Despite 2011 still having half a month left to go, Cracked.com has released their list of "The Top 8 of Everything of 2011". Not to be upstaged by them, and wanting to fit in with the "cool" kids, I've taken that idea and run with it, creating my own list of the top things of the year. I hope this makes up for all the neglect. Enjoy.
Movie of the Year
I’m going to hold off on this one to some extent, since I haven’t seen Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which I suspect will be the film of the year. However, commenting on films I have seen, it’s still going to be a challenge to come up with one which really defines the top movie of 2011. Warrior was an enjoyable genre piece, and definitely worth the watch, but it felt almost like I was watching a guide on “how to make any sports movie, ever”. The only thing it didn’t include was tension between white and black players on a team who finally decide they can trust each other, or the guy from Saw VI playing an East German Bobsleigh racer…
Seriously, Warrior plays out exactly as you would expect it to, and whilst the action is awesome, the emotional scenes are intense, and Tom Hardy’s traps are fucking huge – it is ultimately predictable, and brings nothing new to the table.
I suppose ultimately, the film of the year would have to be the combined parts of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows. It’s a real cop-out, because they’re not actually great movies – but it is nice to see a film series like that finally tied up, so Daniel Radcliffe can go about making films where the Germans shoot him to pieces as he storms a bunker, and Rubert Grint can go back to Eiffel Towering girls on wild weekends.
And Ralph Fiennes can go back to being a Nazi?
Video Game of the Year
The debate here is going to be as boring as ever. First Person Shooter fanboys will be raging hard, shouting either “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3!” or “No! Battlefield 3!”, but the truth is, neither of these deserves to win. We have had enough of games in which Russian terrorist groups plan to set off a nuclear bomb in the United States, or Terrorist groups set off a biological weapon in London, allowing the Russian Army to take control of Europe. All these games have the same basic plot – because they aren’t trying to sell the campaign modes. They’re selling you a new map pack for your online gaming. Gone are the days when games would bother with things like plot, or half decent AI. And sure, Battlefield 3 deserves acknowledgement for making those stupid button-bashing cut-scene moments vaguely enjoyable, after the abortion which was Resident Evil 4 made us all rage beyond belief at the idea of someone including such a shitty function in a game.
But that doesn’t make up for all the short comings of these games. Call of Duty is still the same boring old game it ever was – with the same frustrating AI we’ve always had to deal with. 90% of the time your team are useless, standing behind you when you need to back out of a doorway, or running in front of you as you are trying to snipe, but when you try and go Lone Wolf, the game punishes you for not staying with your team, sending enemies to quickly overwhelm you, just because fuck you, they can.
Call of Duty also has the problem of never really having a limiter placed on the amount of bad guys who can appear – the quicker you play through a section, the less you have to fight. Now, obviously in World War 3 your enemies will be able to keep bringing in reinforcements, and I’m not saying they should make these games like Splinter Cell, with a restricted number of enemies all in their own specific areas. But ‘Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater’ had a much better solution to this – enemies will mass where action is occurring, so if you kill an inordinate number of enemies in one area after the alarm is raised, there will be far fewer enemies to fight in the next section of the game. Snake Eater came out in 2004, and has Modern Warfare 3 beaten both in terms of enemy AI and spawing, as well as in terms of making a game where you fight a terrorist group forcing a war between the United States and Russia engrossing and fun to play. Modern Warfare 3 is designed solely for Multiplayer online gaming, and still sucks for this, because respawns are too quick, and so there is never a realistic break in combat as one would expect.
Forza is another contender for the game of the year, but again this suffers from the same problem as the first person shooters – it is just an extension of the previous games. Nothing new has been brought to the table for Forza 4, and whilst it may have improved realism, and some bitching AI, it is ultimately just Forza 3: improved. In fact, when I asked my younger cousin, who loves racing games and is a massive fan of Top Gear, if he wanted Forza 4 for Christmas, he wasn’t interested. Because it isn’t bringing anything to the table which Forza 3 didn’t already. And what does that
leave us with?
