“Just sayin’” became the new “I’m not racist but…”
Isis merged with Boko Harem to become a kind of jihadist McBusted.
‘Gentrification’ became a big thing. If an area got a posh coffee shop people used to say it was ‘going up in the world’ and this was usually considered a good thing. Now it’s generally looked down upon, as if the area had gone up, over and down the other side. There has even been a violent demo targeting a gimmicky hipster cafe because it sold overpriced bowls of cereal instead of the more traditional fare of overpriced fatty things. In an effort to restore some working class character to an area now dominated by annoyingly smug hipsters, Hackney council has announced an initiative to introduce ‘Chav Fridays’ promoting traditional East London activities such as prostitution, stabbing, casual racism and ‘having bananas’.
The gullibility of the human race continued to increase at an exponential rate with practically everyone on social media believing that if a picture is combined with some words this constitutes an unquestionable statement of truth (especially if they are bold white words on a black background).
Lots of people signed a petition for Jeremy Clarkson to keep his job, which must have been a huge annoyance for Jeremy Clarkson who was clearly looking for a more lucrative job elsewhere.
Water was found on Mars. Probes are now being sent to see if flight MH370 is there.
A terrible, horrific thing happened in Paris. However unlike previous terrible, horrific events such as 9/11 this one played on on social media. Rather than simply feeling shocked and saddened by these events everyone seemed compelled to share their shock, sadness and inevitably their opinion with the world. Facebook offered the option to ‘temporarily’ put a French flag overlay on your profile picture which was a nice gesture and also took away any concerns over the ease of reverting your picture back to the original once it had received enough likes. But this too became a source for debate with people pointing out that lots of tragedies happen elsewhere, and even sharing lengthy articles on the subject. People actually spent time writing articles about the ethics of a profile picture! Within days the whole thing had turned into a kind of tragedy Top Trumps reminding us, as if we needed it, that the world is full of very stupid people doing very bad things. In an effort to bring about peace, love and understanding John Lewis has already announced that next year’s Christmas ad will feature a football match between The Westboro Baptist church and ISIS, or IS, or ISIL or iSis® or whatever they’ll be called then.
Predictably the government decided that the most effective method to fight people committing terrible atrocities in Europe was to blow up with bombs any remaining bits of a far away country that hadn’t already been blown up with bombs. Some people did question the logic of the ‘blowing up with bombs’ tactic, pointing out that the enemy are quite keen on blowing themselves up with bombs.
America amused then ultimately terrified the rest of the world with the possibility that it might elect Donald Trump as its next president. His main rival is a retired neurosurgeon who, rather worryingly for any of his former patients, seems to know nothing about science.
Everyone was a bit surpassed to find that Lord Lloyd Webber was allowed to vote on something other that a reality TV show. The composer later claimed he was tricked into turning up to the Lords to vote in favour of taking more money from poor people so that he could keep more of his own, saying “someone telephoned and said they were filming a Christmas special of Oliver and I had to go and vote for George Osbourne to play Scrooge. I had no idea it was real, in fact I have no idea if anything is real anymore, especially my face.”
Things people forgot about in 2015 – Russell Brand, Ebola, The Ice Bucket Challenge, Jimmy Saville, Dapper Laughs, the Westminster peadophile ring, horse meat, Cecil the lion…