Look, even without COVID, 2020 was going to be garbage. It was an election year, for fuck’s sake, so a glut of unhinged political punditry was destined to clog up our social media feeds and needle our glazed eyeballs. In keeping with tradition, it all turned out to be even worse than we could have ever imagined, which was bad for us but good for this list of the absolute dirt-worst shit on the internet in 2020.
Ah, but it wasn’t all politics this year. As we experienced our loved ones on the very same screens where we work, post, and scroll, our shared despair resulted in an almost perverse sense of comfort in the dregs of online. Dunking on the rich, callous, and attention-hungry became a group activity, a way to pass the time that wasn’t just counting down the days until your unemployment benefits expire. And it’s the rich and oblivious that mostly make up this list, an indication of just how intensely issues of class flared up in 2020. (We also have a list of the best things on the internet this year, if you’d rather focus on the positive.)
Enjoy, and remember: This is what we get for never logging off.
10. The celebs are at it again
The celebrities could not—and would not—allow a global pandemic, international protests for Black lives, and a historic U.S. election to interfere with their eternal quest to keep their names and faces at the forefront of our minds. Their desire for our continued worship took many absurd forms this year, including, most infamously, a cover of John Lennon’s “Imagine” shot and released in the early days of quarantine. In it, celebrities like Gal Gadot, Will Ferrell, and Amy Adams give a kind of trash budget Live Aid performance from the comfort of their mansions, singing us a lullaby urging us to… actually, we still haven’t figured out what we were supposed to take from the video. Despite the backlash to the tone-deaf video’s release—and the many good jokes made at its expense—the celebs refused to learn their lesson. They would go on to release shit nobody needed like smooth-brained coronavirus commentary, somber (and hashtagged!) disavowals of racism, and nude PSAs on following voting instructions. Several of the stars involved in the “Imagine” video have since tried to justify their decision-making process, but it’s too late. Let 2020 serve as a lesson that there are times when even our most famous celebrities should heed oft-repeated social media advice and, sensing that we all have other stuff to deal with, just log the fuck off. [Reid McCarter]
9. Cakes that don’t look like cakes
We hereby decree that cakes are no longer allowed to look like anything but cake. 2020’s worst culinary trend began back in January, when the Chicago Med cast commemorated their 100th episode by cannibalizing a cake fashioned to look like a corpse. A month later, a viral video from @the_bakeking horrified us with cakes that looked like spaghetti, Coke bottles, and human arms, among other objects. And then, just when you thought this unasked-for barrage of grotesque, deceitful confectionary was over, Tasty released a monstrous compilation of trompe l’oeil cakes—Crocs, toilet paper, potted plants—set to inappropriately peppy stock music. The artistry of the cakes is notable, but the cognitive dissonance is unwelcome, especially when it causes us to stare into the sky and ask the dispassionate stars: Are we all cake? [Hannah Hightman]
8. Mike Bloomberg wants to be a meme
Between November 2019 and March 2020, former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg spent nearly a billion dollars on a pathetic campaign that got him a whopping 59 delegates. That’s plenty embarrassing in itself, but his campaign’s comically inept attempts to turn him into a meme were somehow worse. With serial plagiarizers/Fyre Fest knuckleheads Fuck Jerry leading the charge, the campaign slapped Bloomberg’s face on a meatball and funneled money into popular Instagram accounts in an effort to “build a self-aware ironic character” around the multi-billionaire stop and frisk advocate. But money can’t buy online savvy, and the campaign’s cringey social media posts, including one in which they called Bernie Sanders gay, were routinely (and rightly) ratioed by the right and left alike. All the online piling culminated during a February debate in which Elizabeth Warren brutally roasted Bloomberg over his history of sexism. He became a meme, alright, just not the kind he’d intended. [Randall Colburn]
7. Tom Cruise wants you to see Tenet in a theater
Tom Cruise is willing to devote his boundless, advanced OT energies toward a few noble causes: The advancement of his abusive spaceman cult beliefs, the vicarious enjoyment we get from watching a multi-millionaire nearly die, and, of course, the agnostic pleasures of watching films in a theater. “Big movie. Big screen. Loved it,” he wrote alongside a bizarre little film documenting himself—in the midst of a pandemic—heading to a theater to watch Tenet. In the time since he seemingly advocated for extending a public health crisis by watching a Christopher Nolan movie a few months before its home release, COVID-19 has only worsened. “Great to be back in a movie theater everybody,” he says to his fellow moviegoers at the end of the clip, suggesting that the pandemic nightmare was behind us. Back in August. Cruise, who’s since made quite a show of his reverence for COVID-19 protocols, has been audited so extensively that he’s unable to get sick, but the rest of us need to exercise more caution, lest we leave behind obituaries citing our cause of death as: “Big movie. Big screen.” [Reid McCarter]
6. Herman Cain tweets from beyond the grave
Whether or not you subscribe to the idea that one should not speak ill of the dead—and, uh, we don’t, assuming the dead were giant fucking assholes—surely we can all come together to speak ill of still-dead Herman Cain’s still-active Twitter accounts. It’s not like Cain, who died of COVID-19 on July 30, was a master of social media prior to his death. Remember when he was tweeting stills from Twin Peaks: The Return for no apparent reason? Good times. But Cain, who, again, was felled by the coronavirus, didn’t stop being bad at social media from the afterlife. Granted, the since-rebranded “Cain Gang” account was eventually revealed to be “supervised by his daughter team and family [sic]”, but it’s still pretty repellant to use a dead man’s Twitter account to attempt to dunk on Joe Biden (this time without the Twin Peaks references). But the ghoulish absurdity reached its peak when Cain, still dead from the still-happening pandemic, tweeted about how the libs have totally exaggerated the impact of the disease that killed him. It is objectively, gruesomely, pitch-darkly hilarious, but also nightmarish in a more straightforward, wow this isn’t all that funny kind of way. It wasn’t the only recent instance of a tweet hitting in a way it shouldn’t, but it was the most ridiculous, which makes it a perfect encapsulation of this flaming hot turd of a year. Save it for the group text next time, Herman Cain’s Ghost. [Allison Shoemaker]
5. The Dickcourse
In October, famed writer Jeffrey Toobin was fired by The New Yorker after pulling out his dick on a Zoom call with colleagues and making kissy-faces at the camera. He thought he was off-camera, but that doesn’t excuse him from, you know, jerking off during a work meeting. It seems like a pretty cut-and-dried sort of thing: Don’t jerk off during work meetings, virtual or otherwise, or you’ll get fired. That, however, didn’t stop our best and brightest from whining about “cancel culture” and penning galaxy-brained op-eds about how Toobin’s firing is due not to him jerking off in front of his colleagues but to us for “feeling weird and guilty” about masturbation. In a year of horrible discourse, the dickcourse was the worst, if for no other reason than it forcing us to imagine what Jeffrey Toobin’s dick looks like. [Randall Colburn]
4. Turning Democrats into the Avengers
When somebody as cartoonishly corrupt as Donald Trump occupies the White House, it makes sense that people would want to celebrate anyone who stands against him, from slack-jawed grifters to warmongering scumbags. The problem with this kind of thinking is that we begin to see politicians, who are fallible and hyper-aware of their public perception, as heroes instead of public servants who need to be held accountable. So while, yes, we should absolutely campaign and advocate for the political figures whose policies we support, we should also run like hell from anything that tries to equate Mayor fuckin’ Pete with Spider-Man. Stephen Colbert was the first to reimagine the Avengers as contemporary Democrats, but in the days following the election a new video emerged that elaborates upon this fantasy by bafflingly throwing Sean Connery and a smoking Hunter Biden into the mix. Even crazier? It was made in earnest. We enjoy the Marvel movies, too, but idolizing policy makers is just another means of giving them too much power. [Randall Colburn]
3. J.K. Rowling casts “Transphobius Maxima”
In a year that included what we’ll briefly summarize as “a lot of really bad, extremely serious shit,” a woman with a massive platform—incalculably huge, really—decided the time was ripe to air out her transphobic bullshit, again, and again, and again. Often draping feminist language over her bigoted views like a scarf over a really transphobic lamp, she simply would not shut up, going so far as to return a human rights award when the organization rightly called her out. It drove major fan sites to stop devoting coverage to Rowling, and forced quite a few cast members from the Harry Potter film franchise to denounce her many comments, each presumably wishing she’d just delete her account and fuck off back to her castle. That group includes Daniel Radcliffe, whose statement—released through The Trevor Project—is compassionate, frank, and succinct. Rowling’s screeds, on the other hand, have been incoherent lies delivered with all the nuance and empathy of the people who yelled “SNAPE KILLS DUMBLEDORE” to readers waiting in line to buy Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince. But at least one great thing emerged from all of this when the denizens of the internet decided collectively that the person who created the Potter series is actually Britney Jean Spears, writing under a pen name. Remember, when the time comes to choose between what is right and what is easy, choose what’s right, and then give credit to Britney. She deserves a win. [Allison Shoemaker]
2. Having to look at Rudy Giuliani
As the Titanic sank, the story goes, the ship’s band played on while they awaited their death in the icy waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Former New York City mayor and Trump legal gremlin Rudy Giuliani has updated this tale for 2020, entertaining the world with his dipshit antics as the presidency he supported slowly comes to an ignoble end. Giuliani’s been busy the last few months, publicly humiliating himself by doing everything from trying to take his dick out in front of a woman he thought was a journalist, putting together an “election fraud” hotline quickly overrun by pranksters, hosting a press conference in the parking lot of the Four Seasons (Total Landscaping), sweating out oily rivulets of shoe polish hair die while quoting from My Cousin Vinny, and trotting out a court witness who slurred her testimony like an anthropomorphic version of gray wine teeth. In the time between writing and publication, we can only imagine that Giuliani will have stepped on even more rakes, cramming in ever more ridiculous last-minute entries to his awful year in an apparent attempt to make us somehow feel bad for the slimeball on the basis of the sheer volume of his fuck-ups. [Reid McCarter]
1. Coronavirus song parodies
They were everywhere in the first weeks of the pandemic and, nine months later, they’re somehow still everywhere. We even covered a few, foolish in our thought that this was simply a short-lived novelty. But, with hundreds of thousands dead and millions afflicted with a virus we still know little about, the peppy song parodies continue to roll in. We blame not the creators of the songs, which are harmless, but the specific brand of brain-melt spawned by nearly a year’s worth of cabin fever and boredom. Of the innumerable ways to reckon with a global crisis, this is truly one of the strangest. And there are so many.
