Clickbait

If there's one thing that's destroying western civilization, it's ether a new rise in extreme political views, a lack of drive-thru Panda Expresses, or clickbait articles.

Or climate change, whatever Bill.

Personally I'm leaning towards the second option, but this about the third one and not the first two, hence the title.

So clickbait for those not in the know are a new fad of getting easy online revenue by buying ad space on popular websites and then posting A HEADLINE THAT IS THE BIGGEST GREATEST DISCOVERY OF MANKIND IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD AND YOU MUST CLICK NOW TO LEARN WHAT IT IS WHILE IGNORING THE FACT THAT ANY OTER NEWS OUTLET EXPECT FOR THIS WEBSITE YOU HAVE NEVER HEARD OF HAS NOT REPORTED ON IT AT ALL. 

Did the grammar seem a little off? Doesn't matter, your clicks matter. 

For example.

Depends on your body

Wasn't about a currency law.

Just plain bullshit

That's a photoshop.

That's just weird.

You know kids see these websites right?

Yeah it's called eating pure protein and doing nothing expect weight training.

It's called "exercise on a regular basis"

I doubt that it would involve throwing her over your shoulder and walking off with her.

You may be noticing a few trends

Yes, mostly they're about 1.) Some new bullshit food you can eat 2.) Some new bullshit exercise you can try 3.) Some new bullshit law that you have to learn about or 4.) How to get your ex back 

In "researching" this "article" (I would consider this blog and my habit of writing poorly written borderline insane rants on it as being of a more reputable source than the average clickbait website, therefore I shall compromise and use elevating adjectives in quotations) I chose to ignore the average run of the mill "how to fix your body and your problems" baits and instead go for the more interesting lures of something truly weird and out there. 

I'm a classy-ass fish.

So I then stumbled upon this little nugget.

hmmm.

Now this stuck me as interesting. Because never have a I really considered the financial techniques discussed in the Bible. I was always too busy looking into how half of it was stories of loving your neighbors and treating everyone equally and making the world a better place, and how the other half is just fucking weird. 

That is a quote from the King James Bible saying that women must bring their local priest two turtles on the eighth day after their period to be considered a part of the community again. 

So anyway my interest was piqued. I clicked the article, and for what happened next the only way to describe it is in the form of the illustration of an old Chinese tale about how old ideas conflict with new teachings in a way that may seem foolish at first, but you can come to realize the simplicity of the old ways may in fact be beautiful in their own perceptions.

It's "turtles all the way down" is what I'm alluding to.

First I was introduced to a relatively clean website with this headline. 

I know right?

As the story goes, a guy who talks about finances on Fox Business report and such bought a bunch of Best Buy stock when it was on the low end, and made a bunch of money when it went back up. Like how every piece of stock as ever done in the history of capital trading. 

Granted I'm no expert but those lines are showing something.

Purportedly the hot stock tip came from King Solomon himself, but the article isn't ready to give up the secret yet as to how to judge the ups and downs of the stock market and buy risky stocks only for them to serendipitously pay off when you have millions of dollars to play with in the first place.

But Sean here needs some street cred, he ain't no high end country club owner, he's a poor-ass middle-class American like the rest of us. Because he was only making $15,000 a year, and now he's making so much money he can give away $50,000 a year!

See! The words say it! Therefore it is true!

Anyway, short little side-note here. $15,000 is barely livable, if you're a single adult. So apparently this full grown man, who I'm assuming has a family, managed to find some extra cash to start playing the stock market, and is now giving away $50,000 a year? 

Which is probably more than O'Trumpette gives.

Ok I guess it's all about perspective. 

Continuing on, nothing in the article explains what the biblical secret is. But as you continue on it explains a blueprint of sorts that will, if you buy this limited offer, start making you money as the same day as purchasing. I guess if you wait until midnight you get a full 24 hours. I don't know it wasn't fully explained. So then we come to the video. Oh dear, the video. It begins as such.

"I'm counting this as my community service hours"

The video begins with a three-minute long monologue from a guy who needs to learn how to match the color of his shirt to the rest of his shirt. Honestly I really don't know where you can get a shirt like that. It's like his head is superimposed onto someone else's body and the director of visual effects forgot to make sure the wardrobe matched and the the SFX guys where too lazy for a post-production color match.

The three-minutes of talking head syndrome consists of the guy reading the entirety of the article you just read as an introduction to the video you are about to watch. 

