2016 is trending again. And suddenly we’re all looking back like it was the last time life made sense. Foodie pics. Facebook check-ins. Blurry photos. But beyond the filter version of that year, something else was happening too… South Africans were still doing what they do best: showing up for each other.
South Africa (20 January 2026) – 2016 is having a moment again… and I totally get why. It was a decade ago. And a lot can change in 10 years. Right now, it seems to be the go-to year everyone is dragging back onto our feeds like it was the last “simple” era, when social media still felt like a fun diary instead of a full-time performance.
Back then, we’d wake up and post a photo of our breakfast, then we’d “check in” with friends at lunch (like we were celebrities on tour), and before the clock struck midnight there was always some blurry photo from a bar where someone’s shirt had gone missing and everyone looked like they’d just discovered freedom for the first time.
Or was that just me?
I’ve spent the last couple of days scrolling through your 2016 photos while trying to remember what my life looked like ten years ago, and honestly… it was pretty cool.
I was running my Marketing Agency while working at Cliffcentral, and Good Things Guy was still in its first year, brand new, still finding its feet but still proving that people actually wanted to read the good stuff. I was on stage, giving a few talks here and there, went to loads of Secret Sunrises (do you remember those), and somehow managed to fit weddings, funerals, movie premieres, and all my life into one year. I even had a little TV feature every Friday night at 6:30. I loved it because I could feel my career building in real time… but I hated it because all my friends had been at the local bar since 3pm, and I’d arrive like, “Hi guys,” and then spend the next hour trying to catch up (hence the photo of a shirtless man.. it was me).
That was also the year I went to Serbia… but decided to get there via Dubai, London and Scotland, and came back via Germany. Don’t ask. I don’t even know why we booked that way. But we did have all the fun.
Pop culture was giving us absolute gold too. Beyoncé was “Lemonading”, the Biebs was telling someone to go “Love Yourself..” and we were all “Eating Cake By The Ocean”. All while our screens were filling up with new obsessions… “Stranger Things”, “The Crown”, “The Good Place”, “Westworld” and “This is Us” all premiered that year.
I only watched “This is Us” in 2022… ja, I was late to the party but I watched the whole thing in one go. It was bladdy spectacular. I actually think I need to do it again. It’s emotions on steroids.
But if we zoom out for a second, away from music, series and social media, the world was also shifting in 2016.
The UK voted to leave the EU, Donald Trump was elected as US President, there was a bombing in Brussels, the Zika outbreak spread fear across continents and Brazil hosted the Olympics while the world watched with mixed emotions.
And in South Africa… we were going through it too.
Loadshedding became part of our reality, Zuma was told to pay back the money (has he done that yet?), the SABC was being scrutinised for censorship claims, “State Capture” entered our everyday vocabulary and the Gupta allegations reached full crisis mode. The drought also tightened its grip, while Cape Town started bracing for “Day Zero”.
So yes… 2016 was a lot of things. Social media may have felt simpler, but the world was quite messy. Looking back now and the “whole picture” feels heavy. I don’t think we can pretend it wasn’t. But we also know something else to be true… even when the news cycle feels like it’s swallowing all the happiness, South Africans still show up as helpers. As heroes. As the people who will pull strangers out of danger, protect children they’ve never met, raise each other up and remind the world that kindness doesn’t disappear just because the year is hard.
That’s why, when everyone started looking back at 2016 recently, and I was looking back at my life, I also wanted to look back through a Good Things Guy lens. So I went digging into the archives and pulled out the top 10 most-read stories from that year. And no, these weren’t the biggest headlines in South Africa. Good Things Guy was still a baby. But they were moments that made people stop scrolling and feel something good again. They were incredibly important. And they made 2016 feel pretty damn good.
Funny enough, we’ve been tagged by readers in two of these stories, which global social pages are sharing as “new” news. So it seems, 10 years later and this good news is still relevant.
10. Buzzfeed voted South Africa as one of the most beautiful countries in the world!
Not because we needed an overseas website to validate us but because sometimes we forget what we live inside of. In 2016, BuzzFeed listed South Africa among the world’s most beautiful countries, pointing to places like Table Mountain and the Drakensberg Amphitheatre… and South Africans loved it because it reminded us that our home is still extraordinary, even when the news makes it feel heavy.
This article mattered a little more back then too. It was one of the first lists we’d ever found like this. And since we were the only good news platform (in South Africa) at the time, we were also the only publication to report on it. Now these lists seem to come out weekly. We’re not complaining, though, we still celebrate them!