The chief chronicler of this new and depressing art form is Alexander Smith, the Louisville songwriter behind Lydia Burrell and Howell Dawdy. Since March, he’s sought out and excerpted the most relevant sections in a few sprawling Twitter threads. Just dozens and dozens of corona-themed parodies, from “Never Gonna Give You Up” to “Desperado” to the Fresh Prince theme song, are piled one on top of the other, each urging you to wash your hands and wear a mask and stay inside. 2020 will forever be remembered as a year of absolute madness—Trump derangement, anti-maskers, murder hornets, Chewbacca shoes, the Pope liking a photo of an ass on Instagram—but this thread chronicles something altogether more sad: How desperate we were to laugh.
Smith chatted with us over email about his journey with COVID parodies, the form’s obsession with toilet paper, and the biggest stinker of the bunch.
The A.V. Club: How did these parodies initially begin coming on your radar?
Alexander Smith: I’ve always been fascinated by homemade YouTube parody songs. You get all kinds of people doing them, it’s a form of comedy everyone thinks they can do, so people who wouldn’t be comfortable doing standup or making a comedy short will make one. So it’s a fun thing to search on there.
AVC: What kept you coming back for more?
AS: Generally I like to compile song parodies in themed threads because it sort of changes what they are. You aren’t supposed to watch hundreds of these. You’re supposed to watch the one your cousin did and go “Ah, that’s cute” and carry on with your day. Seeing a hundred of them in a row is like going to Burning Man or something, I would guess. Never been to Burning Man.
As for why I keep coming back to coronavirus parodies: I can’t believe we’re still doing this shit. It’s still happening. People are now singing Christmas carols about how you have to wear a mask and wash your hands. The gulf between the seriousness of this tragedy and the silliness of these videos is now just inconceivably vast. I found a bunch of Christmas COVID parodies the other day and one has this guy singing “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” but he sings “Walking around with COVID-19 at your local grocery shop’ and he’s singing in this really sweet voice and… I don’t know. I’m addicted to watching these things and I love them but that could actually be the most fucked up thing I’ve ever seen.
AVC: Which ones are the absolute dirt worst?
I’ll link to the one that I think is the worst which is this couple doing a parody of “Eye Of The Tiger.” It’s a real ride. It starts with them working out for a very long time, then they sing a little bit about how it sucks to go to the grocery store, and then the chorus is about how a disease rose “up from the streets of China” but Jesus will save us.
Aside from that one it’s sort of hard to decide which ones are “bad” and which are “good.” It’s an art form that is universally bad but I love it. You could say low-effort ones are worse on some level but I like them more. There’s something I admire about someone just doing a single take in the bathroom while reading their lyrics off an iPad—as opposed to forcing all your neighbors to participate in some shit you make with a crane and a Steadicam.
AVC: Are there any trends you noticed after watching so many?
AS: Yeah, there’s lots of trends, because in parody songs you have to say all of the keywords related to a particular topic. But the weirdest trend in COVID parodies, hands down, is the toilet paper thing. Toilet paper has nothing to do with the disease but it ran out back in March everywhere so it has to be mentioned in every corona parody song. And even when it isn’t mentioned people use it as a prop. There’s videos where people wrap themselves and their families in toilet paper and then don’t even mention it in the song. They’re just choosing to wear toilet paper. Or they’ll have a line about how there’s no toilet paper and for a visual gag they’ll be sitting on a throne of toilet paper. It ends up looking like the reason there’s no toilet paper is because everyone is hoarding it for props in their videos.
250 Comments
The description in the interview did not remotely prepare me for that “Eye of the Tiger” video.
I managed to go the entire year without watching a single coronavirus parody video. Nor did I watch the much-maligned “Imagine” video. And I survived my own 16-day bout with covid with no lingering effects.Hate to brag, but it sounds like I’m having a much better year than many.
You missed out on a really boring video of 30 rich people singing a bad song in 9 different key signatures.
I lived through “We Are the World.” I’m good!
So many of us lived through “We Are the World”, LaurenceQ.::Claps you on the shoulder in solidarity::
Still, it proved my theory that I will watch Gal Gadot in literally anything.
I suppose there are worse personality defects.
I’m not even a fan of John Lennon covering “Imagine”. There are plenty of wonderful songs by Beatles or by The Beatles advocating peace, love and similar topics without being sugarcoated and bland like “Imagine”.
I don’t know, especially for the time, suggesting that people imagine that there no religions was really powerful. Yes, now it is kind of “whatever?”, but it wasn’t that long ago that publicly admitting to atheism in America/Western Europe would destroy your career.
I can respect it for that reason. I dunno, maybe if it was a Harrison song I’d be more predisposed to liking it. Just a personal preference though.
Or even your life in certain parts of the country!
My parents freaked out when they first heard “Imagine” coming out of the radio, and as Christian Conservatives go they…weren’t as horrible as most? At least they’d evolved far enough to accept that people with darker skin than ours were just as human as we are, and should be treated with as much respect….
John Lennon could write the hell out of a melody, but it feels like he wanted his solo songs to rhyme and/or keep time, and that’s about it. “Crippled Inside” is clever, and “Working-Class Hero” is so blunt it loops around and gets subtle again. But “Imagine” and especially that Christmas song he wrote are beautiful, elegant melodies with… words in front of them.
Since we just had the 40th anniversary of his death, there were a lot of fraught pieces breathlessly saying things like “just think of what he could’ve done had he not been taken so soon?!?!”And I’m here thinking… probably more of the same? Which was frankly pretty (and my god do I hate to use this word) overrated most of the time?I mean, I’m a Beatles stan who bristles anytime someone calls them overrated, but Lennon as a solo artist? I do enjoy some of his songs, no question, but eh.
Scott Bakula did the best cover of “Imagine” in season 3 of Quantum Leap, ‘The Leap Home: Part 1′
YESSSSSS. Absolutely gorgeous cover. Good Lord, that man is talented. And the face of the actress playing his sister! Just a perfect scene.
It makes me cry everytime.
What really annoys me about “Imagine” is that American conservatives — well, stupid American conservatives — seem to think that it’s a secret key to what American lefties really want: the no borders and no possessions thing, I guess. The song is boring and vapid, a pop song is not a party platform, and Lennon himself was a Brit. I am so tired of it. And I’d like to know why nobody remembers that McCartney up and told Maoists to get stuffed in “Revolution,” which really is a terrific tune.