At this point we have read an introduction to an introduction to the introduction. But it gets much worse. The man of the hour then begins speaking.

And all his cheap default fonty goodness

He then begins speaking for five more fucking minutes about his secret. In which he restates all of the "facts" already in the article, and the video intro, and his own intro to his intro, not once, not twice, but fucking three more times. 

I have now read the article, and have watched 8 minutes of video in which I have been told the same information half a fucking dozen times. 

So eventually he introduces his money making secret. In that it's still a secret and he's only introducing, by once again, telling us how he was making 15K and year and how he's giving away 50K a year.

He does this by presenting the idea of love of money, and money, and how it's only a tool and how men corrupt or something, I just, I can't.

Honestly the whole "Do guns kill people or people kill people" debate makes me want to put a gun in my mouth less than the the video did.

Here's a few screen caps from his narrated PowerPoint, for full effect, read "This is how I had gone from making $15,000 a year to giving a way $50,000 a year" Since by this point I had lost track of how many time he had said that.

Anyway, now 15 minutes in, my brain had become numb as he continuously teased me by saying that he will soon be discussing the biblical secret to go from making $15,000 a year to giving a way $50,000 a year. 

But what Sean Hyman didn't know was that I'm a film student, and if there's one thing I'm good at, it's figuring out where a movie is going, and his poorly executed story of financial gain was about to become undone. 

I realized that what he was trying to explain all a long, was to study to company you're buying stocks in and make informed decisions while choosing what company to buy stock in. You see King Solomon discussed how you must find the value in your money, and according to Paul you must learn not to love your money. 

See where I'm going with this? No? Well let me tell you how I went from making $15,000 a year to now giving away $50,000 a year. You see I made my father's $40,000 retirement plan into $396,000, and if that doesn't show that the secret that I discovered works, than I don't know what will. Other than the fact that I went from making $15,000 a year to now giving a way $50,000 a year. And you see....

"Your financial tips and anecdotal stories shall become a part of our collective, you shall become US, resistance to the IRS is FUTILE"

Moving on, let's get a quick brainwash from that madness.

Spoilers: the animal in the picture isn't real, nor in the article.

Funny thing about that one is that it lists botflies as one of the animals on the list, and apparently this ruffled some feathers in the comment section. 

Truly a hero for the ages.

Then there's just the weird stuff. 

Yeah uh, his vision is the least of his problems.

From the picture listed, I'd say I'm good.

I think you're missing a noun.

It's called the MVD here in Surprise, so pass.

Well they failed that.

If you do read some of these articles. And I really, really recommend that you don't, you may notice a trend. They're all written so that they say a lot (as in a lot of words) without saying anything. It's just paragraphs upon paragraphs of just restating the same thing over and over without any point, and some how it always ends up with a link to another website with the same content, yet written differently. 

Touché

I know there's a musical term for a looping crescendo that sounds like it is rising in volume or pitch but not actually rising but looping, (for example Turn Down for What right before the bass drop), but I can't seem to find the proper term, so instead, in layman's terms, reading Clickbait articles is like being that dog from the opening of Mulan. 

You know the one.

I guess what my frustration comes from is that there's people out there who writes the articles, and are paid some amount of money to do so, and I think I might be a little jealous of that, and two, that it's a sustainable source of income for the businesses running them, which means that people are clicking on them enough to generate ad revenue. 

And I honestly don't know what kind of people would do that. 

Other than me for the purpose of writing this. 

Ohhh those kinds of people. 

Ohh I'm now understanding who's in this demographic now. 

Yep, the internet will never be the same. Mainly because this is the last season of Parks and Recreation 

Please tell me...

    

2014

Coming out of 2013, which seemed like an OK year in retrospect, we were all heralding 2014 to be the best year to be alive on this planet. Considering 2013 was the year that North Korea conducted another nuclear bomb test, a meteor exploded over Russia showing that we all can die at any time because a giant rock from space happened to be crossing through the neighborhood, and Boston became the first US to be put under martial law to capture a domestic terrorist; in comparison 2014 was a pretty bad year.

Like meteors crashing into cities and North Korea testing nukes, would have seemed like light-hearted news in 2014.

So let's look at a year I think we can all agree that we'll all want to forget ever happened.

Which ruined a lot of New Years Resolutions before they even had a chance. 

So let's just go through last year's hell on earth as chronologically as possible. 

