CNN's Awful Article Over The 2010s
On December 31, 2019, CNN published an article called "All the trends we loved and hated in the 2010s". In a nutshell, it covered many popular trends from the 2010s and gave them either a positive or negative review.
This article was written by one AJ Willingham. According to her CNN profile, she "covers internet subcultures, religion, positive news and various obsessions". She must be terrible at her job considering how bad this article is, in my opinion at least. I can only assume she's some out-of-touch, middle aged hag whose job qualifications are that she uses Facebook and used advanced search on Google one time. Now, let's bash her article.
Hated: Hoverboards
First, the Razor scooters came to cut everyone's ankles off. Then around 2014, these weird contraptions took over, bridging the gap between scooters, motorized skateboards and Segways. Oh, and they often exploded. All around, a low point in the timeline of trendy transport items.
Who cares about hoverboards? Who cared about them at all? I can only assume this was the first thing that popped up when you searched up "2010s trends", did you have to use Google's advanced search for that one?
Loved: Epic Franchises
Raise your hand if you felt victimized by a long-running epic movie, television or book franchise this decade. "The Avengers"? "Game of Thrones"? "The Hunger Games"? "Star Wars"?! Everyone's hands should be up. Oh, the level of emotional investment is almost too intense to think about.
I'm not into any of these franchises, so HA. Anyways, screw Avengers and Star Wars in particular, I don't want to give Disney any of my hard-earned money at all, I hate those monopolistic cunts.
Loved: DoggoLingo
Doggos. Puppers. Borkers. Woofers. Cattos. Silly meme talk or a full-on embrace of the wholesome, childlike affections only animals can inspire? We vote that this elevated mode of animal baby talk, which went mainstream in 2017, is the latter.
I'm convinced that anybody who uses phrases like "boop da snoot" or "doggo" or "puppers" or "borkers" or "cattos" or "no step on snek" or "hekin chonkerino am doin hooman a hekin concern" or any other variation of them on a daily basis needs to check themselves into the internet equivalent of a mental hospital. Those phrases may be some of the most annoying ones I've ever seen online, I dislike seeing them. As a matter of fact, I used to be a frequent visitor of r/doggohate years back before I left Reddit.
Hated: Clowns
Remember in 2016 when the whole country was freaking out over a rash of unexplained (and mostly unverified) clown sightings? Or the following year when everyone weaponized that dark animus by forcefully and collectively declaring their ardor for Bill Skarsgard's portrayal of Pennywise in the rebooted "It" movie? It was a weird time. Let's not do that again.
What are you, 5? Were you really scared of a bunch of dumbass teens in crappy cosplay? Are you the type of person who sleeps with their lights on after watching a horror movie!? I loved watching those stupid clowns get their heads smacked with a shovel after tresspassing on someone's private property, endless hours of entertainment.
Loved: Old Town Road
It's okay to admit you didn’t understand what the big fuss was around "Old Town Road" when you first heard it. It's also okay to admit that, within days, you were kind of obsessed. A young gay black memelord from Atlanta taking over the country charts, bringing gymnasiums full of children to their feet and opening up important dialogues about genre gatekeeping? All with Billy Ray Cyrus making some legendary dad moves on the side? This was exactly the weird yet heartwarming thing we needed in 2019.
I hated that song
Hated: Pepe the Frog
Haha, memes are funny! Until they totally become racist. Pepe the Frog lived a very normal meme life right up until online trolls turned him into a green thing of hate in 2016. It got so bad his creator symbolically killed him off in 2017. Here's a tip: If a group of people start using something as ironic hate speech, it will eventually be used for unironic hate speech. Don’t act surprised.
Poor Pepe had a hard life back in 2016, but I'd argue that now Pepe's reputation is mostly repaired. If anything, most alt-right jackasses nowadays use those stupid soyjacks over Pepe.
Loved: Vine
Vine died the way Vine lived: Quickly and confusingly. The six-second video app was released in 2013 and quickly became a hub for hilarious, bizarre, amazing and truly absurd content. Seriously, there are multi-millionaires walking around now who got rich in those six-second increments. However, the platform was shuttered in 2016, and young weirdoes have been trying to replicate its chaotic energy ever since. For now, Tik Tok will do.
FUCK VINE. VINE IS EVIL!!! If this website had existed back in the mid-2010s, I probably would've made a VINE IS EVIL!!! page. For the Gen Alphas and granddads in the audience who don't know, Vine was a stupid app similar to TikTok where you'd upload short-form content. The videos on the app could only be 6 seconds long, which meant that "comedians" on Vine had to be as random, loud, and obnoxious as possible. If that doesn't sound bad, it was owned by Twitter too. Oh, and fuck TikTok too.