is 2016 the worst year in human history?

lol

Well curated

For me, personally, terrible. Nothing to do with Donald Trump, nothing to do with rock stars dying.

voted 1864, awful year both in human history and for me personally

yeah good list. Voted Black Death, but 1492 is a pretty good answer.

dude you forgot the year that kurt died

Yeah but isn't his death part of the Rwandan genocide, when you think about it

1520 blew chunks.

The Black Death was pretty bad iirc

hmmm, black death, smallpox, genocides, nazis, crusades...or the year bowie and prince died

I'm assumuing no Christians would claim 30 was a bad year.

they didn't call it the "Great" Leap Forward for nothing

Making the Leap Forward Great Again

Two Sacks is one two many imo.

1968 I'm thinking is the most important to our modern sensibilities.

*serious face* anybody arguing against the Holocaust has got a tough case to make in terms of impact on human history i think

personally the destruction of the library at Alexandria has always felt like an enormous tragedy/crime tho, only mitigated by the possibility that what was lost was exaggerated

slave trade maybe the biggest crime of the lot but its ultimate outcomes are mixed in terms of history of humanity i think

gorta

Terrible stuff, good poll

Went with 1492, Spanish conquistadors are so nightmarish

gorta another horrible crime with eventually mixed results for humans as a whole

2016 is the year five years and purple rain officially became the reality we're living in, and bowie and prince checked out before we could ask them to write songs about what's next.

ie, it's over

lol weed

jameson, actually

That was me second guess ;-)

2016 is the year five years and purple rain officially became the reality we're living in

Not sure about that, Bowie's prediction of the start date of World War 3 was off by ~38 years at least:
Aladdin Sane (1913-1928-197?)

You say you want a leader
But you can't seem to make up your mind
I think you better close it
And let me guide you to the purple rain

seemed pretty relevant, in the "fuck this human ezperiment, let's call the whole thing off" sort of way

so true!

haha i was about to put 'but no one is actually saying this?' then i googled it & found i was v v wrong

well tbf google hits from 1954 are somewhat rare

personally the destruction of the library at Alexandria has always felt like an enormous tragedy/crime tho, only mitigated by the possibility that what was lost was exaggerated

yeah. things get lost, broken and burned all the time, and when we do find past knowledge or preserve it, we either turn it to our own ends or good bits of it end up preserving ignorance of past as received wisdom (hello galen).

was just reading about drunk soldiers shooting at the ankles of passers by in a cellar bar in 17th Germany, and people being forced to drink boiling shit as torture in 30 Years War, but it's hard not choose Holocaust.

Progressivists don't always seem to have the capacity to understand that things can become progressively bad. The 20th Century administrative and infrastructure frameworks helped expediate the programmatic slaughter of peoples.

On this "progressivist" basis however (and with all our new and wonderful globalising weapons and structures) the world as it is very much has the capacity to deliver the worst year ever very soon.

Rooting for 2017. I more see 2016 as the equivalent of the drag racing start line smoke, nitro and burning rubber, before the actual fun starts.

Nothing can touch the GLF for the sheer rapid death toll but the Cultural Revolution probably wasn't far off - albeit over a longer timescale of horror.

List could've done with the inclusion of the 2004 tsunami, that wiped out 230.000 people, for good measure. But it wouldn't be right if this poll threw up a winner that wasn't caused by humans themselves tbf. Hard to not vote for the holocaust indeed.

voted an lushan rebellion (reports of 36 million dead are not considered reliable due to the COMPLETE COLLAPSE OF SOCIETY in the rebellion's wake), but i would add:

1755: lisbon earthquake
1945: hiroshima, nagasaki
1975: start of cambodian genocide

i would also argue the negative perception of 2016 comes from the perception that absolutely _nothing good has happened_ this year. so 1943 is a terrible, terrible year in human history, but if you're russian you can point to the soviet victory at stalingrad as a source of hope and comfort. in 2016, by contrast, you have democracy completely and decisively crushed as a global political force by ethnocentric fascism, but, uh... the cubs win the world series?

I'd err more to the side of the argument that the 36m figure is probably erroneous and caused by the breakdown of the census system. But if if it was correct it would be staggering by 8th century standards, wouldn't it be approx the third of the world or something?