Starting off we had the Ebola epidemic in early February, which still has yet to be contained and has now killed more than 8000 people and infected another 20,000. 

And to counter-act this epidemic disease that is easily contained and treated if under modern circumstances, is the freak out as much as possible. 

Even Walter White came back from the dead to show concern

Yes because instead of having a conversation about how we're living in such a globalized and technologically driven society but there's still countries out there who don't even have access to clean water, which is the main problem facing the containment and treatment of ebola patients, we had to make the problem all about us. 

Well it happened in a Tom Clancy novel I think.

Nothing about how western society has gone out of its way to ruin Africa as much as possible since the Romans discovered boats, and maybe taking some of the blame for African nations inability to stabilize their own countries even after it was us who put them in those positions. You know like, saving lives or something? 

Oh I'm sorry, were you trying to put good into this world? Yeah here's a tent with a box to shit in. 

Of course what would be a truly American tragedy without Donald Trump's two cents into how it's all the liberals' fault. 

Yeah! I would give money to African aid like all those other billionaires, but that's just enabling them!

Oh shit, sorry, I forgot to put in a passive-agressive comment about my personal politics on a subject I know nothing about.

And the Ol' Trumper does bring up another thing that made 2014 a shitty year, 

No, we'll get to you. 

The US border "crisis". 

"Oh no people want to live here!" 

For those not in the know, during late 2013 and early 2014, the South-Western United States received a large influx of children coming from countries as far south as Venezuela and Panama. For those not in the know, that's an entire Mexico they had to cross. 

When converted into Metric that equals, a pretty fucking far ways to travel as a six year-old without a parent. 

Several thousands of kids showed up on the border and then started to turn themselves in because their parents told them that the police officers in America would protect them, unlike the police officers in the countries they were escaping. 

We'll get to you too.

And of course in keeping with American history, we all did what is printed on the bottom of the Statue of Liberty. 

"Unless it's an election year" 

And we told all those kids to go back to where they came from, not because we're racist, but because they might have ebola and/or be ISIS agents. 

"Hey we may support beheadings, slavery, the elimination of equal rights of women, anti-democratic values, suicide attacks, torture, and racism, but child soldiers is where we draw the line" 

My favorite anecdote from the War on Spanish Speaking Kids, was: 

"Well I couldn't tell what color their skin was from outside the bus" 

Adam Kwasman, in an effort to increase his bid for congress, stopped a school bus that he thought was transporting immigrant children to a holding facility, you know to really stick to all those small children who just traveled via riding on top of a train to escape their hometowns that had been over taken by drug lords who are being funded by American citizens, that they shouldn't be here. 

And I mean literally riding on top of trains 

And of course in truly American fashion, he has to claim victory before it happened. 

For those who can't read it, he says he saw "fear on their faces" 

Yeah, the fear you saw Mr. Kwasman is the fear of being verbally assaulted by some random dude with a megaphone and all you want to do is go to YMCA Camp and not be used as a political tool. 

I would bring up another case of using children as a political tool, but this happened back in 2010, which was still an objectively better year than 2014. 

I said "objectively" Greece, yes, 2010 was pretty shitty year for you. Don't have to riot about it.

Anyway, back to the more current past. Apparently this was all solved thanks to an executive action by the President that totally didn't cause any controversy whatsoever.

"It's not because we're racist, it's because it's an election year, wait, I mean it's because of that Declaration of the Constitution thingy."

Which apparently the entire US just flipped out over and started to riot over our executive branch's over-reach of power. Which totally reflected in our mid-term elections.

And that's back when only white people could vote.

So the executive action passed, and it helped put about 5 million immigrants on the path to citizenship in the next 5-8 years or so. And also had nothing to do with the thousands of children who crossed the border earlier in the year. 

They all got deported. Mostly to Honduras, which was named by the UN as "the murder capital of the world" 

But hey let's go back to a lighter note! 

"Oh it involves you Mr. Putin don't worry" 

Yes the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, the biggest frozen-shitfest in history, until Detroit's sewer system failed later in August. 

At least there wasn't wolves, unlike Sochi. 

And man, wasn't that just a fun roller-coster of events. 

It all started with the Anti-Gay Protests following Russia's new laws restricting the rights of homosexuals and restricting freedoms of speech.

"Gays like rainbow, rainbow full of color, in Russia, only gray or black with hint of red."

To the more or less genocide of all the stray dogs in Sochi that had over-run the uncompleted construction site.