I love “Revolution”!To be honest, I think some of the pap from “Imagine” comes from Phil Spector. He was the one who turned “The Long And Winding Road” from sentimental to sap with the elevator-musicesque string music. George Martin was so much better with the Beatles than Spector.
His solo stuff is highly overrated.
Imagine would have been an excellent song if John had written it in 1967 and had Ringo sing it. Ringo excelled at making dipshit lyrics personable and accessible.
I love “Yellow Submarine” and “Octopus’ Garden” and am not ashamed to say so.
Octopus’s Garden is great.
I’m in the same boat and yeah, at least I can be happy about that.
Great!
I used that time watching WAP parody videos. The one with Full-time Dad and “chores in the house” is my favorite.
I’m glad you enjoyed it and I don’t want to sound like a snob, but the very notion of “parody” music videos online makes my skin crawl.
If you watched Forrest Gump and saw that awful digital lip-manipulation of Lennon on the Dick Cavett show, you’ve seen more of the song “Imagine” than any human ought to be subjected to. I’m a big Beatles fan but jeezus, you might as well have had the Brady kids singing it in between their hits “Time to Change” and “Keep On Movin’”.
Remember when everyone thought those FX in “Gump” were “amazing!” and “Groundbreaking!”To me, they always looked at best maybe 3% better than Conan O’Brien’s “Clutch Cargo” segments.I can’t imagine any aspect of that Boomer paean movie has aged well. But I’m in no hurry to find out.
I’m right there with you, except for the bout with the virus. So I had a better year than you. (Very glad you’re okay, though.)
THANKS! Happy New Year! 🙂
Happy New Year! (I’ve also been telling everybody after stating that sentiment- Do your best!)
JK Rowling, aka The Painted Dementor, aka That Fucking Witch is a total and utter cunt. When she’s not casting about lazy stereotypes in her books (do not get me started on the goblin bankers or how shittily Cho Chang was treated) she was using her fucking platform to demonise and denigrate an already marginalised group of people. “Oh, some of my best friends are gay!” she trills, trotting off a list of names of ‘famous gay people she knows’ – so? So fucking what, Karenus Maximus? You’re not an ally to the gays and lesbians, no matter how much you think you are. I’m not even going to touch the Robert Galbraith controversy. Here’s hoping she gets a massive dose of reality in 2021.
Nothing Rowlings has said is controversial. Her point, if you’ve ever actually tried to learn it, is that male-bodied people who identify as women do not belong in women’s prisons or women’s sports etc. or other places where it infringes on women’s sex-based rights. Agree or disagree you have to understand this is actually a very mainstream opinion.
kill yourself
You apparently don’t understand what the word “controversial” means. There is a controversy regarding her statements, therefore her statements are controversial. Do you think “controversial” means “unreasonable” or “uncommon”?
nah, you’re just an asshole
“nah you’re just an asshole” is a shitty, hateful, and dismissive opinion. You’re obviously a bad faith interlocuter who has zero interest in having a conversation that challenges your precious ideology.
The misogyny dripping from this post is unreal. I can smell your fedora from here.
dude, it’s not misogynistic to attack someone for having shitty and hateful opinions, no matter what gender they are. you’re just being dismissive because you have nothing to say to the actual substance of the comment
She’s proud of her own status as a woman and wants women to be recognised for who they are. This is a bad thing?It seems you have a classic case of accusing somebody of being something-ist, with no hope of their having a reasonable justification that you won’t find pathetic or condemnable in some way. Just as she has made her bed, so too have you and you won’t change your mind about it.
I was very happy to read this list in the form of a list rather than slides.
That IS nice, isn’t it? I’m really sick of the slideshows, which make commenting (at least on the Mozilla browser) all but impossible.
Somebody else hipped me to the fact that if you shrink your browser window to take up half your screen the site seems to switch to Mobile-view and you get the whole list and comments on one scrolling page.
Thanks for the heads-up, TaumpyTearrs!
No problem. I was completely skipping ALL the slideshow articles until someone told me that because I hate the format so much.
I quite enjoyed this version of the electoral college vote tallying and how it represented the numbers reported appearing to be seesawing for a bit there.Different to the video above I hasten to add.
I like the cakes that do not look like cakes.
This article made me remember that my sister’s family made a coronavirus parody song of “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” but wisely only directly shared it with family instead of posting it to the Internet.
The Imagine video was the funniest thing on the internet this year. My favorite part is that 75% of them can’t sing. The production value is terrible. My son is 8 years old and he could have equalized the sound better. I don’t know who half the people are. A+
The denialism. Running into people who would insist that covid was overblown because, believe it or not, there are other diseases that kill a lot of people too. Or that hurting the economy is worse than the disease. Or that the vaccine is going to be worse than the disease.
You can blame our Great Orange Leader for exacerbating this willful ignorant and stupidity from top of the office and have almost everyone in GOP follow suits. Far too many people across all political and racial spectrums have fell victims, which underscore how much respect for science, common senses, and even basic fucking decency are sorely missed in our highest offices.Just a bit under a month to go before we can kick Great Orange Leader’s out of the White House.
I very much enjoyed seeing so many of my right wing friends repeat each of those arguments verbatim and simultaneously call anyone who listened to scientists sheep for not “doing their own research.”
simultaneously call anyone who listened to scientists sheep for not “doing their own research.”
“Oh, my own research? Sure, just give me five years to get a PhD in molecular biology and I’ll get right on doing my own research.”I haven’t had the chance to retort that way to someone, but perhaps someday I will (and will remember it in the moment instead of an hour later).
It’s gonna be an hour later, it always is. 😉
I have gotten to do it, multiple times, with other engineers. It’s less satisfying than it should be, because these are people who learned the scientific method in high school and college and are still relying on Trump’s tweets for their “facts.”
“doing their own research.” If I apply the Google Idiot-to-English translator on this phrase, I get, “watched some deeply stupid YouTube videos made by genuinely insane conspiracy nuts and called it good.”Man, these idiots may be wrong about everything, but I DO have to marvel at how much stupidity they can cram into so few words!
Oh totally. My college dropout, unemployed stoner father believes he is smarter than the entire medical community, all climate scientists, economists, etc, in their areas of expertise because of Reddit, it’s maddening. Deferring to people who spend their lives working on this very complex stuff is a foreign idea them.
Should be spending their talents on the Noble Pursuit of Advertising.
That’s exactly right — regurgitating some shit from some nonsense video is free thinking, and taking issue with that is being a mainstream sheep.
Now seems like a good time to post this. https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/07/30/you-must-not-do-your-own-research-when-it-comes-to-science/?sh=4e4b0a95535eEvery time I get a text or an email from some hapless, dimwitted right-wing retarded friend of mine, I just send this article back. It’s absolutely spot-on and essentially irrefutable.Except by Q cultists and……I was gonna say “flat earthers,” but … whatever happened to those chucklefucks? You NEVER hear a peep outta those jokers anymore. Did the SpaceX phenomenon finally shut them up? Where the hell did they all go? (I know it’s folly for me to wish that they all spontaneously suffered brain aneurysms and died — especially because Drumpf got 70 million votes — but let a man dream, why don’t you?)
And the very tool they will use for their “research” will follow an algorithm to give them the results that they want, not the results they need.
No no. Its “wake up SHEEPLE” IF I HEAR IT ONE MORE TIME I SWEAR
What they actually do is reSeArcH. I sent my cousin a research guidebook after she threw that line at me on Facebook after I explained that Google searches, excuse me DuckDuckGo searches and YouTube is not research.
the “do the research people!” argument from the cultists that has flared up since the pandemic has worsened AND Dear Leader was knocked out of office really drove home to me the idea that a big motivator behind this 4 year long tantrum has been the desire of the cultists to feel like they know something you don’t, which is pathetic but I might feel a little more compassion for them if they’d stop being so fucking intellectually lazy in every other way, and also if they’d stop feebly trying to rub people’s noses in shit because they don’t follow some guy from Youtube who knows what’s really going on in the world.
If I had any friends who said that, I’d go ahead and not be friends with them anymore.
Yeah this is The Great Unsaid, Super Fucking Worst Thing On The Internet. When people make their politics a core part of their identity as a person, bad things can happen, and they can always get worse.
Yep, that’s really fucking bad, all right — as was treating “the flu” as something mild and benign when really bad strains (like the Spanish Flu of 1918, or the Bird Flu of 2013) are fatal to humans.
The denialism reached ridiculous levels when Herman Cain’s Twitter started tweeting about how coronavirus wasn’t that big of a deal, despite the fact that Cain FUCKING DIED OF CORONAVIRUS!!!!