Read a book by Rui Tavares recently that suggested the Lisbon earthquake provoked a sea change in Portugal (and consequently Europe at large) away from viewing natural disasters as the wrath of God against sinners and towards urban planning/prevention strategies.

Voting on Monday, after Austria’s presidential election and Italy’s constitutional referendum.

very tempted to vote 1200 BC for the bronze age collapse but went with spanish conquest of americas/smallpox. not just death but close to a total civilizational extinction, enormous impact on world history. mongol conquests, black death, 1917, 1943 all heavy on doom but there's been more of a sense of recovery.

1864 is a bit of a dark horse, as it also has the end of the American Civil War, and the Paraguayan War didn't really get devastating until later. But it's the year where North America, South America, Europe (Second Dano/Prussian War) and China (Taiping Rebellion) are tearing themselves apart. Wordwide violence for some weird reason.

Personally speaking It's been the worst year of my life, hands down, so yeah 2016

no ilx comps this year, so deffo 2016

2003 - sufjan stevens begins his 50 states project

44 BC was great cos it finally gave stabbing victims a clever dying repartee

Pretty much the beginning of the end in 1440. All downhill from then.

Voted 30 Years War, mostly to remind myself to finish reading that book.

no ilx comps this year, so deffo 2016

― ^ 諷刺 (ken c), Saturday, December 3, 2016 1:25 PM (fifty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

had the idea of an ilx comp of 'the worst songs we can think of'

"Sack" lol

Back, Sack, and Crack of Rome.

thinking of Khia now for some reason

stunning lack of non-western history here - write in vote for 210 BC, the burying of the scholars

upon further reflection i am changing my vote to 200,000 B.C., when homo sapiens sapiens evolved from archaic humans

it's sad, ppl in 1346 never even got to hear Bowie and Prince

ppl rly bad at reading thread title questions

um I factored in human history

it's sad, ppl in 1346 never even got to hear Bowie and Prince

― lettered and hapful (symsymsym), Saturday, December 3, 2016 10:06 AM (forty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is so great. we are blessed to have been alive during the reign of Bowie and Prince.

and also, not the plague.

the death count for plagues since 1346 has to be somewhere in the hundreds of millions

http://dailypicksandflicks.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/how-very-interesting-come-closer-and-tell-me-more-tiger.jpg

1945: hiroshima, nagasaki

this was on the original list but it got deleted and when i reconstituted it i forgot to add it

stunning lack of non-western history here - write in vote for 210 BC, the burying of the scholars

stunning lack? i made sure to include a lot of non-western history.

xxp Up to 500 million from small pox in the 20th century alone.

i did not like this year very much! but i'm lucky i had a great thanksgiving

voted the midnight of the century

2009 - GAPDY

a scholarly friend told me at the British Museum last week that the Alexandria Library thing is mythical/exaggerated

i'm sure it's exaggerated, it's just the perfect fairy tale of regret for bibliophiles and people who hate Christianity

it wouldn't be right if this poll threw up a winner that wasn't caused by humans themselves tbf.

― Le Bateau Ivre

Yeah, I kind of feel like my opinion of "the worst year in human history" falls more toward the revelation of how awful humans are/can be, rather than natural disasters befalling them.

would consider adding 1941 as well for Operation Barbarossa. you could honestly make a case for every year of WW2.

just remembered that as well as some 80s pop stars dying 2016 was the year the Premier League was stolen by a gang of mercenary drug abusers who cheated their way past the noble corinthians who normally contest the title so maybe throw that in the scales

kin right mate

without being too callous about it's humungous death toll, the Taiping Rebellion sounds fucking epic and the Hong Xiuquan backstory is very compelling. Deffo need a good book on this one.

The Crusades were fucking stupid and vile and went on for yonks too and, er, remain current.

After considering the Black Death plumped for 1943.

ppl be fighting other ppl for money or cos different can we be getting over this pls

a scholarly friend told me at the British Museum last week that the Alexandria Library thing is mythical/exaggerated

― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius)

a lot of stuff here is exaggerated. nobody even knows for sure _when_ the library was destroyed! (they could have looked it up in a library, but...)

the "burying of the scholars" is dubious in kind of the same way. that's the thing with ancient history- you have a serious lack of reliable sources.