I’m afraid, then, I am forced to agree with Cracked’s Jack O’Brien in saying that Angry Birds is probably the game of the year – because it has popularized hand-held gaming in a way not seen since Pokemon Blue and Red were first released. Angry Birds has made gaming socially acceptable in any circumstance whatsoever. Try playing Manhunt whilst working security in a Sainsbury’s, and you get some weird looks. Play Angry Birds behind the counter, and it’s all cool. Angry Birds has made gaming whilst you take a shit acceptable, and for that, it deserves some credit. But hang on – Angry Birds, whilst only becoming truly popular this year, was released in 2009; so by that logic, couldn’t the game of the year be Metal Gear Solid 3, because Konami are rereleasing it as part of their HD collection along with ‘Sons of Liberty’ and ‘Peacewalker’?
Person of the Year
I would love to be able to write Aziz Shavershiam here. The Zyzz was the embodiment of the spirit of live fast, die young, and leave an aesthetic as fuck corpse. But thanks to a certain incident involving a Sauna in Thailand back in August, it is sad to think that the Zyzz will never be eligible for this nomination again.
I cannot, however, in good conscience, award The Zyzz with the title of the Top Person of the Year 2011. Because no matter how much I, and thousands others, were mirin’, there is a man who changed the face of the world as we know it.
I slated The Dark Knight a bit (ok, a lot) after it came out, because it was such a letdown. However, on rewatching it, I found I actually rather enjoyed it, knowing what would happen, and no longer expecting it to live up to the hype (just like A Serbian Film). I mention this, because there is a piece of dialogue in that film which I think needs to be discussed, so you can truly understand why I have made the choice I have for Person of the year.
After Harvey Dent falls to his death (and no, I don’t consider that a spoiler – if you wanted to watch The Dark Knight, but haven’t seen it by now, you don’t know enough about movies to have found this Blog), Lieutenant Jim Gordon gravely states:
“The Joker won. Harvey's prosecution, everything he fought for - undone. Any chance you gave us at fixing our city dies with Harvey's reputation. We bet it all on him. The Joker took the best of us and tore him down. People will lose hope.”
Breivik did to Norway what The Joker did to Harvey Dent – he took away their most beloved, and utterly destroyed them. Unfortunately, Norway reacted in a similar manner to Harvey Dent. Rather than stand tall as Gotham’s District Attorney, and await the capture of the individuals responsible for Rachael Dawes's Death, so he could punish him within the law, Norway decided to circumvent its own laws in order to punish those responsible for the murder of its loved ones.
Anders Breivik has reduced Norway’s stance on Human Rights to little more than a joke, on a par with Serbia’s maximum sentence of 30 years, about which everyone jokes because we all know that, despite the courts in Serbia only being able to give you a 30 year sentence, once you go in prison, you will never be coming out. Norway’s stance on human rights has been reduced from a shining beacon for all nations to aspire to, to being on a par with a country which right now has one of its generals appearing at the Hague facing charges of crimes against humanity (though, Mladic is actually a Bosnian Serb, for the record). Whilst Norway is still seen to be standing up for the rights of the accused far more so than, say, The United States, or Iran, it has fallen a long long way. And after all, even if Two Face was a sympathetic character – killing those who deserved it, and even sparing some who did on the flip of a coin – his disregard for his own beliefs is what Gordon felt would ultimately destroy the Hope of the people of Gotham. And unfortunately, we have no Dark Knight to take the blame for Norway – no Jack Ruby administering extra legal justice so the Country itself could still appear righteous. Norway was pushed too far – and gave out its first ever life sentence to a sane individual. And for making them do this, Breivik is my man of the year. He is The Joker. And in 8 years time, we’ll see who emerges on the international stage as our Bane...
I’ve heard people moaning about the Occupy movement, saying it’s all just a bunch of rich college kids who have nothing to complain about themselves, standing up for something because it’s the cool thing to do, and not because they actually need the rights they’re demanding. But holy shit – you know what that makes me think?
Yeah, that’s exactly the set-up of Les Miserables. You know, the musical where we’re on the side of the rich college revolutionaries? Whilst we’re on the subject, I think we may have a nominee for the worst film of 2012 here, too:
Look at that cast, and weep.