My least favorite is “It’s a disease with a 99% survival rate”, which they say because they figure 99% is the biggest percent there is that’s not 100, right? And then also believe that we should “just let everyone get it”. So, 3.3 million dead Americans? Uh, hold on, gotta make that percentage even bigger…
Yep. Fallacy of large numbers. 0.01% of everybody, that’s basically nothing at all, right?
Yeah, for some context, only 0.8-0.9% of the country’s entire population dies of all causes combined in a year (around 2.85 million total deaths for 2019). An additional 1% would be a big deal.
The worst were the “oh, wait two weeks, right????” and “oh well everyone said 5000000 people were going to die…what happened?????” types who were so oddly smug about spending days, weeks, and months downplaying mass death and illness.
People are still downplaying it. I assume they are the same people that believe in a flat Earth.
The whole “the economy is more important than a human lives” thing sounds like an over-the-top propaganda campaign the CPSU would’ve come up with to denounce the evils of capitalism. But here we are.
the idiot’s champion – “yeah, but…”
Shoutout to Dr.Drew Pinsky!
The denialism. Running into people who would insist that covid was overblown because, believe it or not, there are other diseases that kill a lot of people tooUmm yeah denier. Lots of people are vaccinated against the flu to keep it from causing more death and suffering. DOn’t forget that we all have been making sacrifices like social distancing and wearing masks keeping the COVID numbers low.I love when they compare COVID to car crash deaths which again are controlled by seatbelt laws and speed limits. I don’t think they have used the car crash deaths are higher than covid deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, but once again they were comparing covid deaths over less than sixty days to the numbers for entire year of car accident deaths.
the one interesting but under-reported thing about the pandemic (I thought) was that of all the people in the Trump administration who contracted Covid-19 (and really, it would take less time to compile the list of people who didn’t get it), no one really spoke out afterwards saying “boy if you died from this or had to be hospitalized you must be a pussy!”, suggesting to me that it at least partially kicked their asses enough to shut them up. The thought that so many people in this awful administration suffered or feared for their lives at least for a little time as much as the immigrants they mocked and did everything in their power to dehumanize made me happy.
The actors, being so actor-y, in the B&W video, holding back tears…..was so much sillier than the Imagine video.
I refuse to believe that Democrats-as-Avengers video was in earnest. I will not accept it.
The worst was and continues to be the daily Orange vomit from the White House..
Yeah, I would gladly watch a video of celebrities cutting deceptive cakes set to a Covid-19 parody of Imagine every single day if in exchange that sack of shit was kicked off of Twitter.
Well he will be at noon on January 20th.You know he’s going to last about 2 seconds on his personal twitter account before he gets banned.
He just left the White House for Christmas. Hopefully but I doubt it he signs that Covid Relief bill and never comes back.
Yeah, how in the hell was Orange “Tiny Handed Sexual Predator” Fuckface NOT #1 on this list?
I’m here breezing through the comments and until I went back and actually read yours I thought you were complaining about my college newspaper.
there was an article in the past month or so that only showed a part of Trump’s face and I thought, as sick as I am of seeing his bloated orange foundation-caked face, if they feel compelled to show his face at the top of EVERY article that even obliquely mentions him, why not just show his ear, or his chin, or whatever until he’s gone?
Ruthkanda Forever
things like that will forever justify twitter in my eyes. even when 100 irrelevant dramamongering pissing matches happen on that site in a single day, it’s all worth it when somebody posts something so mindbogglingly stupid everyone comes together to laugh at it
Agreed! In a year of abject stupidity, that was the stupidest fucking thing I saw.
‘Incoherent lies’ – this is nonsense. The pile-on of Rowling is nuts. Her points – that ‘women’ as a defined group shouldn’t be marginalised or renamed, and that the massive increase in gender dysmorphia among young people is connected to social media echo chambers – are relevant, totally reasonable ones.There was nothing hateful or unreasonable in what she wrote. She did not deny the validity of transpeople’s experience, she did not criticise them, she did not argue for taking away their rights. The people harming trans youth are those telling young, vulnerable people that an essay like Rowling’s is a murderous attack.
I disagreed with a lot of Rowling’s points, but for the AV club, which lied repeatedly about what she actually said, to accuse her of ‘incoherent lies’ is really something else.
Well like another awful online thing presenting as “News”, ‘The Guardian’, ‘The AV Club’ is becoming a political lifestyle blog, and what could be more relevant to an entertainment site than … um, Identity Politics?
It’s like not a single AVClub writer has ever bothered to read what she wrote. People act like she’s Pat Robertson or something, meanwhile she’s raising concerns with violent male sex offenders waving the magic wand, declaring they’re women, and being put in women’s prisons. I respect legal recognition for trans rights but I also don’t think that trans people actually are, in reality, the sex they identify with which causes issues in areas (sports being the most obvious example), and this isn’t an uncommon view among liberals.
If you’re under six foot 2, don’t have a dick longer than 9 inches, earn less than 200k a year and can’t run a mile in under 15 just stop. You’re not a man. So I hope you fit all those criteria like I do otherwise; stop calling yourself a “man”.
This is like the most AVClub-ish response I could have imagined. We have separate sports categories for a reason, but let’s just throw that out the window. Sex doesn’t exist but gender identity is real, once someone says they’re a women then of course metaphysically they must actually be one for any and all purposes and we just have to ignore reality.
Why are you still mentioning sports? Only real men should talk about sports.
You talk like a petulant child and then wonder why your side is losing.
The reality is that trans women are being murdered at a higher rate than nearly any other marginalized group and hatemongers like Rowling just add fuel to that fire. But keep throwing a tantrum about sports while the bodies pile up.
Actually homicide rates are lower than for cisgender people (unless you’re black or latina but there’s other stuff happening there too). https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2017.303878?journalCode=ajph
I can kick your ass at limbo and hold my breath for 50 metres underwater. damn, when did the entry test get so steep?
People act like she’s Pat Robertson or something
Only because she is. Her “points”, as you would have them, are what Human Rights Advocates call “mere pretext” to a case of raging trans-, and if you scratch the surface homo-, phobia.Really, you may as well tell me GamerGate was about Ethics in Games Journalism rather than Rampant Ugly DudeBro misogyny.
Hey, you can pretend that when someone identifies as the other sex they are, in some mystical sense, actually the opposite sex. But they aren’t, and most people aren’t prepared to pretend its true for any and all purposes. Most people also have a line. I personally think the bathroom debate is stupid, and rooted in actual transphobia. But when it comes to people working in rape shelters, or being transferred into a vulnerable female population, or sports, I stop pretending because there’s a measurable and tangible harm.
burneraccountbutburnerlikedisposabletrash
Hey, that’s just like your opinion man. If you want to explain why its rational that male-bodied people who went through puberty should be allowed to compete against women who have a stark disadvantage, or explain why sex offenders should be allowed in women’s prisons which generally house some of society’s most vulnerable and traumatized people, then have at it. Happy to discuss. If you’re going to call people with such opinions trash then be prepared for your side to lose the debate because the concerns being raised aren’t rooted in dissemination, they actually have a nexus to authentic and tangible concerns.
burneraccountbutburnerlikestrawman
The strawman fallacy requires one to invent a fake argument the other side never made and then attack it. In this case I’m not attacking someone else’s argument, I’m making the argument, based on specific policy areas that are capable of being engaged. I also realize I’m probably arguing with a teenager or something so I’ll just peace out.
burneraccountbutburnerlikehotair
So, basically,burneraccountbutburnerlikepot, you’re saying “It’s okay to be trans — so long as you don’t have any rights! Including the right to feel safe anywhere….”You and Rowling have this bizarre notion that transpersons are like horny straight crossdressers. Why shouldn’t they be welcome in rape or battered women’s shelters, if they’re battered or raped? Why shouldn’t they be treated as a vulnerable population — far more vulnerable than Prosperous, Easily-Offended White Women like Rowling, come right down to it?As for sports? First, ask me if I care, as that’s something bullying jocks are into to worship even more bullying jocks! Second, that’s something your…sports will have to deal with on its own, isn’t it? I’m sure y’all have many many opinions on the subject, which you will foul our mutual airwaves and bandwidth with to the exclusion of all else….
“You and Rowling have this bizarre notion that transpersons are like horny straight crossdressers. Why shouldn’t they be welcome in rape or battered women’s shelters, if they’re battered or raped? Why shouldn’t they be treated as a vulnerable population — far more vulnerable than Prosperous, Easily-Offended White Women like Rowling, come right down to it?”