The disasters in communist countries have a sickening irony about them -- alleged "worker's movements" rooted in a political tradition derived from hegel and the enlightenment leading to wholesale extermination of communities -- that make them harder to grasp than the holocaust, which emerged out of an ethno-nationalist movement that, from the start, would have seemed sinister from my own perspective. The disaster of global communism also seems to have crushed any energy human beings might have had for collective action, especially on a global scale, which is a shame as climate change is on the verge of swallowing our fragile civilization if nuclear war doesn't get to us first.

Still voted for the Holocaust.

i don't see why the failure of communism would be any more permanent than the failure of fascism was.

Idk if we need communism, just an understanding that the prerogatives of profit shouldnt outweigh that of survival. That and kill all rich people.

note to future communists: avoid mass collectivisation plans unless you have an amazing food distribution system and shitloads of grain in reserve

and an actual will not to let masses of your population starve to death.

That Platt book on the Taiping Rebellion looks a good un. Could anyone advance a better option?

it's funny to imagine someone in the siege of leningrad or whatever being like "1941 is just the worst!"

"oh god not Paderewski too fuck 1941 man will this year never end"

http://www.biography.com/people/groups/died-1941

this shits on your 2016 celeb death list btw fucking babies

that was angrier than it need be sorry, just found out James Joyce and Jelly Roll Morton have died, had a bit of an Amanda Palmer moment

"Another bombardment? This is definitely the darkest timeline."

The General Government actually issued a tourist guidebook to occupied Poland in '43. And it wasn't unheard of that middle class German families would travel to sites of genocide and point and stare. I'd guess this type of behaviour isn't unprecedented throughout history.

Great Bengal Famine. Good old British Empire, gawd bless you, Ma'am.

"The disaster of global communism also seems to have crushed any energy human beings might have had for collective action, especially on a global scale, "

tris do u really believe that humans have never acted in a collective manner outside of the historically applied frameworks grouped under communism

do u also separately think that humans have been subject to a 'global scale' - if that is any different than any notional scale of magnitude encompassing the attention bounds of yr homo sapiens ito where dinner is coming from on any timeline u wish- for long enough to be making generalities about it as a concept also lads trump is kinda a dead horse will ye fucking stop

Pages in category "1941 deaths"
The following 200 pages are in this category, out of 3,099 total. This list may not reflect recent changes

oh ferfuxsake

on the other hand:

Pages in category "2016 deaths"
The following 200 pages are in this category, out of 6,206 total. This list may not reflect recent changes

so there you have it, 2016 is clearly more than twice as bad as 1941.

i think it's more like, throughout the cold war capitalism was seen as the economic system that went along with democracy. fighting despotism meant fighting communism. being part of the global community meant embracing certain kinds of free trade ideals, or securing the rights of corporations to do business with each other across state lines. this paradigm has more to offer it than communists would admit -- trade helps secure peace; growth, even when achieved under exploitative conditions, pulls people out of poverty -- but it's not enough to really secure global peace and prosperity in a meaningful way. most people get left out of the decision process, and some things -- like environmental destruction -- just cannot be addressed without hurting profits and growth

most Marxists wouldn't argue that capitalism hasn't enriched people more than earlier forms of economic organization, just so we're clear

no, not marxists, but a lot of anti-globalization adbusters types do

consider that Trump won't be president till 2017

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OO9LloDSJo

when did people start to get interested in assessing individual years in this way?

december 2, 2016

I'm on team An Lushan

probably a media thing, stuff like yearly reviews, time mag etc. but there's been a lot of it about now, things like http://www.foreveryyear.eu/ and in academia too, my fav example being

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51pLy9X8-8L._SX324_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

http://www.biography.com/people/groups/died-1941

this shits on your 2016 celeb death list btw fucking babies

― brex yourself before you wrex yourself (Noodle Vague), Saturday, December 3, 2016 6:45 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Also try 1977 - http://www.biography.com/people/groups/died-1977 - Elvis, Marc Bolan, Maria Callas, Bing Crosby, Joan Crawford, Groucho Marx, Vladamir Nabokov, Peter Finch, Zero Mostel, Steve Biko, Anais Nin, Howard Hawks, Wehrner Von Braun, Roberto Rossellini

yeah but star wars

there's no way that 1587 book can live up to its title

that's how I justify not reading it

Mary Queen of Scots got hers that year. That's about all I know about 1587.

shakespeare was around

Spoilers!

