Fanboys Anonymous

Every year, TorrentFreak takes all of the statistics from the past 12 months and compiles a list of the top 10 most pirated films and television shows downloaded through various sources from a worldwide perspective.

Here are the top ten for 2016:


From my perspective, this makes quite a bit of sense. I've actually never heard of The Grand Tour before, so I might be living under a rock when it comes to that, but outside of that being on the list along with Vikings and Suits, nothing else surprises me.

With Suits, I just didn't think it had enough of a following. I would have thought Mr. Robot would take that spot instead for sure, so I'm shocked that's not in the top 10. Vikings is something I underestimated the popularity of, too.

But in general, comic book material is always a target for this type of activity as the fans of those genres are typically more savvy to the ability to torrent things in general. You're not going to find mid-40s housewives scouring The Pirate Bay for General Hospital episodes as much as you're going to see those CW shows on this list.

I'm a huge fan of Lucifer as well as The Flash (and admittedly The Big Bang Theory is still something I enjoy, despite my enthusiasm for it decreasing year by year) so I don't know how to feel about them being on this list. That means they're popular, but it also means a lot of people aren't watching them in means that actually matter to the networks. This could hurt them quite a bit. Perhaps if less people torrented stuff like Limitless, it wouldn't have been cancelled.

Westworld is undoubtedly my favorite new show of the year and with the amount of buzz it got, I fully expected it to make this list. Seeing as how the only two above it are the two shows which have been around longer and amassed an even bigger following over those years, it makes perfect sense.