Website of the Year
I miss the old days to some extent. IMDB was a great site to lurk on a good 8 years ago, before it was bought by Amazon and starting getting shitty about what you could and could not post. I believe the concept of summerfags was invented on the Big Lebowski discussion board long before the term was ever applied to 4Chan (or 4Chan even existed). Likewise, I kind of miss the days when The Spoony Experiment was THE website to visit. This entire site only exists because I was a Spoony fanboy, and felt like doing some ranting reviews along the lines of his, but unfortunately, that site declined to such an extent I never really visit it any more (I suspect some of you are thinking the same about this Blog).
After that, Cracked.com became the place to be, and although it still does host some amusing articles and videos, either there has been a decline in quality of late, or I’m finally getting bored of the format. And whilst I would happily vote 4Chan as the greatest site of 2011, I can’t bring myself to type that, because 99% of it is shit (and I’m not even just counting /b/ here).
I guess, then, there is only one real choice for the greatest website of 2011. And don’t worry, I’m not so egotistical I would vote for my own site (though I totally would if I had two sites and posted on them with different names). My website of the year for 2011 is:
Encyclopediadramatica.ch
Although missing many of the images stored on the old site, the new version does have the upside of including articles which were previously deleted for being too offensive. One particular page of interest is, of course, that of Madeleine McCann:
ED loves nothing more than controversy (well, LULZ, though LULZ inevitably create controversy), so it’s nice to see the site finally got some balls back, now that it’s being hosted in Switzerland. Another nice edition is hate pages directed at the editors, which could never be seen before, because whilst they were more than happy to dish out nastiness, none of them could take it. However, with DeGrippo moving over to OhInternet, which I hope by now has gone under (but I won’t actually check on that because I don’t want to give them traffic if the site is still up and running), the pages of the old editors are now filled with the same lulzy content as every other profile page on the site. What’s more, even Cleary’s page is filled with jokes about how mega-Aspie he is, including a fantastic quote from the telegraph, which states:
“Mr Cleary is described as a "recluse" by his family and leaves his home so rarely that police who carried out surveillance on the property were unsure whether he would be there when they raided it, because they had never seen him go outside.”
The Least Helpful Response to a Serious Question
Here is a man at his wits end. As he later described in the thread, his wife had obviously been to this hotel, and it turns out she stayed in the room with another man. He feels he has to leave her for violating his trust, but doesn’t want to break up the marriage as they have kids together. And how does the very first poster respond when he first voices his concerns?
Stay Classy, 4Chan…
Hey, whilst we’re on the subject of 4Chan, how about…
Most Ridiculous Premise for a Raid Which Was Somehow Successful
This might sound like a bit of an odd category, but I had to include it simply because of this. As we all know, /b/tards will occasionally open a thread asking others to suggest a video they can all raid with RIP comments, then they all get involved and have a jolly good chuckle at the result. They also edit Wikipedia pages, flood Yahoo Answers, and search Google using fancy software which constantly refreshes the searched topic to bump it up the list of “most common searches” in order to make things seem convincing. In cases where someone says “Let’s write RIP on 50 Cent’s new video, and say that Ja Rule shot him”, you can see how this sort of thing may fool people. However, it’s a bit harder to see how anyone falls for this sort of shit when the winning post is:
That’s right. Adele died of a cake overdose. And you know what? A few comments and votes by /b/tards later…
…and people actually bought it:
Let me say that again, just to reinforce how ridiculous it is: People actually believed that Adele, the singer, had died from “Acute Cake Toxicity” at the age of 23, because it was on Wikipedia and YouTube.
And to think I thought they were trolling when I first heard Amy Winehouse was dead. I give these guys too much credit…
Dumbest Analogy Ever
So one day a thread appears linking to a study in which quotes were taken from both convicted Rapists, and Mens Magazines (like the ones Danny Dyer writes for), seeing if participants could tell which of the quotes came from which source. Inevitably, the age old argument erupted of whether or not women really are "asking for it" when they go out dressed like whores, and whilst no-one could quite top Dave Chappelle's musings on the matter, there were some attempts to construct a logical argument as to why dressing in slutty clothes is not an invitation to be raped. Unfortunately, said analogy had a fairly big flaw in it...