Jeez, and you wonder why Rowling is taking such a stand. Y’all aren’t her allies, why should she be yours?
When did I say they shouldn’t have rights? Good lord, I started to actually draft a response to you to clarify what my position actually is (as opposed to whatever nonsense you’ve blathered out above) but you don’t strike me as someone interested in good faith discussion. The sports issue is actually a serious and difficult one that people will have to figure out and your response is to drag up a bunch of personal emotional baggage you have about jocks. As I’ve said to others on here, if your response to people raising concerns is to rant and rave and get angry at “jocks” then you will lose this debate because you aren’t engaging with the issues which, as I’ve said, are real. You can be mature and listen to what people are saying and rationally refute it and possibly win, or lose by default.
I find it very hard to take anybody who defends J.K. Rowling after what she said — and how she refuses to either walk it back, or “clarify” it in a way that didn’t sound trans/homophobic. Before you shit on me because I hate wannabe jocks like you, Pal? Think about what you’re saying about Transpersons — and how stupid and bigoted it makes you sound.
violent male sex offenders waving the magic wand, declaring they’re women, and being put in women’s prisons.That has never happened in the history of things, but I guess transphobes like to create their own reality to justify their hatred because if based on actual facts, they have nothing (other than hate, obviously). You make me sick.
This actually has happened, there’s enough people in the UK to make a list. The fact that something causes discomfort to your belief system does not mean that it has never happened.
Do you think trans folk transition like Michael Scott declaring bankrupcy? It doesn’t work like that. You can’t just say “oh, I’m a woman now” and you’ll be put in a woman’s prison if you’re a violent offender with no question asked. It’s such a basic concept that I don’t believe you’re not trolling bringing this up.
Sometimes facts butt heads with what we want to be true in inconvenient ways: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8303753/Transgender-inmates-carried-seven-sex-attacks-women-jail.html
1) I don’t know that linking to the fucking Daily Mail of all rags is your best move.2) Seems like a little reading comprehension is in order. The cases discussed are about trans women prisoners, not male inmates declaring themselves trans to get one over. So the problem isn’t trans women. It’s rapists. RAPISTS rape. It’s kinda correlation ain’t causation, ya know?
lol, one might call that a distinction without a difference. So you’re right, male rapists are the issue, whether they ID after sentencing or not.
Your ignorance is the issue, really.
So jails are a difficult issue. The thing you quoted? Yeah, totally stupid. But I know people who work in a county jail and have come across trans inmates. And… it’s tough. First, there’s intake. Male inmates are searched by men and women by women. That’s for *everyone’s* sake. Yes, we should all as a society get over bodies, but we haven’t. So if a trans inmate wants to be searched by someone of their identity, that creates an awkward situation. Then there’s housing. Anyone who is gonna fuck in jail will find a way and I don’t buy that gender identity makes any difference. BUT. If a trans woman who hasn’t transitioned physiologically fucks another woman, it could result in pregnancy.I’m very much pro trans and anti-TERF but I think some topics involving trans people are treated by my fellow progressive as far too cut and dry.
Sure, but there’s a helluva distance between recognizing that complications exist and using those complications to excuse elimination. The truth is, on a policy level like you identify, pretty much no issue is clean cut; there are always complications and anomalies that disturb the neat categories our understandings are predicated upon. This is only a problem for people too impatient to wade through the details, too insecure to acknowledge they don’t have all the answers, or entirely bent by a pre-existing motivation to find sufficient complications to dismiss the whole thing.Who knows which one Rowling is. It doesn’t really matter from the outside.
That’s fair.I just know that when the complications get brought up by my jail admin people they sometimes get attacked as phobes by my progressive people. As the ref in those situations it’s frustrating. Because the jail folk get defensive (one of them has a Master’s degree in Counseling and 100% fits your “insecure at not having the answer” description) and the lefties get self-righteous.
Yeah, I’m with you there. Trans people have every right to be upset by these twists and turns, but erstwhile allies could learn to turn their vicarious moral outrage down every once in a while. It tends to create lots of heat and precious little light, and guarantees that people who have to live in the spaces where complications exist bear the brunt of pointless, misaimed villanization.
The thought has occurred to me: Maybe men don’t really want to be women now; they just don’t want to be men. We humans don’t have near the imagination that we think we do, imo.
that’s just stupid, my guy
Rowling isn’t Pat Robertson. She has way more money and a legion of nostalgia-driven fans who think they’re too enlightened to fall for hate speech just because Rowling’s particular brand of hate isn’t religious in origin*. That makes her way more dangerous than Robertson.* Although the difference between Rowling’s anti-trans rhetoric and that of people like Robertson is superficial at best.
You know, before you dig yourself any deeper into that hole you’re so determined to? Maybe take a look at this lengthy article originally in NY MAGAZINE about Rowling’s actions vs. excuses, and the underlying issues behind Feminist Transphobia?
“Before you dig a deeper hole read this disingenuous hit piece which misrepresents her the exact same way I am.” The fact that bigots and assholes find comfort in her words doesn’t mean her concerns aren’t real and valid. Sorry, but you’re not going to convince me that people whose sex (not gender) is male should compete in women’s sports, or be transferred into women’s prisons when they have a history of sexual violence against women. It might mean I live my life under the label of a bigot but so be it.
burneraccountbutburnerlikeanawfullingeringsmell
So what about women who rape women? It does actually happen, so where should THEY go? Not such a simple matter despite your simplistic take.And let’s not even get into your dumbshit sports issue. (Like for instance how the potential testosterone advantage is often negated by the medications involved in transitioning. Or how dumb it is to object to physiological advantages of sex but not DNA. Should the son of a Superbowl MVP be allowed to play high school football? Doesn’t HE have a physiological advantage?)
Okay — Bigot.
I read what she wrote, it’s fear-mongering, transphobic, bullshit. Amongst other things, she said “At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe. When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman” Which means she only considers cis-women to be women, and she repeats the sort fear-mongering transphobic bullshit about bathrooms directly feeds transphobic violence.
meanwhile she’s raising concerns with violent male sex offenders waving the magic wand, declaring they’re women, and being put in women’s prisons.????? This is not a thing.I respect legal recognition for trans rights but I also don’t think that trans people actually are, in reality, the sex they identify with which causes issues in areas (sports being the most obvious example), and this isn’t an uncommon view among liberals.d
They are “the sex they identify with,” and who cares if it causes “issues” (which are eminently solvable) in sports?
Guys, guys, guys, he’s just mad he didn’t make the “worst of” list and is trying to catch up.
It’s the end of 2020, and I stick by my original JK take: I don’t give a rat’s ass what a bargain-basement wannabe faux-Tolkien thinks about gender issues or— any other issues really.(And I don’t see how that makes me guilty of “cancel culture,” with her net worth. When I was a youngster, they just called it criticism…)
Wow what a pile of shit this thread is!
Agreed.Yeah, that endless line of sex offenders changing genders is really overwhelming our prison system, isn’t it? And all those trans athletes trying to completely rewrite the women’s sport record books? It’s like a pandemic! Oh, wait…In short, FUCK YOU Banner, Burner and Dan. (Sounds like a law firm that might congregate outside a porn shop and a landscaping business.)Your slippery slope arguments can’t work because there’s no slope to begin with. But you go ahead and keep rationalizing Rowling’s bullshit by making up problems.
kill yourself
OK, but also everything you said was wrong.
Which parts and why?
Everything typically refers to all parts. If even that much is causing you trouble, I don’t know how much explaining why is going to help you.
Here’s everything enumerated to at least facilitate your understanding of that:
‘women’ as a defined group shouldn’t be marginalised or renamed I’m not explaining all of these but this is wrong in context because it was not Rowling’s point, as Rowling had already incorrectly defined women as “people who menstruate.” the massive increase in gender dysmorphia among young people is connected to social media echo chambers relevant, totally reasonable There was nothing hateful or unreasonable in what she wrote She did not deny the validity of transpeople’s experience She did not criticise them She did not argue for taking away their rights The people harming trans youth are those telling young, vulnerable people that an essay like Rowling’s is a murderous attack. Anyway, I’d like to amend what I said because this person’s first sentence was not wrong, although it is a bit of an oversimplification:
‘Incoherent lies’ – this is nonsense.Nonsense is an okay substitute for the term ‘incoherent lies’, and both aptly describe Rowling’s screeds. ‘Nonsense’ does lose the connotation of malice involved, though, so it’s not great.
No way, social media is always good, except when non-leftists use it.
