My 2021 Year In Review

My 2021 Year In Review

David Shen, News Editor

2021 was a volatile year in American history however it was a marked improvement from 2020. From January to the start of December, let’s recall the most controversial and notable events that have happened in 2021.

 

In January, there was the presidential Defeat of Donald J. Trump and the subsequent attack on the Capitol building on January 6th, which led to Trump’s second impeachment for the incitement of an attempted insurrection. There was also the GME short, in which investors held their stock to cause financial consequences for major hedge funds. 

In February, there was the Winter Storm Viola in Texas that took out electricity for a few days and put on a boil water notice due to microscopic parasites in the water from February 13-17. 

In March, there was the St. Charles Bend strike that lasted from March 4-17. There was also the Stop Asian hate in response to Covid-19 appearing in Wuhan China, the Orange California office shooting on March 31, killing 4 people. And finally the resurfacing of the meme parody “Chug Jug with You”, an American Boy parody created by the YouTube creator “Leviathan”.

In April, Joe Biden, had a joint session of congress on April 28th. Four days before the joint session of congress, there was also the intense mock fight of the Joshes, in which a 5 year old boy, named Josh Vinson Jr., won the event and was crowned with a Burger King coronet as well as a replica AEW World Championship belt.

May was very hostile in which there were many natural disasters. There was the Copper Canyon fire in Arizona, the Johnson Fire in New Mexico, the Palisades Fire that took place in California, the Tussock Fire in Arizona again and several tornadoes in the Midwest. Aside from that, TikTok has created the viral sheesh meme originated from @meetjulio in which TikTokers would point to their arms and “sheesh” in response to something good or exciting, harmonizing with other people or just unironically gesturing good will.

June was also a very hostile month in terms of natural disasters, there was the Backbone Fire in Arizona, the Bear fire, also in Arizona, the Johnson Fire in New Mexico, My Complex Fire in Montana and many more.

July was very aggressive in natural disasters such as wilder fires, but there was also the Western North American heat wave that affected the western United States from June to mid July. The heat wave affected Northern California, Idaho, western Nevada, Oregon, and Washington in the United States, as well as British Columbia, and, in its latter phase, Alberta, Manitoba, the Northwest Territories, Saskatchewan, and Yukon, in Canada. It also affected inland regions of central and southern California.

Though August still had wildfires, it was not as violent as July. For the meme side of August, there was the Dom Toretto family meme inspired from the Fast and Furious franchise in which the meme was created due to the frequent messenger of “family” and what it truly is. In which the joke involves the joke teller in a hypothetical predicament and casually mentioning family, in which Dom Toretto would appear and help the joke teller as an object or himself speaking on the importance of family.

September was a very interesting month for the meme community, on September 1st, user @Jugg4elias captioned a video of himself showing a box of disposable masks that was claimed to be “stolen.” This video had a very basic concept of where you would steal an object from school, no matter how lucrative it was and calling it a diabolical/devious lick. Many people resonated with the idea of stealing, where they would steal entire stalls and toilets from the restroom and would force the school to take action against the TikTokers. This meme would also spawn the “Angelic Yield” meme in where the person filming, would do the complete opposite of the “devious lick” and “drip out ” the public restroom of where the person filmed with various items such as TVs, food, and clean the restroom; restocking the soap dispenser sometimes.

October was also a very interesting month. On October 2nd, there was a women’s march held in protest of the recent abortion law in Texas. Several cities in Texas held events. In Austin thousands gathered on the lawn of the Texas Capitol building, where speakers included Cecile Richards, a Texan and former president of Planned Parenthood. Marches also took place in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. October also spawned a variety of memes such as the Rock Rap and  Super Idol meme, the modern version of the “Rick Roll” meme where user @Zmcmtianyiming from Douyin (Chinese TikTok) uploaded a video of himself singing the Super Idol song and splashing water at the camera. This meme would be inspired from the Xue Hua Piao Paio and the Social credit meme.

On November 5th, a fatal crowd crush would happen during the first night of the Astroworld Festival where in total, 10 people died. The music event owner and performer Travis Scott, also known as that one guy who made a burger made of him at McDonalds, would continuously keep rapping, even though the crowd would keep telling him to stop due to people suffering from the injuries from the crowd crush. On November 7th, Travis Scott would post a video of himself apologizing for the ordeal and constantly wipe his forehead. This lead to many people criticizing the black and white filter on his story and questioning the fact of why he was wiping his forehead constantly. The apology video would inspire TikTok parodies of people either parodying the apology, or using Travis Scott’s face to express displeasure of grievances of petty things such as running out of toilet paper or looking sick.