2014 seemed to go by in a flash. It was a strange year for me, but one constant remained: I spent a lot of time on the Internet. Here’s some of my favourite discoveries.
Funniest video: “Mr Needlemouse”
5 minutes of comedy sketch perfection. “Fuck limpets!” Up there with the very best, yet criminally underviewed.
Honourable mention: Faramir Can’t Read Maps. Technically it was published at the end of 2013, but it gets a mention here because I crack up every time I’ve watched it and it’s so expertly done. It also means there’s yet another scene in Lord of the Rings that I can no longer take seriously.
Best music video featuring Star Trek TNG and sausages: SAUSAGE SAMBA
not a hotly contested category to be honest
Funniest piece of writing: The Wikipedia Entry for Guam, Retold as a YA Novel
Pushing confusing thoughts of United Airlines’ broad back muscles and status as a subsidiary of Chicago-based Continental Holdings aside, Inarajan looked up and realized they had arrived at their destination: The forbidding edifice that was the Duty Free Shoppers Galleria. She suppressed a shiver. Her very first non-binding Presidential straw poll. Surely she would not survive.
Bizarre and accurate and amazing and hilarious.
Best subreddit: /r/AskHistorians
Still endlessly fascinating, and responsible for reigniting my interest in history. A close contender was /r/DeepIntoYouTube, which is also endlessly fascinating but in entirely different ways.
Best artist: Chris (Simpsons artist)
How could it be anyone else?
Best Twitter bot: how 2 sext
WikiHow’s odd articles have often been a source of amusement. Even more so when how 2 sext tweets random snippets from it formatted as sexts.
Most horrifying Twitter: @BadSonicFanArt
The Internet can be a horrifying place. @BadSonicFanArt is a constant reminder of that. As the name suggests, it just tweets and retweets examples of the worst Sonic fan art. There’s genuine works and parody all mixed up in there, and some sort of fan art Poe’s law makes it difficult to tell which is which.
Best blog: Diamond Geezer
Yes, he writes a few long posts about bus journeys. Sometimes even I skip those for lack of time.
But skipping the occasional post hardly matters since you can be certain there will be another one along like clockwork the next day, and it’s very likely to be informative, amusing, or both. That’s why it’s generally the first site I check every day. I’m pretty sure the blog has never skipped a day, and he’s been posting for 12 years! A remarkable record.
Since I’ve moved to London, this blog has taught me a huge amount about the city and my local area. And I’m sure it will continue to do so in 2015 and beyond.