spoke out about the whole thing, apologizing and claiming that it stemmed from an argument she had with another passenger.

In a long-awaited interview, she told Barstool Sports that the whole thing was "cringe" and she felt bad for it, claiming the phrase "that MFer is not real" was just an "expression of speech" and not an accusation that the passenger was an alien or shapeshifter like many assumed.

Woke Outrage Olympics: Woke Chicken, Purple M&M, Bud Light Hysteria

There's perhaps never been a year filled with quite as many woke-related controversies as 2023. At least, that's the conclusion you might come to if you're the kind of person who spends their mornings browsing Fox News and their evenings reading the unhinged Twitter ramblings of post-benzo Jordan Peterson.

The conservative outrage towards woke culture was prominent this year, leading to some of the most truly confounding headlines imaginable. One example was the continued outrage against M&M for daring to redesign its candy mascots.

This year, the company introduced a, in Tucker Carlson's words, "plus-sized, obese" purple peanut M&M that really ground his gears to dust by simply showing its rotund face in public, giving Twitter a solid day of much-needed dunking on the ex-Fox News pundit.

Another top-notch example came to us in June when the previously and somewhat controversial chicken restaurant Chick-Fil-A dared to hire a VP of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, leading Turning Point USA contributor Morgonn McMichael to speak one of the funniest sentences ever spoken, "Chick-fil-A, you are no longer the Lord's chicken. You are the woke chicken." As you can imagine, this inspired a lot of memes in short order.

Then there was the Bud Light partnership with Dylan Mulvaney, which caused an absolute meltdown among many in the conservative sphere that was both humorous and a little sad.

It came with its own unique set of wacky and weird moments, like Kid Rock shooting a bunch of Bud Light cans only to be seen weeks later drinking Bud Light and TikTokers replacing their "woke Bud Light" with beer from companies that ended up being just as woke (if not woker) than Anheuser-Busch. All this over a single sponsored Instagram post with a trans influencer.

Throughout the year, anti-woke crusaders everywhere seemingly lowered the bar again and again for what's necessary to shove the phrase "GONE WOKE" in a headline and attract millions of clicks (and dollars) from boomers and other groups across the globe. We'll just have to see if that bar can get a little lower in 2024.

Wizards of the Coast Hiring Pinkertons

You might just think of Magic the Gathering as a fun card game enjoyed by millions around the world, but the April 2023 Pinkertons incident might change your opinion a little bit. That month, an MTG YouTuber ended up getting his hands on an unreleased booster box for the "March of the Machine: Aftermath" set. Obviously, he decided to make some videos unboxing them for his devout followers. Big mistake. HUGE!

Shortly after, the YouTuber was met with a very unwelcome surprise when none other than the Pinktertons, a ruthless private security and detective agency with a history of controversies (and yes, the very same villains from Red Dead Redemption 2), came to his house to essentially shake him down for the cards in a move that might be described as both very unhinged and very spectacular.

The absurdity of the situation inspired a lot of memes and reactions on social media and gave many Magic the Gathering fans a sour taste in their mouths for a few days before they could peacefully get back to spending their rent money on the collectibles.

Don't mess with Wizards of the Coast, we guess. Unless you're a really big fan of Red Dead Redemption 2 and want to see what it's like to have an actual bounty on your head.

The Barcelona Diarrhea Plane Incident

A lot of people overlooked just how wacky this next story was. In September 2023, a Delta Airlines flight from Georgia to Spain had to turn around and land after a passenger reportedly had explosive diarrhea "all throughout the plane," a quote that practically forces a visceral image of a plane just absolutely covered in diarrhea into your head.

It being 2023 and all, we got a pretty substantial number of videos and pieces of media purportedly taken from the flight, including a flight log that lists the reason for the turnaround as "passenger diarrhea all over A/C – Biohazard" and some videos showing what appears to be diarrhea stains on the plane's floor.

Apparently, dude really shouldn't have eaten that Taco Bell before takeoff.

Bored Ape UV Light Eye Damage

Have you ever looked at a Twitter user with their Bored Ape NFT in one of those hexagon profile pictures and thought, "Wow, I wish I had invested in one of those beautiful pieces of monkey artwork before they became so valuable like this smart crypto-bro did."

Who hasn't, right? Well, you should know that the crypto-bro you were so jealous of is potentially drowning in eye-related medical bills now thanks exclusively to their smart investment and the company behind it. Take from that what you will.

In November, Bored Ape Yacht Club hosted ApeFest in Hong Kong, an event exclusively for owners of Bored Apes. The event was reportedly a total bro-fest and got some pretty rave reviews from Ape owners across the globe.

That is, until the portion of attendees who lost their vision due to the UV germicidal lights used during the event regained their sight and started posting about it online. Do they even realize that Ape holders can use multiple slurp juices on a single ape? Ingrates.

Yuga Labs, the company behind Bored Apes, apologized for the incident and encouraged everyone affected to seek medical help in what was seen by some as a fairly cold response to the controversy. By others, namely those affected by the incident, the apology was presumably not seen at all.

The Island Boys 'Brotherly Love' Baiting

You really thought the Island Boys were gonna fade out of relevancy, huh? Just like that?

Think again, because these twin brothers are desperate for attention, and in 2023, they proved that they'll go to just about any length to hold onto the last remaining strand of relevancy — even if that means starting an OF account together and smooching each other on the lips a few times.

No, that wasn't just a fever dream you had and repressed one muggy Florida night in April. This year, the internet's favorite duo waded into potentially illegal territory by doing what we will only be describing as "brotherly love baiting" by posting a seemingly endless stream of content where it looks like they're going to kiss or get amorous with each other.

If you ever wanted evidence that we're living in the darkest timeline, consider this the only sign you need.