Best Dressed Man
Now, normally these polls vote for George Clooney at the Academy Awards, despite the fact he is wearing the same Tuxedo from the same Tailor as 50% of the other men present. However, this award isn’t for the most stylishly dressed male of 2011. This is an award for the man who best represents 2011 with his sense of dress. In other words, this award should actually be called “The Most WFT? Picture of a Guy Dressed Retardedly” Award. And I give you our winner:
The more you look at it, the weirder it gets.
And finally, we have the award you’ve all been waiting for. The award everyone wants to see the winner for. So, here it is, the last award of the night:
The Most Beautiful Smile of 2011 Award
This girl just has the most incredible smile. Such lovely, perfect teeth. Don't you think?
Voice.
Movie of the Year
I’m going to hold off on this one to some extent, since I haven’t seen Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which I suspect will be the film of the year. However, commenting on films I have seen, it’s still going to be a challenge to come up with one which really defines the top movie of 2011. Warrior was an enjoyable genre piece, and definitely worth the watch, but it felt almost like I was watching a guide on “how to make any sports movie, ever”. The only thing it didn’t include was tension between white and black players on a team who finally decide they can trust each other, or the guy from Saw VI playing an East German Bobsleigh racer…
Seriously, Warrior plays out exactly as you would expect it to, and whilst the action is awesome, the emotional scenes are intense, and Tom Hardy’s traps are fucking huge – it is ultimately predictable, and brings nothing new to the table.
Other than Tom Hardy's Enormous Traps, that is.
A Serbian Film is another possible nominee for this category, but again, it didn’t really live up to the hype. Whilst on the rewatch I certainly appreciated it more, realizing that it was not “predictable”, as the ending was never meant to be a twist, but simply the inevitable outcome (I didn’t rage about ‘Until Death’ because Jean Claude Van Damme was obviously going to die at the end, because it’s supposed to be inevitable, so why did it bother me with A Serbian Film? Because of the fucking hype surrounding it, and everyone calling it a “horror film”, making me see the similarities with SAW before anything else). However, A Serbian Film still isn’t exactly ground breaking, and whilst one hell of an achievement for a first time writer and director, I hardly feel I can award it the title of Film of the Year. And this leaves me in a difficult position. You see: What good films have come out this year?
Hugo will be torrented by thousands of /b/tards who want to furiously fap to Chloe Moretz...
Of IMDB’s list of the 10 most popular films of the year, the only one I have seen, or indeed want to see, is Warrior (As of writing this, it is #184 on IMDB’s top 250 list). Can we really have had such a bad year in film that a decent, but incredibly predictable and clichéd sports movie, is the best we’ve got? Depressingly, it appears so. Even films soon to be released, such as the new Sherlock Holmes, or Mission Impossible 4, will undoubtedly fail to live up to even Warrior’s modest prestige, so I can only hope that Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy really is a good as everyone says, otherwise it looks like the film industry is dead.
Right.
I suppose ultimately, the film of the year would have to be the combined parts of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows. It’s a real cop-out, because they’re not actually great movies – but it is nice to see a film series like that finally tied up, so Daniel Radcliffe can go about making films where the Germans shoot him to pieces as he storms a bunker, and Rubert Grint can go back to Eiffel Towering girls on wild weekends.
And Ralph Fiennes can go back to being a Nazi?
"Actually, It's Rafe"
Video Game of the Year
The debate here is going to be as boring as ever. First Person Shooter fanboys will be raging hard, shouting either “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3!” or “No! Battlefield 3!”, but the truth is, neither of these deserves to win. We have had enough of games in which Russian terrorist groups plan to set off a nuclear bomb in the United States, or Terrorist groups set off a biological weapon in London, allowing the Russian Army to take control of Europe. All these games have the same basic plot – because they aren’t trying to sell the campaign modes. They’re selling you a new map pack for your online gaming. Gone are the days when games would bother with things like plot, or half decent AI. And sure, Battlefield 3 deserves acknowledgement for making those stupid button-bashing cut-scene moments vaguely enjoyable, after the abortion which was Resident Evil 4 made us all rage beyond belief at the idea of someone including such a shitty function in a game.