February 1 – Queen Elizabeth I of England signs the death warrant of her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots, after Mary is implicated in a plot to murder Elizabeth. Seven days later, on the orders of Elizabeth's privy council, Mary is beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle.
April 29 – "Singeing the King of Spain's Beard": On an expedition against Spain, English privateer Sir Francis Drake leads a raid in the Bay of Cádiz, sinking at least 23 ships of the Spanish fleet.
July 22 – Roanoke Colony: A group of English settlers arrive on Roanoke Island off of North Carolina to re-establish the deserted colony.
October 20 – Battle of Coutras: Huguenot forces under Henry of Navarre defeat Royalist forces under Anne de Joyeuse, favorite of King Henry. Joyeuse is killed.
A severe famine breaks out in China during the Ming dynasty.

Bronze age collapse

The Taiping Rebellion

The Mayan Civilisation

Sunni and the Shia split

I have been listening to these audio youtube uploads of the R4 In Our Time program, it was probably this thread that set me off.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/pessimists-guide-to-2017/

thanks

at least there was some good music this year!

There's also 1947 with Partition of India.

Well, partition was a consequence of the imo more significant event of Indian/Pakistani independence, which I see as a very good thing.

Voted 1618; read the Wedgwood book.

xxp with the bengal famine you could make a case that 47 wasn't even the worst year of the 40s for india

you forgot

1999: The Phantom Menace

Once we zero in on the year, we should work to figure out which particular day or perhaps even twenty minute window of time that was the ultra most concentrated worst part of that year. And then we turn that into a time prison for the worst criminals.

Having recently read Charles C. Mann's 1491, my answer is "Small pox hits the Americas" without hesitation. Basically the whole population and culture of a continent mostly wiped out in a couple of years.

xxxp wasn't even aware of that event, holy christ.

Trail of Tears getting slept on imo

We could probably just poll the Indian sub-continent famines during British rule. 14-15 of them. About 55 million deaths 1765-1947.

Still, cricket, eh?

ye didnt even leave us that

which tbf is something i spose

1982: XTC stop touring

2016: Sting starts touring

2009: Sting releases Christmas album
1985: Sting releases first solo album
1951: Sting born

Seriously though:

2006: Sting releases an album of 16th century lute music

2004-2007 Sting has a single session of tantric sex

What year were the rock and roller cola wars?

Hard to not vote for the holocaust indeed.

where's the out-of-context thread

ILX quoted out of context

Inasmuch as acuteness/suddenness/concentrated evil are criteria, that makes it harder to choose multi-year events like the Holocaust, plague, and Civil War. Like for the Holocaust do you choose Wannsee conference or the height of the killings? For smallpox do you choose the initial introduction or the height of the death toll? Trail of Tears is part of a sustained campaign of displacement and abuse.

Morbidity aficionados may prefer more focused and discrete events like Nanking.

lol wins

The British Empire tried to pay for the East India Company's parliamentary bailout post 1770 famine with the 1773 Tea Act, so at least that went tits up for the arrogant pondlife.

Each candidate arrived at an examination compound with only a few amenities: a water pitcher, a chamber pot, bedding, food (which he had to prepare himself), an inkstone, ink and brushes. Guards verified a student's identity and searched for hidden printed materials. In the Ming and Qing periods, each exam taker spent three days and two nights writing "eight-legged essays" — literary compositions with eight distinct sections — in a tiny room with a makeshift bed, desk and bench. There were no interruptions during those three days, nor were candidates allowed any communication. If a candidate died, officials wrapped his body in a straw mat and tossed it over the high walls that ringed the compound.

I can see how the Imperial Examination system would have completely broke Hong Xiuquan after he failed it 4 times.