Man, you either don’t know how to read or you hit your head, because none of that matches what Rowling’s written. She’s done the classic slippery slope of “if trans people can use gendered bathrooms, anybody can-including molesters!!!” She’s made claims that there’s a notable amount of people who transition so they don’t have to come out as gay. She’s claimed that the “woman’s identity” is under threat if trans women can call themselves women. She’s absolutely hateful, she’s absolutely unreasonable, and you’re in denial if you say otherwise.
“She’s made claims that there’s a notable amount of people who transition so they don’t have to come out as gay.”That’s just baffling, the world is obviously much more accepting of gay people than trans people at this point, as proven by the fact that if Rowling was saying ignorant, hateful shit about gay people she would not have anywhere near as many people defending her. Its wrong headed on many other levels too, but just on the surface its nonsensical.
Absolutely. I really think Rowling’s issue is a boatload of generational ignorance and resistance to anything contrary to her worldview, as well as a perceived threat to her personal identity as a woman. That latter thing is insane too, considering that there are countless dynamics to the aspects of cisgendered womanhood already, that woman who weren’t assigned their gender at birth don’t really break the mold.
I can only hope she has a chance in her life to realize her ineptitude and damage she’s caused, and attempt to make repairs.
Number one, fuck off.
Number two, you’re just wrong. She’s cracked jokes, been critical af, and argued against the basic human rights of trans people. If simply saying “you’re not a woman” to a trans-women isn’t denying the validity of trans-people’s experiences, literally what is, you massive dipshit. There is nothing even acceptable about her behavior, let alone anything that makes her “right”.
Number three, fuck off.
Number four, gay people didn’t magically appear when gay rights became a thing either, you dolt. But I imagine it felt that way for a lot of stupid, unobservant, insecure straight people. Trans people have always existed. Always. What has changed is society, making people feel more free and open to be who they are. Fucking DUH.
Number five: Throw yourself into the sun.
Number six: I’m a cis woman. I’m smart and experienced enough at this point to realize I don’t define nor GET TO define what it means to be a woman. Nor does any other individual woman. It simply doesn’t work like that. God’s not real, but if they were why do you or JK Rowling think you’d get to be above God? That you know more than God does, the entity making these trans people? Making people beyond the XX or XY binary? The height of arrogance.
Number seven: Never post here or anywhere else again.
4 of your 7 points are unhinged and useless arguments. (1, 3, 5, and 7 for those counting)Your assertion that you are “smart and experienced” is self-assessed and narcissistic.While you don’t get to define what is a woman you also don’t get to define what other people define a woman.“God’s not real” is unfalsifiable and your analogy is silly and illogical.
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
Nah, she’s transphobic. Infantilizing autistic trans guys is just one of the more bullshit bits that stood out in her dumbass essay. Ya’ll terfs can just admit you hate trans people instead of pretending you’re just concerned about (rich) (white) cis women, no one’s buying it
Rex Banner“Her points – that ‘women’ as a defined group shouldn’t be marginalised or renamed”It’s rather unclear what you mean by “women”. Are you referring to the /category/ women (in which case it makes sense to claim that it’s being renamed, but doesn’t make sense to claim it’s being marginalized), or actual women (in which case claiming that they are being marginalized is a coherent claim, but claiming that they are being renamed isn’t)?“that the massive increase in gender dysmorphia among young people is connected to social media echo chambers.”What is the evidence for that?MyKinja“If you’re under six foot 2, don’t have a dick longer than 9 inches, earn less than 200k a year and can’t run a mile in under 15 just stop. You’re not a man. So I hope you fit all those criteria like I do otherwise; stop calling yourself a “man”.”It’s really quite dishonest to pretend that insisting that a word retain its traditional meaning is the same as just making up a new definition. prisencolinensinainciusol“She’s done the classic slippery slope of “if trans people can use gendered bathrooms, anybody can-including molesters!!!””That’s not a slippery slope. If all that is needed to use women’s bathrooms is to claim to identify as a woman, then indeed anyone can use women’s bathrooms. Miss Two Sense“If simply saying “you’re not a woman” to a trans-women isn’t denying the validity of trans-people’s experiences, literally what is, you massive dipshit.”How is disagreeing about the definition of a word denying the validity of people’s experiences? What do “experiences” have to do with it? What a word means is about societal convention, not about “experiences”.D.R. Darke“Why shouldn’t they be welcome in rape or battered women’s shelters, if they’re battered or raped?”You don’t see any issues with male-bodied people being in a place set aside for people who have had traumatic experiences with male-bodied people? Detective Klaus Mandela ““violent male sex offenders waving the magic wand, declaring they’re women, and being put in women’s prisons.”That has never happened in the history of things”There absolutely have been violent male-bodied sex offenders declaring they’re women.
Yeah, guys, Rowling’s words are totally harmless, that’s why they’re now routinely being quoted by far-right hate groups, religious extremists, and conservative politicians who want to turn LGBT people into second-class citizens. All without a peep of objection from Rowling. Nothing unreasonable at all, you guys. Promise.
This happened in June, Rowling never said a word of complaint about it, because she loves the LGBT community so damn much.
The piling on is not nuts, she’s a transphobic bigot and bigotry should be fought against. She has repeated bigoted bullshit about trans women and bathrooms and supported hateful transphobes like Maya Forstater. She consistently refuses to acknowledge that trans women are women and trans men or men. She prefers a “separate but equal” category that perpetuates bigotry and violence against trans people.Amongst other things, she said “At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe. When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman” Which means she only considers cis-women to be women, and she repeats the sort fear-mongering transphobic bullshit about bathrooms directly feeds transphobic violence.And as long as I’m quoting people, allow me to quote Daniel Radcliffe “I feel compelled to say something at this moment. Transgender women are women. Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people and goes against all advice given by professional health care associations who have far more expertise on this subject matter than either Jo or I. According to The Trevor Project, 78% of transgender and nonbinary youth reported being the subject of discrimination due to their gender identity. It’s clear that we need to do more to support transgender and nonbinary people, not invalidate their identities, and not cause further harm.”
She’s helping promote the lie that cis women are in danger if trans women share their bathrooms. It implies trans women are faking it so they can go into bathrooms and prey upon cis women. This is not happening.The violence against trans women for simply using a bathroom IS happening, and the spreading of the lie leads to greater violence against them.
Her points – that ‘women’ as a defined group shouldn’t be marginalised or renamedBut this is based on the idea that acknowledging the right of trans people to live according to their gender identity somehow marginalizes or renames cis women, which complete nonsense.I don’t think her article was “hateful.” I think it expressed a lot of obvious and upsetting trauma-based fear about her own experiences as a woman. It’s just really unfortunate that she has dealt with her trauma by externalizing it as incoherent resentment over the progress trans people have made in the last few years.
Her points – that ‘women’ as a defined group shouldn’t be marginalised or renamed
No one is arguing for this, though? No one who supports trans women is arguing that women should be “marginalised” and I don’t even know what it means for women to be renamed.and that the massive increase in gender dysmorphia among young people is connected to social media echo chambers
Massive increase? Connected to social media echo chambers? What does this even mean?
Thank you! I agree. I think everyone needs to once again come to the adult conclusion in 2021 that “all people do not agree with everything YOU believe” and that is okay so long as it is merely opinion.
The internet is very bad. We should kill it
But you’re saying this on the int…Oh, I get it.
Calm down Mr. Pai.
I would think the worse thing about the internet this year is the creation of Parler and how its become a true hive of scum and villiany. What a shitshow that place has become: https://www.reddit.com/r/ParlerWatch/
Going on reddit to read about Parler is like shoving your head in the toilet to learn about the sewer.
On the contrary, I think Parler is the perfect response to the censoring of gross opinions on other social media channels. It’s a place where QAnons, Trump Cultists, Sad Bois, Evangelicals, and Nazis can go and swap deranged conspiracies, air their impotent little threats, and say the quiet part out loud without bothering the rest of us.
Parler turned out to be inconsequential.When various Fox News personalities and other Republicans urge their userbase to leave Twitter and go to Parler…yet still continue to tweet…then goes to show you, that Parler is the second place you go to as a backup, not a the Twitter replacement that they seemed to want you to think it was.When you have the 45th president himself not having migrated over to Parler and still – for some reason – still using Twitter, then what’s the point of Parler…at all?The reasons why they stay on Twitter are pretty depressing actually. They know deep down that on Parler, it’d be just an echo chamber where they’d just share all the same views with no one to actively fight. They “need” to be somewhere, where they know their opponents are in order to actively instigate conflict, to “own” each other. And of course the president doesn’t want to give up his millions of followers on Twitter.
