It has been a tumultuous year with every event – from the significant to the trivial being recorded faithfully by Twitter and other platforms. We look at the various trends and headlines that caught people's attention and imagination in this past year:
At long last, the Sanjay Leela Bhansali film Padmaavat was allowed to be released… after violent protests, threats of suicide and the dropping of an ‘i’.
Earlier this year, the PM made a remark in response to the charge that employment poll promises were not kept. This spawned memes and jokes galore; pakodanomics became a thing and pakodas are now the Indian equivalent of let them eat cake.
The horrific Florida shootings had everyone talking about the easy access Americans have to guns. It drew attention to how much Americans love their guns and the second amendment and to the way that the gun lobby finances politicians. Shootings continue and politicians continue to exist in their ivory towers.
In recent times, our media has become cowed; and unconcerned with being seen as a cheerleader for the government. This year it also lost all semblance of shame and taste after the mysterious death of actor Sridevi. The complete lack of empathy, the voyeuristic nature of the ‘reporting’, and the lascivious interest in the cause of her death were frankly disgusting.
Black Panther wasn’t just about finally giving the world a real African superhero, it was just a hugely watchable film. It helped really steer superhero films into the mainstream. The film was one of the highest grossing films of the year and went on to win numerous awards.
2018 was undoubtedly the year of fake news. From the President of the United States dismissing any story that he did not like as ‘fake news’ to the WhatsApp propaganda factory… fake news has been all around us.
There are all sort of ‘challenges’ this year, some of which prompted people to do good things and others that made people do really, really stupid things, such as the condom snorting challenge.
Incels is a contraction of involuntarily celibate – groups of men who blame women for not getting to have sex. Basically incels are men who have given themselves yet another reason to hate women.
Kanye West was in the news for all the wrong reasons: From controversially claiming that slavery was a choice to making nice with Donald Trump in a red MAGA hat!
We found out about new ways to stalk others. We found out about things like ghosting, breadcrumbing, benching, orbiting.... we found that dating is becoming just way too complicated"
Depression and other mental illnesses used to get breezy ‘try to think happy thoughts’ or insensitive ‘you just need to get out more’ types of reactions. We now know that these illnesses are terrible to live with, destructive and dangerous as well.
When Prince Harry and Meghan Markle got married, everyone was all agog! People wanted to know everything about the couple, the celebrations and everything else that went before it! We’ve only reached May 2018 so there will have to be part two of this post to complete the whole list of news and trend makers in 2018!
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