A Year in Review

It is a universal truth worth acknowledging at the turn of a Gregorian year that to recapitulate the events of the previous 365 days is an activity about as commonplace as dental work. But through its never feeling new almost always emerges a sense that it’s never old, either.

Call this an important step in a program dedicated to moving forth with hatches buried and loose ends tied or simply a hedonistic look at the acute photo album that is life-as-told-by-the-past-year.

Either way, as Dickens so famously put it, purportedly to summate the end of every year: it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Here’s a synopsis of 2014 written in superlatives.

Best Accessory of the Year: The sock. And why? Because they were worn under everything from sandals and slides to sneakers and boots and even through the abandonment of shoes at large. Some had cats on them, others were camp-y, some were fuzzy and a great deal were lost in the abyss that is a laundry machine. If we had to predict a forthcoming it-accessory, the bobby pin has a sustainable chance.

Most Annoying Language Affectation: The singularization of popularly plural nouns (see item 1). Socks, pants and lips have historically come in pairs, but in 2014, perhaps at the fault of fashion editors country-wide, such articles were divorced from their twins and highlighted using the prefix, “the” to create a new genus of pretentious speak, calling to action the sock, the pant, and the bold red lip, and leaving behind their beloved siblings.

Best Clothing Item: The foreskin of the garment district, or in other words: turtlenecks — sorry, since we’re still in 2014, so that’s actually “the turtleneck.” They were worn under button downs, sweaters, v-necks, t-shirts, favored predominately by such pioneering designers at Nicolas Ghesquiere and Phoebe Philo, and harmed absolutely zero livestock through their rise to fame.

Coolest Hairy Body Part: Eyebrows. Call this the work of one Cara Delevingne or simply a resuscitation that takes into account the forehead of Brooke Shields but in 2014, threading and waxing took a backseat to allowing facial caterpillars to crawl as they’re wont to.

Most Narcissist Pinky Finger: Jay Z’s. Hear me out on this one — the man is always holding his microphone ahead of his mouth and swinging his opposite shoulder from side to side, while his pinky finger, positioned hierarchically above the rest of his fingers sways side to side. Do also bear in mind a condition that existed previous to 2014: HOVA. (Addendum: Mr. Z always gets an award for being the most selfless proprietor of an appendage.)

True Internet Breaker: Serial. Kim’s ass was close but as far as 2014 could have told, there was no murder mystery tethered to those supple mountains.

Style of The Year: Normcore, which may or may not elicit a normsnore right now but after New York Magazine‘s The Cut coined the term, it usurped the fortuitous thrones of kale and Birkenstocks as most credible viral sensation to bourgeon without the aid of a de facto publicist.

Shoe of The Year: Clogs. Well, maybe not technically yet but as far as the Man Repeller Crystal Ball is concerned (which is a hefty distance, make no mistake), they will be. You’ll see.

Most Frustrating Way to Garner Viral Success: Click bait captions (as in, “you’ll never guess who said this indiscriminate thing to this remote person”) that worked every time but never, ever satisfied reader expectations. Out of darkness, though, always emerges light, and click bait captions and content produced for the sole purpose of virality spawned the birth of majestic parody website, Clickhole.

Best Comeback of 2014: Tumblr — because the publishing service is responsible for the emergence of memes and those memes can amount for the success of such prolific Instagram accounts as The Fat Jewish, Official Sean Penn and Fuck Jerry.

Speaking of Instagram, The Most Delightful Downfall of The Year was the one propelled by Instagram’s deleting spam accounts and causing a stalk market plummet that left several Wolfs of Instagram naked and with single digit followings.

Biggest Device of The Year: The iPhone 95, which still seems to be masquerading itself as an iPhone 6+ and requires the aid of a baby bjorn to be taken around.

It Animal: “All of the” animals, which also touches upon a huge frustration imbued with another form of inflection popularized by social media-savvy Americans-and-beyond in 2014. What is meant by “all of the x?” Why not just “all”? If I had to guess, a foreign exchange student (or my mom) came here, said something, and in a series of subsequent events that are vaguely fuzzy, this “something” was recorded and went viral as recorded comments are wont to. Now we speak as though English is our second language.

Finally, The Occupation of The Year had nothing at all to do with Wall Street or the various pursuits of justice that followed, rather, it was a vocation defined by the suffix, “enthusiast.” Indeed, in 2014, it seems as though half the population quit their day jobs to pursue entrepreneurial efforts which have heretofore been identified primarily via various social media bios as such jobs as “pancake enthusiast,” “hand written notes enthusiast,” “box cutter enthusiast,” and so forth. God bless the American economy.