So yes, Parler is a hive of scum and villainy but…it’s not on Tatooine.
it’s a place for people who all want to be the center of attention for being outrageous. it’s a class full of class clowns.
Right, but when the classroom is nearly empty and there’s no one around except just other people like you…it’s not the place to be.Attention-seekers want as big a crowd as possible, where any reaction is a good reaction.
Worst thing on the internet number 0: The absence of a 2020 Year In Swag article!
Or no The Year in Band Names. The last one was in January 2019 I think.
Johnny Depp really got screwed because JK Rowling had to show that she’s super transphobic. To be clear, Depp has devolved into self-parody and was probably in a very toxic, possibly mutually abusive relationship with Amber Heard and needs to learn that filing lawsuits isn’t always a good thing, but Warner Bros. wouldn’t have done jack to him if they weren’t trying to fix a dying franchise whose creator had alienated a huge chunk of the fanbase.A part of me wishes they hadn’t and Eddie Redmayne would have used Depp + Rowling to somehow get out of his contract and blow the whole thing up.
They shouldn’t even be making a third movie, what up with that?
lol
That celebrity ‘Imagine’ video, while completely tone deaf and unnecessary, shouldn’t even make the top 20. Number one should simply be the hardcore rightwing anti-protestor, anti-BLM, anti-antifa comments that spread out across the internet.. also known as Trumps tweets.
JK Rowling said that a man isn’t a woman just because he says he is and yall mad.
Anything put out by The Root or Jezebel…
kill yourself
All others can and should die, but Rudy Giuliani can and MUST be protected. He is a gift to comedy and to all enemies of the Republican party.He is somehow a less credible Alex Jones.
Yeah, I haven’t seen the new Borat movie, but I can’t imagine anything in it is as funny as the Four Seasons Landscaping press conference or that crazy drunk lady he wheeled out later. Plus the leaking brain ooze, constant butt-dialing of the press, the constant look of surprise and pained confusion on his face, dude just keeps delivering.
You forgot the fart and basically every judge telling him to fuck off. The man has had a legendary two months.
I actually did forget the farting on mic! Because that was the same day as his crazy lady saying of the voter rolls “Why, did you guysss take it and like… do something crazy to it?” which has been playing over and over in my head ever since.
Oh, God, that lady he dragged out in Pennsylvania who was supposed to be a witness to something or other. I thought somebody’s gotten a late-eighties “quirky girl” character drunk on wine and just wheeled her out in front of the cameras. Even her glasses were perfect for the role. The fact that she wasn’t actually played by Victoria Jackson seemed amazing.
And then it came out afterwards that she had just gotten off probation for “computer crimes,” which consisted of sending a sex tape of herself and her fiance to the fiance’s ex’s computer to try and frame the ex for stealing it!
Oof, I hadn’t heard that. My God, there’s no bottom.
I predict that when Giuliani dies, it will be on live TV and he’ll die because his head just spontaneously falls off of his neck. People won’t find it odd because he acts like a living cartoon anyway.
My money on the cause would be the body finally deciding to get that divorce it’s been contemplating for the last 40 years.
No no, he’ll literally be mid-sentence, stop, and fall over dead like Vizzini in “The Princess Bride”
noone has ruined their legacy more. it’s insane that if he just stayed quiet until he died he would have been remembered as a hero!
I honestly didn’t hate on the whole Gal Gadot thing. A little insensitive and tone-deaf sure, but to be totally outraged and suddenly come after her?Nope it’s social media that’s gone crazy.
The worst I could say about the celebrity “Imagine” video was it was — silly. They did it, we laughed at how tone-deaf it was (though many of us appreciated the sentiment — in the way you appreciate somebody giving you a signed Keene Big-Eyed Kitten print as a sign of their affection), and got on with our lives….::hides my Keene print collection::
if anything, it’s pretty hilarious that they felt it was necessary like three days into the pandemic. like, looking back after months of it, it’s absurd that these celebrities felt like they had to try to keep society from falling apart after less than a week of lockdown
yeah it became MORE funny in the rearview. when it came out it was lame, as it became old it became hilarious.
Yeah, it’s the response to it that’s one of the worst things on the internet. Someone tried to do something positive and uplifting and didn’t nail it. Let’s shit on her and be assholes to her for daring to waste a few minutes of our time with something we didn’t care for. Boo! Fuck You! It’s basically the AVclub that was one of the worst things on the internet this year.
I totally forgot about Tom Cruise trying to convince people to go back into a movie theater during a fucking pandemic.Makes his taped rant feel all the more staged now.
Tom Cruise is definitely an industry shill. Even his words during the rant were less about preventing outbreaks and more about public relations.
Cruise (and Christopher Nolan, King of the My Movie is a THEATRICAL Experience!) would be in good company there, NextChamp — a number of film critics I listen to/read swallowed “The Pandemic Has Turned the Corner! It’s Safe to go to The Movies Again!” propaganda hook, line and sinker, and strongly urged their audience to “Go Back Into the Theater! Save Movies as Movies!”A month or two after that, the numbers spiked in — in California, so badly they were worse than before. So, in a misguided attempt to save overpriced corporate multiplexes, they may be indirectly responsible for a number of COVID-19 cases….EDITED TO ADD: In Conclusion — FUCK J.K. Rowling and her hypocritical homo/transphobia.Sideways.With a kitchen knife.
If we extend this list to more than ten items, I’d like to add John Krasinski’s YT show that was supposed to deliver goodness and joy, but instead ending up being a con for him to increase his bottom line. Even at the start I had my doubts of what his true intentions were (figured it was to gain goodwill for the eventual release of the Quiet Place sequel). Then when he sold the rights to CBS, I thought, sounds about right. What is even happening with that show now?
I think it’s being developed for 2021, and they put out some bullshit with The Rock recently. I only send him the worst wishes on his project, and may his project go the way of the Quibi!
Haha and a big ick. The only reason The Rock gets on there is because of Emily Blunt (who is the main reason John Krasinski is still relevant after The Office).
…because of Emily Blunt (who is the main reason John Krasinski is still relevant after The Office).Yeah, I’m sure it has nothing to do with directing, co-writing and co-starring in a movie that grossed more than $340 million worldwide vs. a $20M production budget.
Yeah, and I’m sure he got another chance in Hollywood based on his name alone after such critically acclaimed work as the Hollars. I also forget who co-stars in that movie you’re talking about.
…and I’m sure he got another chance in Hollywood based on his name aloneOr the fact that after working with Michael Bay on that Bengazi movie and the “Jack Ryan” TV series, he has a good working relationship with Platinum Dunes, which has a first-look deal with Paramount.
Okay sorry, I take everything bad back I said about him. Every success he’s had has nothing to do with Emily Blunt.
Cody’s Showdy has been putting out some great videos this year, and one of my favorites was him taking apart Krasinski’s show:
I watched that and was impressed that Cody held absolutely nothing back. He even called out John personally and said he knew John was watching his video; Mr. Emily Blunt had to have been seething.
While I hope it did get under Krasinski’s skin, I can’t imagine it bothers him too much since he gets too sleep on top of a pile of money with a beautiful lady.
How exactly is it a “con”? “Con” is not a synonym for “crass”, “manipulative”, “exploitative”, “gimmicky”, or “avaricious”.
John Krasinski on the CIA.“… the CIA is something that we should all not only cherish, but be saying thank you for every single day.”
I don’t even know where to start with this.
https://www.insider.com/john-krasinski-cia-cop-jim-halpert-2019-11
Sorry, John, you can cherish and say thank you for the CIA every day, but I’m not going to be doing that.
The worst thing on the internet was the half of the country that I personally disagree with also being on the internet.But I like cakes that don’t look like cakes.
God forbid half of the population disagreeing with your opinion and having a voice on the internet. A fucking privilege that, I’m guessing, you have never contributed to.
EMERGENCY UPDATE: Kevin Spacey has released his annual creepy holiday villain video, so this list will have to be updated accordingly
11.
A suicide prevention PSA is a terrible thing now? What’s wrong with you people?
mmm…I don’t know that JK Rowling believing that consideration for trans women’s rights needs to be balanced with equal consideration for non trans women’s rights is one of the worst things on the internet…
nah, she just doesn’t want trans women to be respected
She’s literally never said that.
