Happy New Year from ROTI!
January 4, 2013 Leave a comment
Well, now. We almost let the new year get away from us without a year in review wrap-up. That wouldn’t do!
2012 was a big year for Rumors on the Internets. We had over 165,000 views this past year, an increase of 60% over 2011 and 100% over 2010. Thanks for continuing to visit, friends! Your patronage is truly appreciated.
Our most popular article this year was The Ultimate Dance Party Playlist, which we created just in time for summer wedding season to help all those folks out there trying to be their own DJ. Over 10,000 people checked that one out and many people subscribed to the accompanying Spotify playlist — which I continue to update on a regular basis to reflect the latest in dance floor glory.
This was the year we launched our podcast, Fortnight on the Internets. With my amazing cohost Alison the Business Casual, outstanding contributors led by Jeni Sue, and an army of bold Likers, we made the information superhighway a more fun place to dwell. From Kony to Psy, we tackled every huge meme and viral trend to arise in 2012, culminating in the Best of the Internets competition and an epic two-hour podcast in which we revealed the winners. Soon, we’ll unveil the inaugural class of the Internets Hall of Fame! (You can subscribe to our podcast via iTunes, among other sources.)
Even when the mics were turned off, we posted some articles reflecting on the latest memes, like the amazing collection of horse mask photos added by Amazon.com users. We also got fooled by an environmental hoax campaign masquerading as a Shell Oil corporate website overrun by pranksters. Damn you, tricksy hippies! And we enjoyed DATE-A-MAX, the video dating service that time forgot.
One of my favorite new topics was our coverage of the Back Talk section of the Lowell, MA Sun, where grouchy, Fox-News-watching olds write or call in to whine about the poors and coloreds. Gems included: “Why is there always a double standard for women? If I was a woman, I’d steal all sorts of things. You’ll never go to prison.” and “Looking back, television was clean and good. Today, it’s so filthy and serious. They should be ashamed.” We’ll keep monitoring Back Talk for more amusement.
Off-beat celebrity coverage has always been a staple of our offerings here at ROTI. In the popular article “A Porn Star, An Elf and Two Crooners,” we enhanced and/or ruined many people’s enjoyment of popular HBO shows by revealing the cheesy or tawdry pasts of some of the pay channel’s most prominent actors. We noted that Katy Perry’s divorce song would have worked a lot better if it was more straightfoward. Finally, we returned to the Hollywood Stock Exchange to once again play the StarBond market for fun and profit.
We also periodically dropped in with an edition of This Month in GIF, with C. Dave providing key assistance. My favorite GIF moment of this year was “Shaq’s Trip.”
Guest contributors arrived in clutch moments. As always, we turned to the master DB to predict the Oscar nominations and help us in our Oscar pools with his final predictions. (Check out his website: I-am-DB.com.) Meanwhile, Vicious Rumors made his merry way through the ludicrous offerings of the Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue in a brilliant post. Then he returned with a humorous look at the Police Beat of small-town Maynard, MA.
As always, we wound up the year by running down The Best Music of 2012. There’s also a 200+ song Spotify playlist you can check out for the top songs of the year that was.
Thank you again for reading. I hope you’ll return in 2013 for more posts, podcasts, jams, GIFs and articles — I’m hoping to step up our output in the coming year and would love to have you along for the ride.
Your pal,
Alpine
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