Since the brothers first went viral in 2021, it's always been a meme to go into their comment sections and ask them to kiss. But until 2023, they would always laugh those comments off, dismiss them entirely or even get upset about them.

As it turns out, the missing ingredient to these memes was a brush with irrelevancy thanks to an ever-growing pile of controversies and a general lack of talent or interesting character traits. Where's the eye bleach when you need it?

Montgomery Alabama Riverboat Fight

The world got a little taste of what to expect from Grand Theft Auto VI earlier this year when a wild fight broke out by a riverboat in Montgomery, Alabama.

The whole thing purportedly started when a ferry captain asked a pontoon boat to move so they could dock. That was not acceptable in the eyes of the person asked, so naturally, they started swinging.

The fight is truly something to behold. Every time you watch it you can pick up a new detail. During one viewing you might focus on the man who swims across the river to join in on the fight, deemed "Black Aquaman" by many online, whereas on another you might focus on the creative use of the folding chair as a weapon.

The whole thing truly looks like footage from a video game and it's not surprising how quickly it went viral back in August.

SSSniperwolf Doxxing Jacksfilms

This was probably the most avoidable controversy of the year. Literally all SSSniperwolf had to do when fellow YouTuber JacksFilms called her out for what he felt were lazy reactions and refusal to credit content creators in her reaction videos was throw some social media handles in her video descriptions and maybe acknowledge the growing backlash against her (and other react content creators this year).

Instead, she responded by making fun of Jack, showing up to his house and posting it on her Instagram Story for the world to see. In case she didn't know, that's called "doxxing," and uh, it's illegal.

You could argue that it would've been quite easy for SSSniperwolf to just take note of the prevalent criticism of her content and win a couple of internet points by trying to address the issues, but instead, she apparently chose to go the route of the villainess, allowing Jacksfilms to make tons of hilarious content reacting to her videos that garnered hundreds of thousands of viewers in 2023.

Unfortunately, the whole thing was soured by the doxxing and what many saw as a poor "punishment" from YouTube, who only gave SSSniperwolf a temporary monetary suspension and blamed both her and Jack for poor behavior.

Alien Madness: Whistleblower Report, Lake Huron UFO, Alaska UFO, Mexican Aliens

Remember back in 2020 when the Pentagon confirmed the existence of UFOs? It was a pretty big deal for about two minutes, but people got bored with the few clips released by the Pentagon pretty quickly. Thankfully, 2023 renewed that interest for at least five minutes this time when two UFOs were seen in Alaska and Huron in February, sending social media into a momentary panic.

One UFO was one thing, but two UFOs? While some people simply figured it was another Chinese spy balloon (perhaps an honorable mention on this list), others truly thought the end was nigh.

Then, of course, there were people who just wanted to meme about it and the hilariously named town they assumed the Alaska UFO landed in. Eventually though, people got bored of the UFOs and moved on to the next thing, which was probably like, Onika Burger or something.

But that wasn't the end of 2023's UFO madness. In June, Air Force veteran David Grusch decided to blow the whistle on some UFO information in a report to Congress, particularly concerning a "crash retrieval program" set up by the U.S. government to collect and reverse-engineer crashed UFOs and alien matter.

The whole thing inspired a lot more memes and discourse about aliens, including some understandable cries of "pics or it didn't happen."

Thankfully, those "pics" were only a few short months away when, in June, the supposedly mummified bodies of two aliens were shown in front of the Mexican Congress. Nobody seemed to know what to think of these wrinkly little dudes, especially once reports that their authenticity had been debunked started surfacing, which are now seemingly in question again after new reports purportedly found unknown DNA in their bodies.

On one hand, the aliens are undeniably goofy-looking and very easy to doubt, but on the other hand, we've never seen real aliens before and who's to say these aren't the real deal? (we want to believe).

Regardless of your opinion on the matter, UFOs were a hot and wacky topic in 2023 and the way the world handled the news with such aloof skepticism, memes and overall boredom truly acted as evidence that we live in a society.

OceanGate Titanic Submarine Incident

Some people might have an issue describing an event that led to the deaths of five people "wacky," but everything surrounding those deaths was so bizarre to the core that it would be a shame not to include it in this list.

For the two of you who don't know, back in June, a tourist submersible packed with four wealthy passengers (five including the captain) dove into the ocean to visit the wreck of the RMS Titanic. Communications with the sub were lost, and then it was discovered that it imploded due largely to a lack of safety precautions.

The more news that came out about the incident, the more ridiculous the whole thing became. First, there were memes about the sub being controlled by a cheap third-party video game controller, which is apparently common but still funny.

There were also a lot of wild theories about what could have happened to the sub before it was confirmed that it imploded, like suggestions that it was attacked by whales.

Then there was the whole Brian Szasz saga in which the stepson of British billionaire Hamish Harding, who was on the sub, seemingly tried to capitalize on the tragedy. The whole thing started when he tweeted about the tragedy from a Blink-182 concert. Then his old posting history was quickly brought to light and he was criticized into the ground, becoming an odd footnote in the incident.

Overall, the OceanGate incident was a tragedy, but it was a wacky story that will not soon be forgotten and will likely become the subject of many documentaries in the future.

It also taught us all a valuable lesson: If a wacky guy with a hatred for safety protocols asks you to get on his submarine, for the love of god, don't do it.

Looking for more of this year's best viral phenomena and memes? Be sure to check out our other 2023 meme roundups below:

Tags: wacky, wacky news 2023, tmfinr, island boys kiss, sssniperwolf jacksfilms, mexican aliens, bored ape uv light, montgomery riverboat fight, oceangate, 2023 review, crazy stories, wildest stories of 2023,

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