Every year has its abominable moments – this one was no different
2015 is an odd number, and it’s been an odd year. While progress has been made in some quarters – see the optimistic opponent to this article here – some really unacceptable stuff has gone down. It’s the same every year – the human race does some fairly normal things and they are lauded as spectacular because we’re so average to begin with. But rest assured my friends, each year we will plunge to new depths, each terrible action magnified by the fact that as we step into the future we should be getting better, not worse. Here are some bad things carried out by human beings in 2015. Disclaimer: We know worse things than this happened in 2015.
THIS AWFUL ANTI-GAY MARRIAGE VIDEO
People need to get wise to the fact that quite a lot of us think it’s cool for people who marry whoever they like. This shitshow is a platform for people with the temerity to "come out" that they’re against gay marriage, implying that there’s a similarity between confusion over your sexuality and confusion over denying someone else’s. There isn’t. Babes, the struggle ain’t that real.
THE TIDAL LAUNCH
I wonder if everyone present looks back on this day and it feels like a family gathering out that the brain is working tirelessly to erase. Just watching the live stream was awkward enough. Deadmau5, wearing odd Converse and his Mau5head, failed to shake Madonna’s hand, Alicia Keys was out there quoting Nietzsche, Calvin Harris was "beamed in" on Skype and the whole thing felt like a wake where no-one was quite sure who’d died.
LONDON’S HOUSING CRISIS REACHED NEW NADIRS
Fuck this city that I love. Estate agents Zoopla listed a property in West Kensington as a "compact mezzanine includes not only a fully furnished living area including table, chair, wardrobe and chest of draws but also a personal shower and kitchenette complete with storage". It’s actually just a cupboard with a shower under the bed and it will set you back £520 of your own money every month for the privilege to live there. It wasn’t an anomaly – there was also a shed in a living room listed, along with a place underneath some coats in Bethnal Green. Soon, everyone here will be a landlord, or dead.
HUNGARIAN MAYOR RELEASES DIE HARD-TYPE FILM WARNING REFUGEES NOT TO COME
The UK could have dealt with the refugee crisis far better than it did slash is doing, but some of Hungary’s authority figures went all out on the whole inhumanity thing. This video you can file under "would be funny if it wasn’t sad, but actually is still funny". The film, presented by the Mayor of Ásotthalom, a town on the border of Hungary, is a pseudo-cinematic warning to refugees not to enter the country that shamefully tries to double up as a trailer for a low-budget, low quality, low morals action film. Cameras linger on the classic signifiers of brutality – CCTV cameras, police vehicles, razorwire fences, men with guns and men on horses, while a tinny nu-metalish soundtrack plays in the background.
ICE BUCKET CHALLENGE, BUT WITH COCAINE
#RetoDelPasesito, translated to English as "the little pass challenge", is kind of like the "Ice Bucket Challenge" (remember that?) except instead of pouring cold water on your head, you do bumps of coke. Whereas the intention of the Ice Bucket Challenge was to raise money for charity, #RetoDelPasesito seems to have no endgame beyond just doing coke and asking your mates to do coke too. It’s hard to say that this went "viral", it being hard to say on account of the fact that not many people did it before it got shut down.
DRAKE VERSUS MEEK MILL
This beef just didn’t stop, it was an endless, strung out Bayeux Tapestry of beef, at the end of which Drake was celebrated at Lord Of The Memes, while Meek Mill came out of it looking, well, rather meek, despite arguably being the better rapper.
It all started when Meek Mill requested that people stop comparing him to Drake as Drake doesn’t write his own raps, which it’s rumoured that he doesn’t. Drake responded with "Charged Up", which is quite lowkey and haunting for a diss track. Still, it happened, and that’s the main thing – Drake needed to prove that he was a rapper that could rap. Meek wasn’t impressed, but didn’t respond immediately and Drake continued to fire disses out into the world while Meek went a little quiet. Eventually, he released a freestyle called "Wanna Know" but it didn’t cut the mustard and Drake somehow won, proving that spitting memes are just as important as bars in 2015 if you want to sell records.
GROWN ADULT HUMAN BEINGS PETITIONED FOR KANYE WEST TO BE TAKEN OFF THE GLASTONBURY LINEUP
Just think. Some of the people who were extremely angry about Kanye West headlining Glastonbury are fully grown adults who probably have mortgages and little cars and maybe even children that like Kanye West. The petition was set up by Neil Lonsdale from Kings Lynn, demanding: "cancel Kanye West's headline slot and get a rock band". A simple enough request. Lonsdale wrote, "we spend hundreds of pounds to attend glasto, and by doing so, expect a certain level of entertainment". But all he wants in place of the man who can legitimately lay claim to being the biggest rock star on the planet, is any "rock band". 136,000 people signed this petition. Anyway, he did headline and a comedian crashed the show to little acclaim or fuss.