But that doesn’t make up for all the short comings of these games. Call of Duty is still the same boring old game it ever was – with the same frustrating AI we’ve always had to deal with. 90% of the time your team are useless, standing behind you when you need to back out of a doorway, or running in front of you as you are trying to snipe, but when you try and go Lone Wolf, the game punishes you for not staying with your team, sending enemies to quickly overwhelm you, just because fuck you, they can.
Call of Duty also has the problem of never really having a limiter placed on the amount of bad guys who can appear – the quicker you play through a section, the less you have to fight. Now, obviously in World War 3 your enemies will be able to keep bringing in reinforcements, and I’m not saying they should make these games like Splinter Cell, with a restricted number of enemies all in their own specific areas. But ‘Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater’ had a much better solution to this – enemies will mass where action is occurring, so if you kill an inordinate number of enemies in one area after the alarm is raised, there will be far fewer enemies to fight in the next section of the game. Snake Eater came out in 2004, and has Modern Warfare 3 beaten both in terms of enemy AI and spawing, as well as in terms of making a game where you fight a terrorist group forcing a war between the United States and Russia engrossing and fun to play. Modern Warfare 3 is designed solely for Multiplayer online gaming, and still sucks for this, because respawns are too quick, and so there is never a realistic break in combat as one would expect.
"I'm glad Viet Cong aren't magically appearing behind us every 5 seconds and knifing us in the back. That would be most unfortunate."
Everyone hates campers – but we all hate the dicks who you finally kill only to have come up behind you 2 seconds later and knife you because of insta-respawn – even more. In fact, I don’t even find these games fun to play online anymore, because they are simply full of kiddies who learn the maps inside-out, and run around ‘pwning’ others. And when you do manage to kill them, what happens? Nothing. They respawn instantly, and start acting like a dick again. I would like to see more intelligent multiplayer content. I know there is an online mode in which you are limited to only 5 lives, and whoever is left at the end is the winner, but this still seems unsatisfying. In fact, Battlefield’s ‘Rush’ mode is the only online first person shooter mode I still enjoy, and even that can be a piss take at times.
Especially when you're playing with cunts like this...
As far as Battlefield’s campaign goes, I just couldn’t stand the scene where you are forced to kill an American Marine who bursts in on you after you receive intel from a Russian – simply because if you don’t kill him, he shoots you. What the fuck? You wind up being arrested regardless, couldn’t we have a slight variation from the story where you choose how you end up being questioned? ‘Splinter Cell: Double Agent’ had the same missions and ending regardless of what you did, but leaving the player in charge of a few simple actions, and giving us alternate cut scenes made it feel as though the player was changing what happened. Coming back to Snake Eater – you could kill The End without ever having to fight him if you so desired, by sniping him prior to entering the warehouses after defeating The Pain. Ocelot’s bullets would also change chambers, or even guns. When you face off with him in the plane, sometimes he had the loaded gun, sometimes you did. These little differences never affected the overall story, but it made you feel like you were in control of the game. Having to shoot a Marine because he will kill you on sight if you don’t takes all the emotion out of the act, and makes it as dull as any other killing in the game. Battlefield is certainly a better series than Call of Duty, but it’s not much of an improvement.
Forza is another contender for the game of the year, but again this suffers from the same problem as the first person shooters – it is just an extension of the previous games. Nothing new has been brought to the table for Forza 4, and whilst it may have improved realism, and some bitching AI, it is ultimately just Forza 3: improved. In fact, when I asked my younger cousin, who loves racing games and is a massive fan of Top Gear, if he wanted Forza 4 for Christmas, he wasn’t interested. Because it isn’t bringing anything to the table which Forza 3 didn’t already. And what does that
leave us with?
A forced meme about arrows in the knee?
Skyrim is the talk of the town of late, but having a slow as fuck piece of shit laptop, I can’t really comment on the game, as I haven’t played it. Likewise, although I have played through limited sections of LA Noire, I wasn’t that impressed with what I saw, but acknowledge that maybe this is because you need to see the whole picture to appreciate it. When I watched the scene from Scarface where Tony confronts Frank by itself, I thought it was shit. Watching that scene in context, however, it is an awesome scene in an awesome film, and I can’t believe I ever disliked it. So, whilst I can say I wasn’t impressed with LA Noire, I must also acknowledge that perhaps if I had played through all 3 discs, rather than just odd sections, I would like it.
