Oh man, you don’t? I remember the Mayan calendar 2012 thing, and how at the end of 2011 people were like “maybe it’d be better if the world did end next year.” And then at the end of 2016, I think largely with the run-up to and fallout from the election in the US, people were posting stuff like “hey don’t say 2017 is gonna be your year, we don’t need to tempt fate like that, just be really quiet and make no sudden moves.” We’re around the same age, so I dunno, maybe I was just too online then.
2011 was the first year I remember that kind of doomerism around New Year’s Eve. I feel like I remember 2012-2015 being pretty normal, but then it got super amped up in 2016 (understandably) and we haven’t really had a “normal” (non-doomish) New Year’s since.
Sure, but the Mayan calendar stuff was a fucking joke. The only people who took that seriously were already batshit or the media. Everyone else treated it like a fun distraction. Same thing for Y2K.
Having lived through 2011, I just don’t recall that doomerism being culturally pervasive at all. A subset of people have been pining for the end times for millennia
To be clear, I’m in my 40s. As far as I’m concerned, my years have been way too complex to classify any single one of them as the “worst.” I’m talking about internet reactionary doomerism, which keeps on proclaiming every single year as “the worst year ever,” since 2011 but especially since 2016. It seems like our culture at large should stop making such huge, binary statements like that. Some years can just be bad, or decent, or good. They don’t all have to be (and can’t all actually be) the best or worst; and you probably won’t be able to identify the actual peaks or valleys until you’re able to look back on them with some greater perspective anyway.
Having lived since the early 80s, I don’t recall any years prior to 2017 being “the worst year ever.”
Oh man, you don’t? I remember the Mayan calendar 2012 thing, and how at the end of 2011 people were like “maybe it’d be better if the world did end next year.” And then at the end of 2016, I think largely with the run-up to and fallout from the election in the US, people were posting stuff like “hey don’t say 2017 is gonna be your year, we don’t need to tempt fate like that, just be really quiet and make no sudden moves.” We’re around the same age, so I dunno, maybe I was just too online then.
2011 was the first year I remember that kind of doomerism around New Year’s Eve. I feel like I remember 2012-2015 being pretty normal, but then it got super amped up in 2016 (understandably) and we haven’t really had a “normal” (non-doomish) New Year’s since.
Sure, but the Mayan calendar stuff was a fucking joke. The only people who took that seriously were already batshit or the media. Everyone else treated it like a fun distraction. Same thing for Y2K.
It was a joke, but the doomerism about that year was using that joke to say something real about 2011. That’s what I’m saying.
Having lived through 2011, I just don’t recall that doomerism being culturally pervasive at all. A subset of people have been pining for the end times for millennia
Seems like the “first bad year” is based on when in your life you became conscious of the things happening around you.
To be clear, I’m in my 40s. As far as I’m concerned, my years have been way too complex to classify any single one of them as the “worst.” I’m talking about internet reactionary doomerism, which keeps on proclaiming every single year as “the worst year ever,” since 2011 but especially since 2016. It seems like our culture at large should stop making such huge, binary statements like that. Some years can just be bad, or decent, or good. They don’t all have to be (and can’t all actually be) the best or worst; and you probably won’t be able to identify the actual peaks or valleys until you’re able to look back on them with some greater perspective anyway.