January 16, 2012 Written by - Meat Park Twitter - @meatpark Photo Source: Billings Gazette---
Welcome all, to PART 2 of my 2011 year-in-review rating different categories of events on how much they ruled or, in most cases, didn’t rule. Let’s get right to it and finish last year off.Economy – 2/5Quick, go check your bank account. Do you have enough to survive this month? Yeah, I don’t either. Thanks to overvalued property, unregulated banks and the desire to chase down the American Dream, we’re all poor. On the bright side, I am still able to get loaded on a case of beer and order a large pizza for less than 20 dollars.
Sports – 1/5Hockey – Boston Bruins won the cup, and no one likes people from the Northeast. The Patriots and Red Sox are both teams that nobody likes, so sending a championship up for hockey makes me feel like they’re not going to appreciate it. Combined with the fact that, for the majority of 2011, the very best hockey player in the world was ON our team, but unable to play due to concussions made me have a very bad taste in my mouth by year’s end. This is not including the fact that Geno was hurt early 2011, and a myriad of other terrible occurrences that happened in the rink.
Football – Green Bay Packers beat the Steelers. I don’t need to go into detail here do I?
Baseball - St. Louis Cardinals
Basketball – Dallas Mavericks
I’m not going into detail about either of these because I THINK, as a person catering mostly to people in Pittsburgh, there’s not a lot of my readers who watch more than 15 seconds of basketball in an entire season. The Pirates are a yearly disaster, sucking most of my will to live and desire to watch live baseball by the time game 20 rolls around. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK NUTTING, THANKS FOR EVERYTHING!
I also did an extensive research (one Google search) for other popular sports in the U.S. One of the results was “Combat Sports”. I’m not sure what happened in the wide world of Combat Sports this year, but I can promise it was awesome with a name like that.
Technology – 2/5
This section was written by a close personal friend and tech guru; @brianedwards. He is currently a marketing director at some hoity-toity hi-tech company, and he was kind enough to share his thoughts on technology…
Everyone Got a Smartphone It's been building every year for the last few years, but now, chances are that you and everyone you know has a smartphone. For the most part, they are all big touch screens that have the internet, apps, and a camera on the back. Most everybody is dumping their Blackberries and jumping on an iPhone or Android device. This is a good thing because Blackberry as a company is the funniest/most tragic thing that happened in tech in 2011.
Blackberry basically invented smartphones but somehow gave up trying to come up with new ideas in 2007. They made as far as color screens and cameras and just called it a day. Everyone in the leadership of that company is either mentally handicapped or completely wasted. Don't believe me about the wasted part? Tell that to the crew of the intercontinental flight that had to TURN AROUND ON ITS WAY TO CHINA because 2 high level Blackberry executives were so drunk and disorderly that they had to be put in restraints.
It's worth mentioning that even though everybody has a tiny device in their pocket that is connected to everything all the time and better than any computer they have ever owned, people spend an unbelievable amount of time complaining about their smartphones. I'm not directly quoting Louis C.K. here, but he summed it up like this: "The worst cell phone in the world is a miracle of modern science." Stop complaining.
All Your Friends Think They Are Interesting Now that all your friends have smartphones, staying friends with many of them has likely become pretty tough. That's because everyone now thinks that everything they do or think is interesting. They'll tell you when they wake up in the morning, take a picture of their coffee and talk about how badly they needed it, follow up with some cryptic comments about work drama, check in EVERYWHERE, and complain in a way that sounds like they're not complaining and also find dozens of ways to sound humble while bragging. It's insufferable.
Heap on top of this the massive explosion of social networks that attach themselves to other social networks so you can just start clipping and tagging things that you like willy-nilly and spamming the hell out of your friends with them, and you will see why 2011 was one of the most disastrous years in the history of the internet.
Old People Discovered Social Networking In 2011, old people all over the world discovered social networking. The implications range from everything to your parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles wanting to be your Facebook friends to ignorant exposes in stuffy old people publications that basically conclude that Twitter is directly causing violent revolutions all over the world. Our only saving grace as a generation is that old people only seem to be able to figure out Facebook, and we can all just start blocking them and telling them we don't use it.
Every Company Ever Made a Tablet Computer In 2010 Apple introduced the iPad and sold millions of them. They continued to sell millions of them in 2011. Every other company on the face of the planet made a tablet to compete with the iPad this year and some even sold as many as a dozen of them. This isn't a pro-Apple statement. It's a statement of fact that really underlines how poor most tech companies are at understanding what actual people want.
A tablet computer is basically a giant smartphone that doesn't make phone calls and makes it even easier for dudes to view inappropriate content on the internet everywhere they go. Pro tip for all you other manufacturers out there. Just get a big battery, a nice screen, make it cheap, and let dudes know how fast the web browser is, and you'll have yourself a winner.
Tech Companies Failed At Marketing Do tech companies watch their ads or show them to real people before they put them out there? Do they learn from their mistakes? Are they all high as kites? The answers are no, no, and yes.
Consider every DROID commercial ever. Every last one of them looks like a terrifying scene from some not too distant future where machines rule the world. It's either that or the DROIDs are in car chases in black vans with missiles and stuff like some kind of top secret weapon that every villain in the world is out to get. I don't know about you guys, but I'm scared as hell of the Droid RAZR.
Parts 1 & 2 Full Review;- Politics – 0/5
- Science – 5/5
- Entertainment – 3/5
- Deaths – 3/5
- Economy – 1/5
- Sports – 1/5
- Technology – 2/5
- Overall Score – 42%
I’ve really got to stop writing about things I dislike, as it’s having a major effect on my usually sunny disposition in life. Overall, 2011 was a below average year though. Let’s hope that 2012 brings all kinds of awesome and unique things to the table.
However, until next time, keep living the dream.
@meatparkYou can follow @meatpark on twitter. In fact, he’s always looking for new and interesting things to cover in his “Biased Reviews”, so give him a follow and tell him you like his beard.READ: Part 1 of 2 | "A Biased Review" | 2011 Year-in-Review