Yeah I'm not making a joke here, that's just sad.

But hey you can always see a close cousin of the dog, you know, the Siberian wolf, they'll just walk right into your hotel. 

"I hear the Poles aren't very fast"

No need to worry about the wolves in the hallways though, since you won't be able to leave your hotel room anyway. Unless you punch your way out.

Turns out that it wasn't a design flaw, that's just how Russians open doors.

I wouldn't suggest using the toilets though, considering they're more there for show than anything else.

"In Russia we only make shit twice a year, we hibernate for rest of days."

Granted you also probably don't want to use the toilets, because they may be your only source of clean water.

People complaining about fracking making our water flammable? Yeah, it could be worse.

At least when you're stuck in the bathroom hiding from wolves trying to find out where to put your feces, you can have some bonding time with your new friend!

"When I heard Russia had loose personal privacy laws, I didn't think they meant this"

And of course what really matters every Winter Olympics, is who won the US-Canada Hockey match. This being the only time every four years that the US-Canadian Hockey rivalry flares up from friendly to this-might-mean-nuclear-war levels. 

Oh goddamnit

At least we did good overall right? 

Well at least we didn't lose to Germany this time.

Well Sochi was a bust, ball is in your court South Korea. 

Really pushing it to the extreme with that logo...

So what happened after the Olympics? Well more stuff involving Russia, human rights violations, and frozen disasters zones. The Ukrainian revolution! 

Yes the protests turned riots, turned full on government overthrow that claimed more than 100 lives in several days soon followed the Sochi Olympics. And in an example of how much 2014 sucked, that was the good part of the story. 

Also it gave us plenty of cool desktop backgrounds. 

Understand that this happened in the second largest country in Europe.

Also it all ended when "The Freedom Dozer" showed up (named coined by me)

So the country made a new government that seems to be more representative of the people, and Ukraine as made a lot of progress into weeding out corruption in the government and economy. Unlike all of those other revolutions in 2013 that are still being sorted out now. 

We'll get to you too.

So we now have a Ukraine that is kinda pissed off at Russia for that whole "supporting a government that actively went against the interests of the people" thing, and Ukraine became more pro-western than it had ever been before, and started bidding for a place in NATO. Which in Russian, NATO directly translates to "America's New Best Friend" and Russia can't have that, because much like Helga on Hey Arnold! Russia's only way of showing how much she secretly loves America is to be as mean to all of her friends as much as possible.

"I just want you to love me as much as I love your blue jeans and pop music"

So Russia "totes didn't" invade the Crimean peninsula in Ukraine and then "had nothing to do with" a Pro-Russian revolutionary force that then took over the area allowing Putin to "coincidentally" annex an area the size of Vermont. 

At least they didn't invade Georgia again. 

And "completely not backed by Russia even though there's mountains of evidence proving otherwise" Pro-Russian rebels continue to fight against the new Ukrainian government which has now claimed almost 4000 lives. Which gives it a 1-2 ratio with Ebola. 

Well then we had the Malaysian airlines flight crash.

No the other Malaysian Airlines crash

Yeah that one. 

Back in March of 2014 (yes we're only in March at this point) 239 passengers of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 died in a emergency landing somewhere in the Indian Ocean. Since at this point cable news was done with the child invasion of the US and Ukraine didn't cause World War 3, we turned our attention to how an international tragedy showing the flaws of modern air travel, has to do with how America is in danger. 

Oh thank God, I was worried there for a second. 

You now no one said anything about how it involved the US, Chinese, Australian, and Indian Navies all teaming up in an international effort, showing that we live in a world where we watch out for our fellow human beings, or focusing on how this tragedy deeply affected people all around the world, nope it was all "Could of been ISIS teaming up with the North Koreans and using the plane as a flying bomb full of airborne Ebola". 

Because it's not like there were people's families suffering or anything. 

And of course we had the other Malaysian Airlines crash, Flight 17 that was shot-down over Ukraine killing almost another 300 people. Which may or may not have been shot down by the Pro-Russian forces who may or may not have been using a Russian build surface-to-air missile. Contrary to all of the evidence showing that the Pro-Russian forces did use a Russian build surface-to-air missile system and stated as such until the Russians heard about the incident and claimed otherwise. 

"Honestly, it could of been anyone's."

And that brings us to April, where first we had the kidnapping of 276 teenage girls by terrorists in Nigeria. Which were later reported to be sold into sex slavery.

