We’re not here to deny it. It’s been a rough year.
Though it’s hard to pinpoint when 2015 ended and 2016 began, existentially speaking, 2016 itself fast got a reputation for being a singularly awful year, particularly if you were in any way keeping up with what the Internet had to say. At least now you know half of what you read wasn’t true…
Sure, happy things occurred, as they always do, even amid disaster. People enjoyed time with their families, got married, brought babies into the world, got new jobs, freed themselves from negative relationships, recovered from illnesses, discovered a really great new ramen place, ate a transcendent salad, experienced personal growth, etc. Not everything was all bad, all the time.
For some people, 2016 is going to be the best year of their lives (though they may want to keep quiet about that for awhile). And for others, it will be their worst year, as every year is the worst year for some.
Still, never before has the news so converged into one heaving, gelatinous mass that, largely thanks to social media, only seemed to be getting angrier all the time, feeding off of negative energy like the slime in Ghostbusters II (which was close, but no cigar, with its’ Valentine’s Day 2016 end-of-the-world prediction).