1914. All of modern right-wing evil stems from a refusal to get over 1914. We thought we were done paying for 1914, but look who got elected on November 8? The Austrian election only came out ok because Austrians KNOW everything is about 1914 and they're pretty sick of it.

Once we zero in on the year, we should work to figure out which particular day or perhaps even twenty minute window of time that was the ultra most concentrated worst part of that year.

1346: you've watched helplessly as your entire family (and half of everyone you know) dies, as parts of your body rot and blacken and fall off, and have spent all morning vomiting up blood while waiting for the doctor. he finally arrives, only to strap live chickens onto your buboe-covered arms and give you "medicine" which is really just a mixture of various urines and mercury. the doctor visit is probably the worst part of the day.

Once we zero in on the year, we should work to figure out which particular day or perhaps even twenty minute window of time that was the ultra most concentrated worst part of that year.

You mean like the day Sting released an album of 16th century lute music in 2006?

99 Reasons 2016 Was a Good Year: https://medium.com/@angushervey/99-reasons-why-2016-has-been-a-great-year-for-humanity-8420debc2823#.747qbjze7

thx4sharing

not the worst but certainly the most recent outrage

this is the 1st im hearing of this sting lute album is there anything that guy cant do

Can't or Shouldn't?

xpost be in a room with Stewart Copeland without waking up covered in blood?

hey guys maybe his name should be Stink, what do you think

xp
was that from tantric fucking for too long?

Feeling the lack of Syrian posters right now

99 Reasons 2016 Was a Good Year

https://medium.com/future-crunch/99-reasons-why-2016-has-been-a-great-year-for-humanity-8420debc2823#.5qyt20dsg

2016 was the hottest year in human history, by a good large margin.

we're voting for best, right?

"I write a fortnightly newsletter"

that guy is still adding dead celebrities to his sgt. pepper thing (including ppl he missed the first time round, e.g. Barry from Hi Di Hi who died back in April)

https://twitter.com/christhebarker/status/813811135522734081

Write in vote for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Changping

Yes. Voted 2016.

this "FUCK YOU 2016" shit is really out of hand

no but the internet is an amplifier

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoS1MCF8AeI

blaming it all on 2016 is a magical thinking get-out that assumes not-2016 -> not-shit

http://i.imgur.com/0wqrJPN.png

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Every latest year is the worst year in human history tbh, so yes.

nah its not

egos be as happy with doom as with pride imo

anything pre internet and eg anaesthetic and whatever else youre having yourself was so demonstrably worse that anybody claiming otherwise is suffering delusions

i think you might be wrong even tho on the obvious level you're right

something to do with the imaginability of good/bad in any given era? the boundaries move. nobody was sat around bored in the 18th century longing for the internet. and even abstract evil vs experienced evil has always been a thing, sure there were mopey cavemen pondering the imminent extinction of their kind even if they'd personally had a mammoth-filled year.

imma claim deeper level right again tho, one downmanship

something something we are too heavily invested in our greater knowledge of global suffering which something something relative to our level of maximum possible/experienced comfort is worse than historically was the case but in general something something relative to historical levels of global suffering something something is actually fine tbh

that last part obv needs work

yeah tho i agree that awareness of bounds of suffering/possibilities is a factor but think it works both ways

feel like everything is fine and has always been fine and always will be fine tbh

we've all felt the "pang" of "loss" in 2016 amirite

Not take anything away from recent genocides or die-offs, but I find it hard to see how 2016 can measure up to such older vintages as '42 or '58 - If soulseek went tho' it'd be right up there for sure.

that guy is still adding dead celebrities to his sgt. pepper thing

now with added Debbie Reynolds: https://twitter.com/christhebarker/status/814381762205851648

maybe we can bring the deadpool thread back for 2017, but with the condition that all submissions must be in the form of a photoshopped sgt.pepper cover featuring the people you're predicting will die over the next 12 months

namaste

yeah i pondered some sort of discrepancy argument, i'm not sure i buy it.

