Happy New Year from ROTI!

Happy New Year to all our devoted readers! I hope you enjoyed your holidays as much as I did mine. I kicked off 2012 with a decidedly non-tragic dive into the icy waters off Chappaquiddick, and despite an unfortunate hangover caused by too much Champagne Pong, I daresay 2012 is looking good so far…

It’s not too late, though, to quickly recap the past year in Rumors on the Internets history. 2011 was by far the biggest and most epic year in the history of this blog. My trained stat-counting monkeys inform me that the site had over 100,000 visitors in 2011, an increase of 20% over 2010 and 100% over 2009.

Our biggest month ever was November 2011, when tens of thousands of This American Life fans swarmed the site to read and comment on our 2010 writeup and photo gallery of the tale of Steven Raucci, as chronicled in TAL’s “Petty Tyrant.” Much love to Ira Glass for re-airing this episode!

Now, to the archives to recap an epic year on the Internets.

We kicked off 2011 with an analysis of the best music of 2010, singling out albums by LCD Soundsystem, Band of Horses, Arcade Fire, and Janelle Monae for particular distinction, and naming Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy our Album of the Year.

Our extremely high-minded arts coverage included the awesomely-disturbing “Civilization” videos from the NY Standard Hotel’s elevators, “Lemme Smang It” from Turquoise Jeep Records, and the best and worst Lifetime movies of the year. ROTI published, for the first time anywhere, the amazing works of outsider artist Fredk. We lavished praise on the brilliant jeebus comedy team and their instant smash “Hobo Christmas,” celebrated the genius of Brad Neely, encouraged everyone to check out “A God Named Pablo,” and breathed a sigh of relief that one of our favorite Twitter feeds remained untainted by CBS.

Great songs abounded as we brought back our beloved Deep Cuts series, which this year featured Blur, CSN, Danger Mouse, Fleetwood Mac, and Talking Heads. (Would you believe the Mac article was by far the most popular?) And in a poignant and rockin’ post, I shared The 25 Most-Played Songs on My iPod Before It Died.

We continued our celebrity reportage, using our shadowy network of sources to reveal the sinister hotel-spying schemes that lie behind so many tabloid rumors, and breaking down the winners and losers from our HSX Star Bond account. As usual, our awards consultant David Burnce expertly analyzed the 2011 Oscars, opining on the nominees and predicting the winners with eerie accuracy.

At times, we were even servicey, letting y’all know about Google Talk Guru, sharing the hilarious online reviews of Osama bin Laden’s Hideout Compound, and puzzling out just what, exactly, Dikembe Mutombo said in his infamous Request for Sex. We gave Michael Eric Dyson a hand by creating an entrance exam for his Jay-Z seminar, and dispatched a crack team to eat every fattening food at The Big E and grade them from scrumptious to disgusting.

And then there was GIF! Our indispensable roundups featured a “You Are Not The Father” Povich breakdance,  Chubby/Ecstatic Nets Fan, and Lance Reddick tripping balls. Byrne grooved, Arrogant Jeopardy Kid smirked, and Michele Bachmann scared the shit out of everyone. We found Blake Lively with a mustache disturbingly appealing, and even got into the GIF-making business with the definitive Herman Cain Creepy Smile GIF.

We remained grouchy on a more-or-less constant basis throughout the year, slamming the crappy comedy of Garfunkel & Oates, bitching about the lack of originality of many participants in Wire Quote Day, and tooling on the self-published authors who ran ads in the NY Review of Books. (One of them even showed up in our comments section to accept our criticism with good humor!) Grouchiness turned to sorrow as we mourned the losses of Liz Taylor and Nate Dogg.

2011 concluded as it began, with a roundup of the year’s best albums — this time, we laureled Metronomy, The Horrors, Girls, Wilco, Fucked Up, Kurt Vile, Cults, Fleet Foxes, and Bon Iver, and gave Album of the Year to M83′s Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming. We also leveraged new technology to create an acclaimed Spotify playlist with hundreds of the best songs of 2011.

This site wouldn’t exist without your support and readership, and I am grateful to the entire ROTI team that suggested and collaborated on so many of these posts throughout the year, every site that linked to us (especially Razzball, Kissing Contest and Casual Hoya), and anyone who shared our posts with friends, forums or social networks. Our cadre of rumor-mongers continues to grow, with comment sections bustling, Facebook and Twitter armies mounting, and more active participants joining up every day. World takeover seems imminent.

Rumors on the Internets has some cool new stuff planned for 2012, and we’ll continue to provide the features you love along the way. Keep reading and you will be rewarded. Peace!