Just as I can now fully appreciate this scene in Scarface...
I’m afraid, then, I am forced to agree with Cracked’s Jack O’Brien in saying that Angry Birds is probably the game of the year – because it has popularized hand-held gaming in a way not seen since Pokemon Blue and Red were first released. Angry Birds has made gaming socially acceptable in any circumstance whatsoever. Try playing Manhunt whilst working security in a Sainsbury’s, and you get some weird looks. Play Angry Birds behind the counter, and it’s all cool. Angry Birds has made gaming whilst you take a shit acceptable, and for that, it deserves some credit. But hang on – Angry Birds, whilst only becoming truly popular this year, was released in 2009; so by that logic, couldn’t the game of the year be Metal Gear Solid 3, because Konami are rereleasing it as part of their HD collection along with ‘Sons of Liberty’ and ‘Peacewalker’?
AAAAAAWWWWW YEEEEEAAAAH!!!!!!
Person of the Year
I would love to be able to write Aziz Shavershiam here. The Zyzz was the embodiment of the spirit of live fast, die young, and leave an aesthetic as fuck corpse. But thanks to a certain incident involving a Sauna in Thailand back in August, it is sad to think that the Zyzz will never be eligible for this nomination again.
God is Mirin' you Now, my Brother...
I cannot, however, in good conscience, award The Zyzz with the title of the Top Person of the Year 2011. Because no matter how much I, and thousands others, were mirin’, there is a man who changed the face of the world as we know it.
I slated The Dark Knight a bit (ok, a lot) after it came out, because it was such a letdown. However, on rewatching it, I found I actually rather enjoyed it, knowing what would happen, and no longer expecting it to live up to the hype (just like A Serbian Film). I mention this, because there is a piece of dialogue in that film which I think needs to be discussed, so you can truly understand why I have made the choice I have for Person of the year.
After Harvey Dent falls to his death (and no, I don’t consider that a spoiler – if you wanted to watch The Dark Knight, but haven’t seen it by now, you don’t know enough about movies to have found this Blog), Lieutenant Jim Gordon gravely states:
“The Joker won. Harvey's prosecution, everything he fought for - undone. Any chance you gave us at fixing our city dies with Harvey's reputation. We bet it all on him. The Joker took the best of us and tore him down. People will lose hope.”
Assuming the world is Gotham City, and the shining light in politics – the beacon of social policy to which every country aspires, is Norway, then I’m afraid my nomination for Man of the Year 2011 goes to The Joker:
That guy has rape face...
Anders Behring Breivik. Breivik murdered 69 people on the island of utoya, and a further 7 in an attack on a Government building in Oslo. It was the worst massacre the world has ever seen, with Breivik, as Encyclopedia Dramatica would put it, smashing the ‘high score’ for the most people killed in a single rampage by an individual. People were calling for Breivik’s head, and yet Norway’s justice system will not allow the imprisonment of an individual for more than 30 years.
Breivik did to Norway what The Joker did to Harvey Dent – he took away their most beloved, and utterly destroyed them. Unfortunately, Norway reacted in a similar manner to Harvey Dent. Rather than stand tall as Gotham’s District Attorney, and await the capture of the individuals responsible for Rachael Dawes's Death, so he could punish him within the law, Norway decided to circumvent its own laws in order to punish those responsible for the murder of its loved ones.
Norway, the shining light of justice, equality, and socialism in the world, refused to let Breivik take the stand in his own defence in Court, and kept the details of the trial private. Not only this, but Breivik, a man who premeditated these attacks, and wrote a gigantic document explaining his reasons for the attacks, and what he hoped to achieve, was found insane by the Norwegian Courts - a convenient way of keeping a man, who in any society with life sentences or the death penalty would have been declared sane, locked away for the rest of his life, thereby avoiding the maximum penalty of 30 years the Courts could legally give him.
Breivik won. Norway’s Human Rights policies, everything they stand for - undone. Any chance they gave us at fixing our own countries dies with Norway's reputation. We bet it all on them.
Breivik took the best of us and tore them down. People will lose hope.