And much like #Kony2012, leave it to the internet to simplify a problem into a hashtag. Yes, this launched the "#bringbackourgirls" campaign. Which unlike the reactions to the all the other atrocities in the first of 2014, actually seemed to be gaining traffic in international concern, and then quickly died out as we found out that no one knows where the girls are other than "some where in that area of Africa" and that the Nigerian government wasn't making any progress with negotiations, other than lying by saying at one point that they have the girls back, which they didn't and have yet to.

Then later that same April a ferry in South Korea sinks killing 304 passengers, mostly high school students. Because life can always be worse, and it usually is.

The small bright side to that story is unlike the Costa Concordia sinking in 2013, the captain of the ferry took responsibility and turned himself in and admitted to his mistakes.

Also speaking of the Costa Concordia it was refloated in July and is now rusting in a harbor ready to be scrapped.

Hope the giant-ass rock he hit on "accident" was insured

But hey, May came around and that means a whole slew of Blockbuster movies to keep our minds off of all the deaths of children and blood diseases in the world. First one right of the gate was: 

A movie that opens with a plane crash, involves a blood disease, and ends with the death of a high school student.

Yes Amazing Spider-Man 2, which was supposed to save the new series of Spider-Man Movies from the chasm of "meh" that the first one fell into, was so received so bad that it put the entire future of one of the most iconic characters in the world into jeopardy. 

Granted the same thing happened in 2013.

As as we all recovered from the "Green Goblin Disease" (actual line in the movie, I'm not kidding) the World Health Organization told us all about how Polio was now considered an international health risk. 

I don't know about you, but I thought Polio went the way of the Spanish Flu and Smallpox, but no, there was enough outbreaks of Polio in 2014 for the WHO to state that is an international health risk. Oh and before May was over with, the same terrorist group that kidnapped the girls, detonated a bomb that killed 118 people. 

Speaking of Terrorists, in the first week of June, our new best enemies ISIS decided to strike like a cobra in waiting and took control of northern Iraq. This caused the deaths of at least 2000 people. And of course lead to more news stories about how the suffering of others is putting America at risk of collapsing any second now. 

Just don't listen to the CIA and its estimates about how ISIS is about 20,000 men strong.

You know it's not like some other western country was actually put under threat by ISIS, which we then used to justify scaring our own people with, not like there's any other human tragedy going on, it was 2014 after all. 

Nope, not in this American mid-term election.

Also in case you were wondering, by this point Ebola had killed a little over 200 people. 

But hey! All that death and destruction caused by a power vacuum and America's ignorance between the Sunni and Shia Muslims. 

Or you could blame Churchill.

Anyway the FIFA 2014 World Cup came around! And all of us Americans cheered! Because for some reason we like soccer all of a sudden. To the point where we started calling it football on occasion. Even though calling it soccer is one of the many strong cultural ties we have with Canada. 

Without Canada's innocence America would be without checks and balances, and without America's assertiveness Canada would still have the Queen's birthday off as a holiday.

 So yeah FIFA! That thing that happens every once in awhile that involves that tournament that doesn't make any sense, but we still watched it because America was kicking ass throughout, and by that I mean tying and barely losing every game. 

Nothing could go wrong with FIFA, it's like the olympics, countries coming from all over the world to celebrate sportsmanship and cooperation, ignoring the three major civil wars occurring in the world and the virus that is pushing back the development of the Western Africa economy by decades. 

Oh it's almost as if them writing the sign in English as supposed to their native Portuguese implies that the message is really for the richer English speaking countries than the predominantly Spanish speaking FIFA participants. 

So there was the FIFA protests in Brazil. For some reason the people of Brazil (which has the highest rate of homelessness in the Western Hemisphere, and one of the biggest housing shortages in the world) were mad that their government spend upwards of $11 Billion on building and housing the FIFA tournament in luxury stadiums that would then fall into immediate disrepair after the games were over because no one could afford to see games in them. Much like, say, almost every Olympic stadium ever. 

Hey it's just like being in Athens back in 2004.

And the Russians will be done with the Sochi Olympic Stadium in time for their bid in 2038

So yeah, FIFA had a lot of shady shit going on in the background, the US didn't make it very far, and Germany won. 

and the sight of thousands of celebrating Germans is always terrifying

Then we had another incident with the Gaza Strip. Honestly if there was a more depressing area of the world than the Gaza Strip, then it would be in North Korea. 

