The past decade has been a whirlwind of scandals. From 2010 to the present day, each year brought more drama than the next. Especially with the emergence of “woke” culture and “cancellation” culture, there was no escaping a good scandal. Though there are several great options to choose from, here are the top five scandals of the decade:
Fyre Festival (2017)
This festival is perhaps the biggest failure in the music festival industry. The festival was planned on an island in the Bahamas and was advertised with some really famous models, like Hailey Bieber, Bella Hadid and Emily Ratajkowski as one of the greatest festivals of all time. However, the plans were constantly changed, the funds kept running out, and when people got there it was so overbooked that they had nowhere to stay and no means to get home. It was so huge, in fact, that Netflix and Hulu both made documentaries about the tragic festival. After the documentaries came out, people wouldn’t stop talking about the chaos that was the Fyre Festival.
Reemergence of Trump’s Access Hollywood tape (2016)
If you didn’t hear about Trump’s Access Hollywood tape, then you’ve been living under a rock. Especially now that he’s the president, it was a huge point of contention during his campaign. In 2016, during the heat of the presidential election, The Washington Post published a video of Donald Trump and Billy Bush in a bus on their way to film an episode of Access Hollywood. The two men had a conversation about women, and Trump started talking about how he tried to seduce a married woman, and indicated he might start kissing a woman he and Bush were about to see. He said “I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything… Grab them by the p---y. You can do anything.”
Needless to say, the comment was taken as a permissive remark about sexual assault, and the world exploded. Two days before the second presidential debate between Trump and Hillary Clinton, Trump issued a statement apologizing for the video, but finished his “apology” by saying that Bill Clinton had said far worse things to him on the golf course. In a time when the fight against sexual assault is so relevant, this comment was a huge hit for Trump’s integrity and persona.
Facebook - Cambridge Analytica (2018)
This scandal was one that affected a great majority of the world. In 2018, it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica (CA), a British political consulting firm, had been harvesting personal data of millions of peoples’ Facebook profiles without their consent. CA began to use the data for political advertising purposes. The public was outraged, and more than $100 billion was taken away from Facebook’s market capitalization in just a matter of days. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, testified in front of the United States Congress, but in the end Facebook was fined $5 billion and the investigation ended. It was a wild ride for people involved and for those watching it all unfold, and will likely not be forgotten for quite some time.
Harvey Weinstein (2017)
Though there have been plenty of sexual assault and rape allegations against several big name figures in the entertainment industry, Harvey Weinstein’s was arguably the biggest. The allegations against Weinstein began with a New York Times article in 2017 detailing decades of sexual assault allegations. Rose McGowan and Ashley Judd were among the first to come forward, but soon the allegations spread and turned from sexual assault to rape allegations. Weinstein’s allegations were actually at the forefront of the #MeToo movement, and though he has faced several consequences for his actions, he is nowhere near done paying the price for his actions.
Lori Loughlin college admission scandal (2019)
Lori Loughlin, better known for her role as Aunt Becky on Full House, was recently caught in a scandal regarding her daughter’s college admission. After an investigation, it was discovered that Loughlin had paid a college prep organization to take the SAT/ACT entrance exams for her daughter, or to correct the answers. Felicity Huffman, known for her role in Desperate Housewives, was also involved in the scandal, doing the same thing Loughlin did with her daughter. Huffman pled guilty, but Loughlin pled not guilty, and was arrested. She served for 11 days, and is currently facing more charges.