we could use some objective measurements - mortality, life expectancy, hunger, disease - and they'd almost all point to "we've never had it so good" - for certain functions of "we", which i'd happily accept broadly covers the posting population of ilx

it gets harder if you factor in less measurable but no doubt life-affecting experiences such as sense of purpose, sense of community, sense of hope etc. but intuitively it feels to me that an individual's sense of happiness at any given moment is a product of the objective measurements and that second category of stuff interacting in some complicated way - obv for somebody like Maslow it's simply hierarchical but i'm not so sure

before we even get to individuals as consistent narrative units that are always in the same relationship to the world they think is around them which, well, i'm not touching that, i don't believe it, and i've wandered a ways off track

i have this intuition that for any individual human being happiness contentment misery and all that stuff are in a set of interrelated sliding scales that are kind of outside your immediate station in history - so like "fuck Year X" is partly "'twas ever thus" but also not unreasonable depending on the context that the sentiment is uttered from inside

or something something telling people their moaning is unfounded/unreasonable is of a piece with affirming that their moaning is founded/reasonable, you can't argue one without allowing the other argument maybe

agreed but with the proviso that id think it merits further over a pint

this is the only truly bad year because it contains this shitty meme tbh

I couldn't care less about famous people dying but trump + what.cd shutdown were the WORST things ever

some kind of pint-related summit meeting would get half this board sorted over a weekend, i'm sure of it

summit summit pint

this is the only truly bad year because it contains this shitty meme tbh

this probably being the legit answer

if I were a notable person the best I could hope for would be that news of my passing be pulled into the slipstream of the most woeful schtick since whatever cunt came up with no cash no hope and no jobs

Nobody remembers to prepare an agenda. And here's why

At least people have stopped saying that celebrities die in threes. Now it's like 30s.

it'll be great if Sgt Pepper bloke has shopped himself into his own shitty collage and posts it prior to cutting his own throat at five to midnight on Saturday

http://i.imgur.com/IAm9Tgn.png

on the plus side, my second cousin is pregnant with twins, first ones in my family in my lifetime

feel like everything is fine and has always been fine and always will be fine tbh

― forgive me fader for I have sinned (wins), Thursday, December 29, 2016 12:52 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

we've all felt the "pang" of "loss" in 2016 amirite

― forgive me fader for I have sinned (wins), Thursday, December 29, 2016 12:52 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

superb work

took me way too long to get that

I was minutes away from saying so myself xp

elaborate pls

anything pre internet ... was so demonstrably worse that anybody claiming otherwise is suffering delusions

lol

before the internet, it was difficult to expose ourselves to alarmed dumbasses in sufficient quantity to induce the reassuring feeling that alarm is for dumbasses

back then you were ostracized for being a little shit, now you can just join subreddits full of people who think just like you and convince yourself that nah, it's everyone else who's deluded

but yeah just thinking about stuff like dental care pre-1940 (or whatever) makes me feel queasy, I never want to travel back in time

just access to information via the internet makes recent years worthwhile than stuck in some pre or colonial times

like woman putting urine and egg in their hair and consuming arsenic because it supposedly cured acne or put all sorts of shit on their faces and bodies is not nor ever will be cool henceforth

TS: you must find a man, crack this egg on your head VS you must find a man, shoot this paralytic neurotoxin directly into yr face

(women's experience in general not exactly the hardest lens thru which to argue for our own time but that particular example surprised me)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS74e-4dQLU

waiting for a 538 article on whether or not 2016 really had more celebrity deaths than one could expect

been shared around a fair bit

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08504ln

unable to play that, what's it say?

no iirc

up from last year but well within expectations (haha listening again their "method" is complete bollocks though, based entirely on the number of pre-written BBC obituaries deployed)

it was just the huge glut at the beginning of the year. "2016 omg wtf bbq" already under way by the end of january. Prince died in April and even at that point it was like "when is this going to end"

2016 baconed, but when will Bacon 2016?

Post-truth is the Oxford word of this year - 2016 definitely a prime year for insulting ones intelligence.

Some perspectives

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/12/29/stop-saying-that-2016-was-the-worst-year/?utm_term=.a16cb4d355f7

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2016/12/29/_2016_was_the_year_white_liberals_learned_about_disillusionment.html

As a group, white liberals seem particularly prone to declaring 2016's worstness (as opposed to the many many horrible years that preceded it). I will readily admit that I am a white liberal with gobs of privilege. Further, like many people, I know I'm in a bubbly echo chamber of like-minded people. This functions as an amplifier.