9. South Africans formed a human chain to help each other during the Johannesburg floods.
This article was one of those “only in South Africa” moments… where strangers literally linked arms in fast-moving floodwater, guiding people to safety and helping each other out of cars. The clip went viral, but the real story wasn’t the video… it was the instinct. That immediate decision so many people make in this country: we don’t leave each other behind.
8. Taxi drivers used their vehicles to protect an injured student after a crash.
This story still makes my heart so full. And it mattered because it challenged the way people love to stereotype. After a learner was injured, taxi drivers were among the first to act… creating a physical barrier with their vehicles to protect the student and stop things from escalating.
It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t for show. It was just humans being human. And I guess South Africans being us.
7. Rudi Smit went viral… and Meghan Trainor noticed.
If you were online in 2016, you remember it. Rudi Smit and his crew absolutely OWNED Meghan Trainor’s “Me Too” with a dance routine featuring more than 27 dancers. It exploded across the internet, racking up views like crazy, and then Meghan Trainor herself responded. Like WTAF?! It was one of those wholesome global moments that made South Africans walk a little taller for a month.
6. Tracy Todd Heine reminded us to live out loud.
It was the year I met Tracy Todd Heine. And she completely changed the way I (and many readers) see life.
Tracy’s journey, filled with courage and perspective, touched thousands because it wasn’t just about surviving something difficult. It was about choosing happiness anyway. She later raised enough money through crowdfunding to publish her memoir, turning her own pain into something that could hold someone else up. 10 years later and she is still such an inspiration.
5. We met Jo Black for the first time.
This was the year we were introduced to the Afrikaans artist who was breaking every mould…. tattoos, style, edge… but also sincerity and heart. He was proof that South Africans are never just one thing, and that sometimes the people who look the toughest have the softest message.
4. Jan Hendrik van der Westhuizen made history as South Africa’s first Michelin-star chef.
In 2016, Jan Hendrik became the first South African chef to earn a Michelin Star.
That moment wasn’t just about food. It was about possibility. About what happens when a South African takes the world stage and doesn’t just show up… but changes the room. Who knew that (almost) 10 years later, he would invite me to dinner at his incredible restaurant in Nice, France, and make me cry over cheese?
3. Margie Brand survived a terror attack with her baby… and still chose love.
This story wasn’t easy, but it was unforgettable. Margie survived the Westgate Mall terror attack while protecting her eight-month-old baby. And even though this story wasn’t from South Africa, it went viral here. Margie hid for hours, living every parent’s nightmare, and what stayed with people wasn’t only what happened to her… it was what she chose afterwards: messages of humanity, compassion, and hope instead of hate. That takes a different kind of strength. And was one of my greatest interviews of 2016.
2. Obakeng Seutane saved a woman’s life… and restored faith in South Africa.
Nicole Morgan believed she was going to die. Then Obakeng ran toward the chaos (not away from it), dispersed the crowd, and helped her in the moment she needed it most. It was the kind of story that made people comment the same thing over and over again: there are still good people here.
1. Allan Gray gave away his entire controlling stake to charity.
And then there was this. A story that genuinely stopped people mid-scroll. Various news outlets reported that Allan Gray and his family had donated their entire controlling stake in the investment company and its offshore partner Orbis to charity, with dividends going to philanthropic causes and the family retaining no remaining economic interest.
It wasn’t a small donation or a PR campaign… it was legacy-level generosity. Giving that will carry forward long after a trend disappears.
It’s “that” quote in action, that I always mention… and add to.
When you read these 10 stories now, you realise something. Or at least I did. They weren’t viral because they were “nice”. They were viral because people needed proof… proof that there was still goodness here, still heart here and still something worth holding onto when everything else felt loud.
And that’s what makes looking back at 2016 so interesting… it wasn’t a simpler time. It was just a different kind of complicated.
Ja, it was the era of Instagram foodie pics and Facebook check-ins at places nobody needed to know you were at. It was also a time of blurry photos, big opinions, bigger personalities and a social media world that felt more playful than pressurised. But while we were posting and laughing and living, real life was still happening in the background. With no filters.
That’s why this whole “things were better back then” conversation never really fits. It depends who you were. Where you were. What you were carrying. 10 years ago, someone was living their best year… while someone else was simply trying to survive theirs. Time doesn’t treat everyone the same and memory definitely doesn’t either.
But here’s what I do know.
Looking back isn’t about going back. It’s about perspective. It’s about seeing how far we’ve come… not only as a country but as people. It reminds us of the moments that shaped us, the chapters that tested us, the good things that were happening even when the headlines were heavy and the strength we didn’t realise we had until life forced it out of us.
I love this trend (of looking back to 10 years ago) but I don’t think it’s about missing 2016… it’s about appreciating what it made of us.
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