So, Hamas, a Pro-Palestian group may or may not have been involved with kidnapping and murdering three Israeli teenagers. There may or may not be a power struggle in the Hamas group, some members claim that committed the acts, other's do not. It's a very gray area in the middle of a tragic event. 

In response a Palestinian teen was found brutally beaten to death with his remains charred, Israel quickly investigated and arrested three suspects who later confessed. But this didn't help to decrease tensions, because in the opinion of the Palestinian President, Israel hadn't condemned the attack like how condemned the attack on the three Israelis earlier. 

This lead to increase tensions and Israel then cracking down on Hamas agents by arresting them, and then burning their houses down. Which lead to international outcry, because one of the hottest debates in the world that no one in the US knows about, is if Hamas is really a terrorist organization or not. 

This lead to further tensions, and then next thing you know rockets are flying in and out of the Gaza Strip, and Israel is leading an invasion force into it. Which lead to further international problems, as the US was trying to handle the Ukrainian situation while China and Japan were once again fighting over two little islands, at the same time that North Korea had started launching mortar shells into South Korea.

If you want to know where World War III is going to start.

Needless to say John Kerry had a busy weekend. 

"Does my face not look like I'm ready to kick some international ass?"

(Full Disclamer: That is from several years ago, John Kerry had some sort of accident while playing hockey, unfortunately it did not involve him boxing Putin for the fate of Crimea.)

After seven weeks of fighting the death toll was around 2,200. 

But to cheer things up the US started bombing ISIS targets in northern Iraq and began the process of creating a new coalition of countries to help stop the Islamic State from taking over all of the world, or just keep them out of Baghdad. Much like that other war we couldn't get out of for more than a decade. 

A coalition of allies of which only a handful of western powers involved are actually doing anything.

Sending in a few hundred "advisors" quickly followed by a few thousand more "more advisors"

Prolonged air campaign mostly against ground targets 

It's almost like nothing has changed since 2003, or 1963.

So yeah, we're bringing the fight back to ISIS. And depending on what headlines you're reading, we're ether winning and the war will be over soon, or we're all going to die. 

Still really depended on that mid-term election.

So let's jump ahead to November, half the world maybe on fire, but at least space isn't on fire, because of all that lack of oxygen and abundance of people to burn. 

This shirt is about to become very relevant. 

So in late 2014 humans made another step closer to finding out the origins of ourselves as well as the future of our species. 

A tiny little probe managed to land on a comet, first time a probe as done that to anything that wasn't a moon or planet, and took samples to record and send back to Earth to be studied. 

You go little guy! 

But this story then became a clash of three of mankind's greatest technological achievements: the internet, space exploration, and t-shirts. 

The story goes that a man by the name of Dr. Matt Taylor who was one of the leads on the comet landing mission did a press conference soon following the news that the mission was successful and wore this shirt. 

Relevance.

 Which then managed to piss off what seemed like, everyone. 

Apparently the shirt in question was a sign that women are actively discouraged from science in general.

Because science is just one big giant thing that people do.

Ok graph aside, yes women do on average make up a smaller portion of those working in scientific fields, with the few exceptions of biochemistry and other similar anatomical and biological studies. 

Is this due to women being discouraged or an overall a lack of female interest in more mechanically minded studies? Studies seem to show that women are less interested in mechanical engineering (space travel being a very advanced form), now is this due to being discouraged or a lack of female role models in the work force? Who really knows, but there is plenty of female role models. 

There was a woman in space the same year Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I have a dream" speech for reference. 

Now could the lack of female interest in science be caused by a lack of education about important female milestones in science be a symptom of how we only focus on who did things first, meaning the only female scientist we ever focus on is Marie Curie, who later died of radioactive poisoning from mishandling deadly isotopes? Honestly, that's probably it. 

Granted you'll occasionally hear about Rosalind Franklin who made critical discovers about the structure of DNA which later set the ground work for the last 100 years of biological science and helped increase the human life span by another 20 years. Unless you were taught about the men who then stole her work and took credit for it without mentioning her, since that was what was taught in American schools until fairly recently. 

If you live past 60, you literally owe her your life.

Anyway, back to the shirt that broke the internet.

Sorry Kim Kay.

The story behind the shirt is that it was made by a close of friend of Dr. Taylor who thought he would like it, and makes shirts similar to it (and the friend is rocking a pair of ovaries), so one could assume that the shirt was special to him so he chose to wear it on one of the most important days of his life. 