I also want to note that white liberals tend to love us some vicarious traumatization ("I'm just SO SAD about what's happening in East Timor!"). So bad things happening to other people can often be counted up as yet more bad things that are happening to us.

Okay so the Venn diagram of mega-grieving populations is not strictly white and liberal, but there will be a lot of overlap. White liberals aged 35-50 are culturally well positioned to have enjoyed the music of Bowie, Prince, and Cohen. We're very well positioned to have been into Star Wars. Add the election and particularly its gut-punching surprise and the recipe is complete. Almost everybody thought it was in the bag, and that the country was more woke than it really is. (This mostly only surprised white people.)

If the American election already had you primed to think everything is going to shit, it's easier to see every celebrity death as yet another ingredient for your Sorrow Soup. And if you had a couple bad things happen in your life (personally, my mom died, my cat died, and my son was diagnosed with a rare genetic intellectual disability).

I don't think the "fuck 2016" sentiment is a white thing.

We get a leap second this year, it would be great if a mass extinction happened in that final second. Then there should be no more debate.

We're very well positioned to have been into Star Wars.

Also it wasn't just white people shocked by the election, despite what the Dave Chappelle skit depicted. The problem with this website and many other spaces in American life is that it is too white and people end up hand wringing over whether certain opinions are "white opinions." Even more problematic, people end up imagining what the "other" believes, as if nonwhite people were a homogenous bloc. In reality "they" think all kinds of things. Nonwhites are not the other of whites. We're all just people. Xp

Identity politics is good when it's anout fighting inequality but it's bad when it's about generalizing the perspective of enormous, diverse groups.

That wasnt intended as an attack on you ye mad puffin

Treesh otm

It's cool Treesh - honestly this isn't meant to be blankety but.

Can one say it's not exclusively white, while also saying that it's been noticed among yr white liberal types pretty prominently of late (acknowledging that if you're in a white liberal bubble you're going to see a lot more of it than otherwise)?

I'm as dismayed and worried by trump, brexit and the CONTINUED inroads of extreme right-wing ideology into mainstream political discourse as anyone and if you've had a bad year of course I sympathise, but that isn't quite what's happening in a terrible internet meme that needs to fold in things like mass killings in the United States (as dependable as hangovers) and a slight statistical blip in celebrity deaths (maybe correspondent with an increase in celebrities over the course of the 20th century? I wonder) in order to make its case

Almost everybody thought it was in the bag, and that the country was more woke than it really is

don't forget "America is Already Great". the people that did think the above were also convinced "almost everybody" thought the same.

im watching platoon what year is that set in that seems pretty shit nb theres some black guys and some lads i think maybe vietnamese they would appear to concur so thats a strong suite for the current argument

Platoon is set in 1986

maybe correspondent with an increase in celebrities over the course of the 20th century?

Absolutely; if you trace the commoditization of celebrity qua celebrity along with the mid-20th c. nexus of technology e.g. television with specific cultural figures e.g. beatles, elvis, you get a lot more people who were famous 25-50 years ago than people who were famous 125-150 years ago. And people 25 or 50 years past the peak of their fame are both more likely to be beloved and more likely to die soon, ergo more beloved dead celebrities.

true but it still is a shock that nearly all the mega-selling blockbuster artists of the 80's are dead (besides Janet?) while the Townshends, McCartneys, and Rolling Stones are all still alive

famous 60s band The Townshends and The McCartneys

the idea of multiple Townsends is quite frightening, although he'd probably like it - he could say twasn't me, it were him!

true but it still is a shock that nearly all the mega-selling blockbuster artists of the 80's are dead (besides Janet?)

