The Takeaways of 2011
But when I sit down to reason, think to take my stand nor swerve,
While I triumph o’er a secret wrung from nature’s close reserve,
In you come with your cold music till I creep thro’ every nerve.- Robert Browning
In 2010 it seemed like things couldn’t get any worse, that we’d reached the apotheosis of awful. Then 2011 came along and showed us we had not yet begun to be grossed out. Here at the end of 2011, it seems as though the collapse of civilization is not just at hand, but nearly complete. We are clearly not at the beginning of the end, but somewhere past the middle of the end.
Looking at our society today, it would seem that we’ve filled the cup of retarded to the brim. But the joys of 2012 will no doubt show us how puny were our 2011 dreams of what retarded could be. Here then are my lessons of the year past, which if put to use will see you through this weak piping time, hopefully alive.
• If you offer people a chance to hear themselves speak, they will take it.
• Once people get a chance to hear themselves speak, they will never want to hear anything else.
• In the short run, being young and attractive and blogging about your sex life beats all.
• There is no long run.
• In the shorter run, animated 30 Rock gifs are even better.
• You can fool all of the people all of the time if you get the art direction and hair right.
• Everyone is now too young to actually remember what happened in the 80’s so it’s alright to just go ahead and steal it.
• Old reality show line not to cross: Suicide
New reality show line not to cross: TBD
• People now feel they are entitled to not only to get all their services for free but feel those services that are giving them things for free are morally obligated to do it in a design that they like.
• In 2012, people will feel entitled to pick the uniforms of people who bring them free pizzas and will become enraged when a delivery guy shows up wearing hoodies and sneakers that clash with their throw pillows.
• The hashtag was invented because we can no longer count on anyone to understand what we are saying without an explainer appended.
• Sooner or later gravity catches up with us all, even Hollywood PR-whore stunt couples.
• 140 characters is now too demanding on the human attention span. By year’s end we will communicate only in emoticons and acronyms.
• With the advent of TLC’s Extreme Couponing, we are running out of human grotesqueries to mock. Next we will have no choice but to make freaks of the average. Scrapbooking Monsters and Minivan Babylon are at hand.
• By the end of next year everyone will talk half the time like a drunken carny midway hooker/barker and the other half of the time like an eight year old who is sad that he didn’t get more crayons.
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