Anders Breivik has reduced Norway’s stance on Human Rights to little more than a joke, on a par with Serbia’s maximum sentence of 30 years, about which everyone jokes because we all know that, despite the courts in Serbia only being able to give you a 30 year sentence, once you go in prison, you will never be coming out. Norway’s stance on human rights has been reduced from a shining beacon for all nations to aspire to, to being on a par with a country which right now has one of its generals appearing at the Hague facing charges of crimes against humanity (though, Mladic is actually a Bosnian Serb, for the record). Whilst Norway is still seen to be standing up for the rights of the accused far more so than, say, The United States, or Iran, it has fallen a long long way. And after all, even if Two Face was a sympathetic character – killing those who deserved it, and even sparing some who did on the flip of a coin – his disregard for his own beliefs is what Gordon felt would ultimately destroy the Hope of the people of Gotham. And unfortunately, we have no Dark Knight to take the blame for Norway – no Jack Ruby administering extra legal justice so the Country itself could still appear righteous. Norway was pushed too far – and gave out its first ever life sentence to a sane individual. And for making them do this, Breivik is my man of the year. He is The Joker. And in 8 years time, we’ll see who emerges on the international stage as our Bane...
Awesomely, for this analogy, I get to be Gary Oldman. Almost makes all those murders worth it…
I’m kidding – please don’t hunt me down for that comment.
Picture of the Year
This one doesn’t need any real discussion. Sure, there are plenty of funny pictures out there, but we’re talking here about pictures that really capture the essence of what 2011 was all about. So, I don’t believe we need look any further than a picture of a fat ill-educated member of the working class pepperspraying people who are fighting to give him a better pension, better healthcare, and a higher wage. God Bless America.
Picture of the Year
This one doesn’t need any real discussion. Sure, there are plenty of funny pictures out there, but we’re talking here about pictures that really capture the essence of what 2011 was all about. So, I don’t believe we need look any further than a picture of a fat ill-educated member of the working class pepperspraying people who are fighting to give him a better pension, better healthcare, and a higher wage. God Bless America.
He used 99% of that can...
I’ve heard people moaning about the Occupy movement, saying it’s all just a bunch of rich college kids who have nothing to complain about themselves, standing up for something because it’s the cool thing to do, and not because they actually need the rights they’re demanding. But holy shit – you know what that makes me think?
I'm still working on the script. I just need One Day More. And yes, that is two awful puns on consecutive pictures.
Yeah, that’s exactly the set-up of Les Miserables. You know, the musical where we’re on the side of the rich college revolutionaries? Whilst we’re on the subject, I think we may have a nominee for the worst film of 2012 here, too:
Look at that cast, and weep.
Website of the Year
I miss the old days to some extent. IMDB was a great site to lurk on a good 8 years ago, before it was bought by Amazon and starting getting shitty about what you could and could not post. I believe the concept of summerfags was invented on the Big Lebowski discussion board long before the term was ever applied to 4Chan (or 4Chan even existed). Likewise, I kind of miss the days when The Spoony Experiment was THE website to visit. This entire site only exists because I was a Spoony fanboy, and felt like doing some ranting reviews along the lines of his, but unfortunately, that site declined to such an extent I never really visit it any more (I suspect some of you are thinking the same about this Blog).
After that, Cracked.com became the place to be, and although it still does host some amusing articles and videos, either there has been a decline in quality of late, or I’m finally getting bored of the format. And whilst I would happily vote 4Chan as the greatest site of 2011, I can’t bring myself to type that, because 99% of it is shit (and I’m not even just counting /b/ here).
