That Was This Year

I want a girl with external gills and long, thin digits.

It’s year in review season: British magazine The Fence asked a selection of what I assume must be famous people over there what the funniest thing they saw this year was (“It’s days like these I curse the Chinese for inventing gunpowder,”) and Rolling Stone recapped the top twenty one memes you won’t believe happened this year, somehow. This led me to the full “Planet of the Bass” video which dropped while I was on summer break so if you you want parties to be making, have some noise:

That was this year! Barely four months ago. Am I so out of touch? No, it’s time that is wrong. The Racket’s Jonathan Katz recapped the Top Zero Ivy League Genocide Threats of 2023, and Variety’s Todd Spangler reports that the most Googled actor this year was Jeremy Runover.1 

But the main thing that happened this year was Elon Musk murdered Twitter, which is now limping along with its new Mountain Dew ass name on eight dollar a month donations from the anti-woke and whatever it can collect for semen theft ads. Today The Verge released a package of stories which amount to a eulogy for the hellsite that was, and let’s be honest, big editorial packages are usually mostly filler but this one is all killer, with Zoë Schiffer remembering what Twitter wanted to be at its best, Nilay looking at the way Twitter concentrated everyone in media and politics on one website and then drove them all insane, an archive of so many of the all-time greatest Tweets that you can easily waste an entire workday just scrolling through them (and you should), and a masterpiece from Sarah Jeong about her 2018 Twitter-fueled cancellation and subsequent “case of PTSD that is deeply embarrassing to explain.” Jeong’s story includes an anecdote about Andrew Sullivan that requires more telling than I can easily blockquote here but is so delightful on its own that it would more than justify the whole piece. Also here’s a dancing Joyce Carol Oates.

Turnip Puff posted “the Wikipedia entry for axolotls reads like a Cake song” with a text screenshot reading “Their heads are wide and their eyes are lidless. Their limbs are underdeveloped and possess long, thin digits.”

Over a half-dozen fake Goodreads accounts review bombed upcoming authors and books with similar themes, while also giving 5 stars to someone in their cohort. When confronted with this information, fellow debut author Cait Corrain claimed it was a friend taking action on their behalf, which left many unconvinced, and then privated most of their social media.

While this all may seem like an obvious case of an insecure author giving low scores to their competition and boosting their own book and then creating an elaborate fake text conversation with an imaginary friend who they claim actually posted the reviews without their knowledge or blessing, it turns out that’s exactly what it was. Today Corrain posted a statement explaining that they did all of this while suffering from a very particular type of “psychological breakdown,” which less charitable commenters are describing as a “the meds made me racist” defense. People aren’t buying it.

A tweet exchange: NiskaMarie posted “What prescription made you racist specifically?” and darkness+sound replied “That kkklonopin”

Corrain has now been dropped by their agent, their U.S. publisher, their U.K. publisher, and the Reylos. In conclusion, this has been: Books.

IKEA Turkey-Sized Meatball. The B-52s “Chop Suey.” “I made a majestic (reverse) centaur:” “You’re gonna have to look at this double-cheeked monstrosity for some time.”

Today’s Song: Cake, “Sheep Go To Heaven”

Can you believe that was this year? Can you believe anything was this year? Can you believe in years? Can you believe the unstoppable marching of time that is slowly guiding us all toward an inevitable death? Is time real? Subscribe now, to whatever extent “now” is a meaningful concept for you personally.

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