Then he later had to apologize for doing so and ended up crying while making a public statement. 

Congratulations interent, you made a grown man cry. 

And yes there was the discussion of the hypocrisy that those angered by the clothes he wore are also the ones that get angry about people who blame rape victims for the clothes they wear. 

Because adding rape to any discussion just really brings out the best in people. 

It's practically the brownie batter that holds us all together.

(Sidenote: Don't compare being harassed on the internet for a few weeks to the lifelong emotional trauma of being raped, nor compare rape to brownie batter)

(Sidenote to the Sidenote: Don't blame victims of rape on the clothes they wear, actually, don't blame rape victims in general)

Just to end that off, here's his wikipedia page, which will forever look like this. 

Granted he is probably is the only person to have "shirt controversy" listed as a subject on his wikipedia page.

Rolling into December, we got the US normalizing relations with Cuba. 

Which then caused controversy since the Cuban-American vote in Florida helps decide elections, and since 2016 is just around the corner, we can't have that happening. 

Incase you're wondering, the Cuban-Americans who's votes are up to grabs are assumed to be those who don't want the normalization of relations. 

In the mean time if you want to vacation on a small Spanish speaking Caribbean island with a complicated history with the US, there's always Puerto Rico.

In all seriousness though...

We really need to rethink this whole off-year-on-year election cycle.

Then with three days left to go on December 28th, another airline crashed killing another 162 people. This time it wasn't Malaysian Airlines, who have got to have the record for worst PR disaster in a six-month period. 

This time it seems that it was just a freak storm that caused the crash. Which really goes to show how much 2014 sucked, it's weird that bad weather crashed a plane and not terrorists, civil wars, or black holes.  

I can't stress this enough. 

Then just to finish things off, on New Years Eve of 2014, four people in Brazil were killed in a freak lightening strike. 

"Because Fuck You!" - XOXO 2014.

And thus ended one of the worst years of the past 14 years. Because to highlight how much of history sucked, the 20th century was the most peaceful century in human history. 

You know the one where we developed the technology that could wipe out the entire human race in a three day weekend. 

2014 is still marginally better than any year in the past 100. 

"But what about the 90's?" you say, finally speaking up out of the small box you've hiding in for the past 20ish days. 

Oh the 90's? You mean the decade that had not one but two genocides that amounted to almost 1/10 of the death count of the Holocaust?  

Yeah great times. 

As the Soviet Union collapsed under its own weight the US was too enthralled with 1990's Captain America to see how everywhere else in the world was quickly going to shit.

Anyway a few highlights from 2014.

Uhhh. 

The movies were good. 

Mainly the ones with Chris Pratt in them. 

There was some good music too. 

Mainly the ones with Taylor Swift in them.

Video games? 

Ehhhhhhhhhhhh maybe next year.

*achem* 

Oh shit, almost forgot. 

Look it's getting late writing this post I'm going to summarize the Hands Up Don't Shoot debate real quick, because honestly, this probably makes me the most sad out of everything else that happened last year and I don't want to dwell on it.

In short. 

You can't deny that there is issues of police officers in America treating black citizens with more aggressive behavior than white citizens. 

You can't deny that more black citizens in America are wrongly convicted and given harsher sentences than their white counterparts. 

You can't deny that this has been a problem in the US since about 1654.

Because these are facts. You can Google them.

You can't compare black on black crime or black on white crime to police brutality.

Because that's comparing POLICE OFFICERS to MURDERERS. Hence why a gang member killing a police officer isn't the same as a police officer killing an unarmed black man, because gang members kill people, that's kind of their job description, police officers protect people, because that's their job description. 

You don't deserve to die for supposedly stealing a sandwich, and you don't deserve to die for selling loose cigarettes outside of your store. 

You do deserve to go to prison for choking out and then causing the death of a man who in no way physically assaulted you outside of saying "stay away from me".

Also saying that black people in America should focus more on the epidemic of father's leaving their children than police brutality, is kind of racist. 

Yes, 67% of African American homes are those of single parents, but 25% of white homes being single parent isn't much better. 

Also comparing who has the highest percentage of children more prone to crime due to the situation in the household isn't a fucking competition nor is it an excuse to ignore issues of race in the this country's legal systems. 

So in closing. 

Everyone just fucking hug each other.