I guess, then, there is only one real choice for the greatest website of 2011. And don’t worry, I’m not so egotistical I would vote for my own site (though I totally would if I had two sites and posted on them with different names). My website of the year for 2011 is:
Encyclopediadramatica.ch
Yes, the Superior Wiki lives on in another form, brought back to us by the infamous Ryan Cleary:
Although missing many of the images stored on the old site, the new version does have the upside of including articles which were previously deleted for being too offensive. One particular page of interest is, of course, that of Madeleine McCann:
ED loves nothing more than controversy (well, LULZ, though LULZ inevitably create controversy), so it’s nice to see the site finally got some balls back, now that it’s being hosted in Switzerland. Another nice edition is hate pages directed at the editors, which could never be seen before, because whilst they were more than happy to dish out nastiness, none of them could take it. However, with DeGrippo moving over to OhInternet, which I hope by now has gone under (but I won’t actually check on that because I don’t want to give them traffic if the site is still up and running), the pages of the old editors are now filled with the same lulzy content as every other profile page on the site. What’s more, even Cleary’s page is filled with jokes about how mega-Aspie he is, including a fantastic quote from the telegraph, which states:
“Mr Cleary is described as a "recluse" by his family and leaves his home so rarely that police who carried out surveillance on the property were unsure whether he would be there when they raided it, because they had never seen him go outside.”
When you can write that kind of shit on your own editor’s page – you know your website is truly in it For The Lulz.
Their Banner Wasn't Lying!
There was a brief time with no adverts, but unfortunately, like all sites, they needed cash to keep running. So, ED now has Ads again, and I’m still stuck on a crappy Blog site without my own .com – such is life in Russia.
I was looking for any excuse to post this one...
Well, that’s all the serious business out the way, so I’ll just round this up with a few quickfire nominations for more obscure categories.
The Least Helpful Response to a Serious Question
Here is a man at his wits end. As he later described in the thread, his wife had obviously been to this hotel, and it turns out she stayed in the room with another man. He feels he has to leave her for violating his trust, but doesn’t want to break up the marriage as they have kids together. And how does the very first poster respond when he first voices his concerns?
Stay Classy, 4Chan…
Hey, whilst we’re on the subject of 4Chan, how about…
Most Ridiculous Premise for a Raid Which Was Somehow Successful
This might sound like a bit of an odd category, but I had to include it simply because of this. As we all know, /b/tards will occasionally open a thread asking others to suggest a video they can all raid with RIP comments, then they all get involved and have a jolly good chuckle at the result. They also edit Wikipedia pages, flood Yahoo Answers, and search Google using fancy software which constantly refreshes the searched topic to bump it up the list of “most common searches” in order to make things seem convincing. In cases where someone says “Let’s write RIP on 50 Cent’s new video, and say that Ja Rule shot him”, you can see how this sort of thing may fool people. However, it’s a bit harder to see how anyone falls for this sort of shit when the winning post is:
That’s right. Adele died of a cake overdose. And you know what? A few comments and votes by /b/tards later…
…and people actually bought it:
Some /b/tard posted this, this is not from my Facebook. Because 1. I no longer have a Facebook, and 2. I don't speak to women. Ever.
Let me say that again, just to reinforce how ridiculous it is: People actually believed that Adele, the singer, had died from “Acute Cake Toxicity” at the age of 23, because it was on Wikipedia and YouTube.
Ok, so maybe it is KIND of believable...
And to think I thought they were trolling when I first heard Amy Winehouse was dead. I give these guys too much credit…
Dumbest Analogy Ever
So one day a thread appears linking to a study in which quotes were taken from both convicted Rapists, and Mens Magazines (like the ones Danny Dyer writes for), seeing if participants could tell which of the quotes came from which source. Inevitably, the age old argument erupted of whether or not women really are "asking for it" when they go out dressed like whores, and whilst no-one could quite top Dave Chappelle's musings on the matter, there were some attempts to construct a logical argument as to why dressing in slutty clothes is not an invitation to be raped. Unfortunately, said analogy had a fairly big flaw in it...
Best Dressed Man
Now, normally these polls vote for George Clooney at the Academy Awards, despite the fact he is wearing the same Tuxedo from the same Tailor as 50% of the other men present. However, this award isn’t for the most stylishly dressed male of 2011. This is an award for the man who best represents 2011 with his sense of dress. In other words, this award should actually be called “The Most WFT? Picture of a Guy Dressed Retardedly” Award. And I give you our winner:
The more you look at it, the weirder it gets.
And finally, we have the award you’ve all been waiting for. The award everyone wants to see the winner for. So, here it is, the last award of the night:
The Most Beautiful Smile of 2011 Award
This girl just has the most incredible smile. Such lovely, perfect teeth. Don't you think?
Voice.
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