She has, literally, said that. She refuses to acknowledge the reality that trans women are women, and repeats fear-mongering lies about trans women and bathrooms, lies that directly lead to violence against trans men and women. She also supports virulent transphobes like Maya Forstater and supports transphobic organizations. She’s a bigot through and through. Av club had it right when they cited Daniel Radcliffe’s“Transgender women are women. Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people and goes against all advice given by professional health care associations who have far more expertise on this subject matter than either Jo or I. According to The Trevor Project, 78% of transgender and nonbinary youth reported being the subject of discrimination due to their gender identity. It’s clear that we need to do more to support transgender and nonbinary people, not invalidate their identities, and not cause further harm.”
Yeah, and Donald Trump has never outright, on the record, said he thinks, say, black people are inferior, and yet we shouldn’t have any problem believing he’s racist. Stop pretending to be so naive.
yeah like I don’t see the problem per se in calling them all women, but as a writer, how do you talk specifically about a woman who was born with a vagina without using the word woman or talking about menstrual cycles? If they’re going to write-over the word with a new meaning, there needs to be a new word to classify the definition of: a woman born with a vagina.Then that if you just use that word going forward with new books, is that implying sexual ambiguity of characters in the old books now because of the old terms? Or does the writer rewrite their old books with the modern verbiage? Seems like more of a problem with the limitations of the language than anything else.
You can say biologically female or cis woman if you need to distinguish that you are talking about a woman who was born as a biological female.
yeah like I don’t see the problem per se in calling them all women, but as a writer, how do you talk specifically about a woman who was born with a vagina without using the word woman or talking about menstrual cycles?What does this even mean? Of course you can talk about a woman without talking about their vagina or their menstrual cycles.
and how would you do that? Just refer to all the characters as cis from now on?
Just refer to characters who are women as women. I have no idea what confusion you are possibly even imagining. If a woman’s vagina is relevant to the story, just talk about her vagina as necessary to explain whatever it is that needs explaining about it. If a woman having a period is relevant to the story, talk about her having her period as appropriate. It’s also possible to tell an entire story that involves women without their vaginas or periods being necessary to the plot at all, but if they are, just talk about them. I don’t see how the existence of trans people changes any of that in any way whatsoever.
The issue is that the creators of the work have a very specific person in mind when writing for a character and it does no good acting like it’s all the same. So women born with a vagina should have a word all their own if that’s what a writer wants to talk about, rather than leaving it up in the air. There’s nothing wrong with trans people but to act like their identical to women born that way is false and if you want to talk about specifics of your character traits and understand how characters think in a believable way, the writer should have a firm grasp on every aspect of their characters so words are important to get that across. Making things more vague doesn’t help, so, if the word woman now means several different things, it doesn’t do any good using it to describe something to the reader; so future writers will have to use a different word when describing their female-born female characters.
Again, if it is essential to a story to know that a character has a vagina, the writer will make it clear to you that the character has a vagina, so I don’t think there is more confusion there. If the particular genitalia a character possesses is left unsaid, by definition it is not important to the story(just like it might not be important to know a character’s eye color, or whether a character is gassy, or whether they have sideburns).And besides all that, there is already a word for women who were assigned the gender female at birth, and you already know what it is, because you literally just said it a few comments ago. Given all this, I don’t see any reason why the existence of trans people (which is not new, incidentally) should cause any confusion for writers or readers.
I’ll put in a vote for Kanye’s holographic spectre of Kim Kardashian’s dad, and the time it takes out of talking about watching over the family to praise Kanye’s genius.
It had no soul, just like the real life version.
I’ve had a pretty bad year when I recognise more from the list of the worst things on the internet than the best. The sunny side of the street just seems so far away.
Any time people would decide to waste talking about Ben Shapiro, who only profits from their paying attention to him by joking a million times about his views on WAP.Speaking of discourse, the last months of the primary, for many, many, many reasons. The people who claim to dislike Trump yet to this day, either genuinely believe or pretend to believe that Trump is showing why he is better than “the establishment” or “liberals” by doing things like…tweeting a meaningless comment about $2,000 then leaving town while millions suffer. “Cancel culture,” and the claim that the Bari Weiss story was the most important of the day. Some cheap attempt at making a “conservative Saturday Night Live,” which I mostly remember because of two “conservative” brothers doing gay jokes about Don Lemon.
Ben Shapiro denouncing “WAP” was such perfect promotion for that song, I’m almost convinced he was secretly a member of the marketing team. Seriously, he got a check for that shit, not a doubt in my mind.
“Are we all cake?” Bravo Hannah.
Thank You for that Randy Rainbow jam.
“The problem with this kind of thinking is that we begin to see politicians, who are fallible and hyper-aware of their public perception, as heroes instead of public servants who need to be held accountable.” So just so we’re clear: politicians are fallible and hyper-aware of their public perception, and public servants who need to be held accountable. As opposed to the Avengers, who are not.
Love the incoherent and unarticulated J.K. Rowling hate.
Love the J.K. Rowling hate.
The AV Club
Rudy gets my #1.But #2-10 is occupied by Madonna in the fucking bathtub. What in the actual fuck was that? It was like watching a skeleton trying to “reinvent” itself by submerging in a fetid puddle of rose petals, Evian water and self-importance.
#1 this shithole of a site
“Their desire for our continued worship…” That was your takeaway from a bunch of entertainers trying to make others feel better? Maybe it was a little tone deaf but the intent sure seemed a good one.
The TERF argument that people would rather ID as trans instead of gay doesn’t hold water— trans folk run the gamut from gay, straight, aromantic and/or ace, bi, pan, etc. It’s part of the LGBTQIA+ umbrella, yeah, but gender and sexuality are not intrinsically linked.
I’d rather be in the same bathroom with a trans woman or a cis lesbian who needs to pee and isn’t directly interacting with me, than I would a cisgender heterosexual woman who is having a private vent party in the bathroom and gives me dirty looks when I come in actually needing to use the toilet (this happens sometimes, and I will never understand it).
As a Beatles fan, I think my favorite solo career is actually George Harrison’s, followed by Paul’s. John’s is alright, but I’ve never been a huge fan of “Imagine” because it’s a little too schmaltzy for me.I live in an area with very little COVID denialism (that I know of), but a lot of people not actually enforcing the ‘wear a mask, stay six feet apart’ mantra. They make excuses to take the mask off every time they talk, they don’t encourage their kids to wear a mask (or keep their mask on), they won’t stop celebrating huge birthdays together that take up half a restaurant.
You forgot to add arrogant articles from people like Randall Colburn, Reid McCarter, Allison Shoemaker and Hannah Hightman who act like they’re above everyone else. You were also one of the worst things about the Internet in 2020.
Some guy with a handle like “MajesticEagleWarrior” accuses others of acting like they’re “above everyone else.” Now I’ve seen it all.
You assume.
I’m not “politically correct”, you know!
When you’re with the monster and not on the receiving end of the monster. You never see the bad in the monster.
Dude, you’re SO DEEP. Anyway, if you think the writers here are arrogant jerks, I sort of have to wonder why you’re here.
dude! you’re so dismissed and will never matter me to ever. BYE
Every discussion collapses into finger pointing, “yeah but” and “what about.”Every single one. Opinions are spouted as if they were carved in stone and appeared in a burning bush. Case closed… until someone responds.It has been so from the beginning. The thin veil of civility was shown to be a sham long ago but now that even Crazy Uncle Jim has a voice the voices of many resist all semblance of courtesy. Regardless of topic. Blame can be placed on this person or that but the bottom line, as my son-in-law said to me (and this may be a quote) is that everyone seems to think they have become professional comedians and they are not.
I truly and honestly wish I have been immune to this, but in a subReddit called Unpopular Opinion, I posted what I knew would be unpopular. Before that day was over, I cancelled my account and I will not go back. A minority told me they disagreed but gave simple, and often beautiful, explanations why they disagreed. The rest were either “I disagree but you are hateful” to, worst of all “I agree but you aren’t hateful enough.”
Sean Connery in the Avengers video makes me laugh every time I think about it and absolutely does not belong on this list.
There are many ways to discover whether a person is totally vile and toxic on the inside and should not be associated with. Denying COVID or downplaying it, being a Republican, people who say shit like Blue Lives Matter and All Lives Matter. But by far the best indicator is a person supporting J.K. Rowling after everything she’s done to hurt trans people this year. Doesn’t mean you can’t like the books (I counted her as a childhood hero, so it’s a mood), doesn’t mean you can’t read them (as long as you buy them used), but backing up any of her sadistic rhetoric is an indicator you are not worth engaging with. She’s a truly hateful woman, and I hope she is rightly vilified and forgotten.