I’ve pretty much done one of these round ups every year since the early 2010s. Last year I skipped it because the world was so awful. This year the world is even more awful but, fuck it, I’m going in.
If someone had said back when I started these that this would be how things turned out I would probably have thought them insane. Invasion, genocide, fascism, tyrants, racism, misogyny – you know all the stuff we were generally told was bad growing up, all seem to be normal now. It all started falling apart after Bowie died, or perhaps that was the day I fell into an alternate universe. This godforsaken one!
“It’s all gone Greek Dave!”
Greek tragedies would often feature a ‘Deus Ex Machina’ (God from the machine) – basically everything goes tits up and there seems like no way to escape an imminent disaster but then at the last minute the Deus rocks up to save the day in an entirely improbable way. Given that humanity has now well and truly entered its ‘tits up’ era have we unconsciously sleepwalked into to thinking AI will be the godlike machine that magically swoops in and solves all of our problems? Humans have certainly proved themselves incapable of behaving in a sensible manner. The hope is that AI will suddenly become self aware, realise what a shitshow humanity is, and say in a Pyhthonesque tone “stop it, this is getting silly” then fix it so that we all find ourselves living in a futuristic utopia being attended to by the kind of robot manservants we were first promised on Tomorrow’s World back in 1976. The reality is that our new algorithmic overlords will probably just think “what a bunch of morons, let’s nuke the place.”
That hasn’t stopped the entire stock market placing all its eggs in the AI basket. Imagine the profitability of replacing all your human workers! Maureen from accounts is now the Maureenbot 9000. ‘Codeboy’ Kevin now the Kevincode System 2.0. However, given that market trading is basically gambling for posh boys, a task which algorithms can perform infinitely better, the very people investing in AI will no doubt find themselves on the scrap heap very quickly too, and all that will remain as the last flesh and blood vestige of power and influence is the singular worst type of human to have evolved in the 21st century… the Tech Bro.
I mean really – where did all these Tech Bros come from? It makes the 80s comedy Revenge of the Nerds feel like a documentary. They’re so fucking weird. Zuckynerd attempted a human-like makeover which was about as convincing as Russel Brand’s conversion to Christianity. Alex Karp is the kind of guy you imagine kidnapping a school bus and making the kids sing ‘Baby Shark’ over and over again at gunpoint. Peter Theil looks and sounds like he should be starring in a Hills Have Eyes reboot. Elon Musk has now sired 14 mini Musks – presumably he’ll keep having them until he finds one that doesn’t hate him. These are the people that run the world. Deus Ex Machina help us all!
Here in the UK 2025 was the ‘Year of The Flag’. There was a point when all corners of this green and unpleasant land were proudly festooned with Temu Union Jacks or a badly painted George Cross. Up and down this sceptred isle legions of proud patriots armed with nothing more than ladders, garden ties and paintbrushes were ‘taking back are country’, our at least our mini roundabouts, from gangs of marauding infidels holed up in Travelodges and defunct Pontins holiday camps. The flags acted as a kind of talisman, warding off Shakira laws with the Arthurian power of red, white and blue. Even my local cafe changed its name from The Laughing Sausage to The Flag & Ham. I asked what was on the menu and a theme emerged…
“Egg and flags
Egg, bacon, and flags
Egg, bacon, sausage, and flags
Flags, bacon, sausage, and flags
Flags, egg, flags, flags, bacon, and flags
Flags, sausage, flags, flags, flags, bacon, flags, tomato, and flags
Flags, flags, flags, egg, and flags
Flags, flags, flags, flags, flags, flags, baked beans, flags, flags, flags, and flags”
I guess if AI ain’t gonna save us, flags will.
Yet take heed ye flag waving dolts from the redoubtable Samuel Johnson who said “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Actually, there is one refuge after that but to be fair to Johnson even he was unlikely to have had the foresight to predict THE VERY LAST REFUGE OF ALL…
…YouTube
Joining the Tubian ranks of ‘journalist’ Tommy Robinson, ‘comedian’ Katie Hopkins, Dan ‘Martin Branning’ Wootten and ‘rapey wapey Christian’ Russel Brand was none other than ‘Lettuce Liz’ – Britain’s shortest serving Prime Minister. Apparently she’s been stitched up by the shadowy organisation known only as The Deep State, and ‘Woke’. Fortunately their tendrils don’t reach as for as Google so she’s bravely able to start her own YouTube channel and tasked a 15 year old on work experience to produce videos with doom laden titles like ‘London is Falling’ or ‘Whatever Happened to Pork Markets?’ So far ratings have been poor so I’m expecting she will soon start making ASMR videos in which she whispers “that is a disgrace” repeatedly for 10 hours straight.
Undoubtably the award for most ridiculous spectacle of 2025 must go to Donald Trump for receiving a completely different award – none other than the prestigious and entirely made up Fifa Peace Prize. A trophy forged not from iron but from 100% pure irony. The award is to the Nobel Peace Prize what the Razzies are to the Oscars, but with absolutely zero self awareness or humour. If Donald’s Trump’s contribution to world peace was a movie it would be Cats, Freddy Got Fingered and Battlefield Earth all rolled into one.
In another death knell for the world as we know it iconic film studio Warner Bros has been bought out by pile of streaming shite Netflix. Expect to see some reboots of Warner Bros classics popping up on the small screen soon such as: ‘Ricky Gervais is Rick in Casablanca!’, ‘A K-Pop Orange’, Nigel Farage in ‘The Brexorcist’, ‘Rebel Wilson Without A Cause’, and ‘The Shining’ sponsored by Jet2holidays. All of which will be mediocre enough so you can safely have them on in the background whilst doomscrolling on your smartphone.
Assorted dictionaries announced their words of the year for 2025 including ‘rage bait’, ‘AI slop’, ‘parasocial’ and ‘6-7’. All of these signify disillusionment with the digital age, except perhaps ‘6-7’ which seems to have no real meaning and was described by Dictionary Dotcom as “meaningless, ubiquitous, and nonsensical.”
Sums it all up really.
6-7 and out.
The Jase