Except the vast majority of them are still alive and kicking, if this page is to be believed: http://tsort.info/music/ds1980.htm.

well yeah, he was basically marvelling at how ~6 people can have died while a different ~6 people are still alive, which nngh everybody get a fucking grip already

I entirely sympathise with treeship's "I feel like I'm going insane" except he and I have apparently woken up in different twilight zones because from where I'm sitting mine is the minority viewpoint that actually makes any kind of sense according to the rules of the reality I went to sleep in

All I'm saying is, someone is killing celebrities and wins is involved.

sorry for your losses

yeah I know it's all arbitrary and it doesn't mean anything, point is as someone born in the mid-80's its weird to lose people who you can remember having hits and being a big cultural figure, over those who have been dinosaurs your whole life. it just affects you in a different way. maybe the first time my generation has started to feel, I dunno...kinda old? if it was all about whose music I was most attached to I'd say losing 2/3rds of ELP was the worst (lol) but they've always been "in the past" in my mind...hell the fact that they released two albums in my lifetime is still very strange to me.

still seems better than 1346, where if anyone in your village was famous it was probably cos their rotting corpse was hung on display at the town entrance as a public example

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

OK

can we move on now

Chicxulub impact fans hardest hit

lol at results
Maybe if more Star Wars cast members had killed themselves in sympathy

at least no one voted for Roman Sack and Siege of Juersalem

Good thing no beloved musicians are going to die now that 2016 is over.

This rookie general (Zeng Guoquan) for the Qing dynasty captures 8000 Taiping soldiers in an unlikely rout. His battalion commander helpfully explains that they have to kill them all now. Zeng then reluctantly subordinates the task to him and goes off to hide in his tent. The Commander sets up a killing station where people get beheaded in batches of 10 at a time "finishing by the light of lanterns just after the sun went down that night"

His brother (Zeng Guofan) wrote several letters to Guoquan over the following days - first more sanguine, suggesting his brother find a way to bury the thousands of corpses or else pile them onto old boats and send them down the river so the stink wouldn't bring disease into his camp. But as he realized that the slaughter was weighing heavily on Gouquan's conscience, his letters became more reassuring by telling him if Confucius were alive, he too would say it was right to exterminate the rebels.

This General Beheaded 8000 Captive Soldiers...And That's Okay!

Probably for the "why am I such a dick" thread, but have felt a rage I don't quite understand every time I see facebook / twitter posts along the lines of "quit it with the fuck 2016 meme - there's no magical meaning to a year" or "whew, glad it's 2017 now and all of your heroes are safe" - I don't think these ideas / sentiments are wrong, exactly, it just seems like such a patronising attitude, like they think everyone else is an irrational idiot for indulging in some sort of semi-magical thinking when (a) everyone does and (b) the world isn't always a worse place for it. But I should get over it I guess.

yep

surprised there was no option for "every year is worse than the previous year"

ban years

ban years

mods?

they would but even the worst one only got 16 fps

read about the Great Leap Forward the other day. 55 million dead, wow that 20th century was evil

not if those 55 million were stood in the way of a beautiful future

I'm dying to get hold of that new Tan Hecheng Cultural Revolution book, but £18.20 for an epub download is more than I'll pay.

2017 thus far featuring less celebrity death but more dystopia

Alan Colmes rip
Fuck you 2017

no

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/why-536-was-worst-year-be-alive

That’s a woke kid’s dream come true

should i run this again with 2020

definitely

Smallpox very likely killed more than 50% of the population of the western hemisphere within a few decades of its arrival. The black death killed nearly half of Europe's population. As bad as this year is shaping up for those of us living through it, covid-19 isn't even close to the head of that class.

We're still in April!

rank the past five years in order of terribleness

i'll start

5. 2019 - came out
4. 2017 - moved, got new job, bought house
3. 2020 - ehhhh.
2. 2018 - severe depression (recurrent), treated with tms but overall unpleasant
1. 2016 - dad died, lost job, also it was 2016

or, like, just go on speculating what was really worse, the black death or the an lushan rebellion. not sure i have much of a horse in that race.

Smallpox very likely killed more than 50% of the population of the western hemisphere within a few decades of its arrival. The black death killed nearly half of Europe's population. As bad as this year is shaping up for those of us living through it, covid-19 isn't even close to the head of that class.

Governments around the world in those named single years didn’t respond to massive climate crisis events by relaxing or waiving checks on fossil fuel extraction.