The most popular tweet of the year was only one word


It wasn't all Donald Trump. After crunching the numbers, The Associated Press reports that the most buzzed-about topics on Twitter in 2016 included the Rio Olympics and Pokemon Go, as well as the Oscars, Euro 2016, Game of Thrones, and Black Lives Matter. "RIP" was also one of the biggest trends on the social media website, surfacing for a number of celebrity deaths throughout the year.
U.S. politics did dominate the conversation, though, with "Election2016" as the second most-tweeted topic and "Trump" also cracking the top 10. Brexit also resulted in an enormous spike in conversation.
As for the most popular tweet of the year? It might be a little unexpected — it was simply the Spanish word for lemonade, "limonada," tweeted by a Spanish gamer who promised prizes to fans that retweeted it. It resulted in more than 1.3 million retweets:
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Runners-up included this tweet by One Direction's Harry Styles and this post-election tweet from Hillary Clinton.
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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.
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