The internet got strange in 2014. Really, really strange. From skin-crawling GIFs to Slender Man and Sony hacks, this was the year that online life blurred the line between fiction and reality. We delved deep into the dark underbelly of the web to dredge up everything weird, wonderful and perverse about our virtual lives.
It's 2014, and social networks have finally wised up to the fact that not everyone likes being boxed into gender categories. Facebook got the ball rolling by introducing more than 70 gender options (including trans and cisgender) to their network, and Google+ went one better by inviting users to enter their own preferred gender identities in their profiles.
Internet memes can occasionally cross over into real life with very, very unexpected results. Slender Man, a popular online spook story, became all too real when two pre-teens attempted to kill a friend as a sacrifice to the bogeyman. Thankfully, there's a happy end to this story: the girl survived and even received an anonymous Purple Heart medal in the post thanking her for her bravery.
Slender Man has allegedly driven two girls to murdervia Deviantart / Ray Kanen
One step forward, two steps back. Queens all over the world threw shade at Facebook for suspending their drag accounts under its 'real names only' policy, calling on the social network to be a little more understanding about gender identity. Thankfully, it's since reinstated their accounts and apologised - but not before tonnes of users migrated to Ello, an alternative network.
While one newspaper claimed to have discovered the true identity of Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto (spoiler: they were wrong), maybe the biggest sign of Bitcoin's rise from unknown cryptocurrency to Pretty Big Deal was the fact that drug dealers in Europe had started stamping BTC logos into ecstasy pills. Seriously.
"Seriously, I've swallowed too many Bitcoins"www.pillreports.com
Meanwhile in 'skin-crawling viral GIF of the year' news, everyone went crazy for this image of Modern Family star Sofia Vergera wearing Emma Watson's face like a mask. Turns out that the truth is stranger than fiction – and it leads straight to the very Lynchian fetish subculture known as female masking.
Call it a viral success story. Las Vegas background voguer and spotlight hijacker Brendan catapulted to instant internet fame and landed the ultimate coup for any teen in 2014: a modelling contract with American Apparel.
Another internet subculture that emerged this year? 'Lifters', the Tumblr community of thieves who post images of their #fivefingerdiscount hauls. Slammed as the equivalent of The Bling Ring's middle-class teen robbers, the real-life lifters told Dazed that the truth wasn't so simple.
The Bling Ring group flaunt their stolen wares in the film
Forget the festival crowd call of 'coke-weed-pills-MD'. Enterprising online drug vendors are finding alternative ways to sell their stash on darknet marketplaces. So how do you attract young, tech-savvy buyers to your product? Easy: tell them it's fair trade and locally sourced.
Fair trade cocaine: bad for your nose, better for your conscience?Passetti via Flickr
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