We love celebrities. We love the entertainment they provide, the glimpse into glamour they give us, and the escape from the increasingly abundant horrors of everyday life they offer. There are websites entirely devoted to, like, documenting every time Kylie Jenner goes to Sugarfish—and they’re very heavily trafficked! That’s how much we love celebrities. But holy Jesus, they can be so terrible and stupid sometimes.
For every time Chrissy Teigen awesomely calls out Donald Trump, there’s Matt Damon explaining racism to Effie Brown; for every Jesse Williams speech at the BET Awards, there’s a Justin Timberlake tweeting that “we are all the same.” Underneath the designer jeans, Oscar acceptance speeches, and eight-figure follower totals, celebrities are just people, and people are bad. And just as regular people continued to be questionable decision-makers in 2016—over 62 million people voted for Donald Trump—so too did celebrities. They contorted their mouths to voice wildly uninformed opinions, they lied to our faces, they dated Taylor Swift.
Here’s a list of the biggest celebrity fails of 2016—a year loaded with them. Hopefully, this will be enough to convince you to never make a celebrity your role model.
20. Ben Affleck Rants About “Deflategate”
19. Gregg Sulkin Sells “Grab Her by the Brain” Hats
To those who are currently asking, “What is a Gregg Sulkin?” he’s a 24-year-old actor most prominently featured on the Disney Channel, MTV’s Faking It, and Pretty Little Liars; he's known for being Bella Thorne’s ex. It might be debatable how much of a “celebrity” he really is, but this is such a fail it just needs to be included on this list. Because it turns out being unwoke and abusing your wokeness is the same thing. Following the leak of Donald Trump’s “grab ‘em by the pussy” comments, Sulkin eagerly took it upon himself to become an advocate for women. How? With hats! That posited another region to grab women by!
Grab Her By The Brain is an initiative dedicated to empowering females of all ages. Honored to take part. https://t.co/9mDt99ygAE pic.twitter.com/wC7ch5VlRr
— Gregg Sulkin (@greggsulkin) October 19, 2016
It didn’t take long for people to one, quickly Google Gregg Sulkin, and two, suggest to him that, “Hey, maybe we should just not grab women at all?”
Among so many other things, 2016 exposed a group of people obliviously patting themselves on the back for being socially aware, as if acknowledging that women and minorities deserve equality is something one should be praised for. Sulkin really went there, and the fact that he did so in service of selling hats makes the whole thing that much more confounding. The guy did apologize—"I am sorry if anyone found the wording offensive, however the intent was to promote women for their intellect and not just their bodies,” he later tweeted. But I don’t know, something tells me he still doesn’t really get it. —Andrew Gruttadaro