Things From 2015 I Never Understood and Would Like Some Clarification on Before Year's End

This year made no sense. Help me out—or maybe let’s just forget about all these things altogether.

Netflix and Chill

Not that I actually don’t understand what this is, but rather, why did it become such a big deal all of a sudden? Isn’t Netflix and Chill just called “dating”? Hasn’t anyone gone to college? When you got hit with that, “Hey wanna watch a movie?” text you knew exactly what was up. What is old is new again when the world has the memory of a goldfish on ecstasy.

Jidenna

Ok, so everyone likes this dude? Just completely unironically? Alright.

Does Brooks Ayers have cancer?

I have written thousands of words on the saga of Real Housewives of Orange County grifter Brooks Ayers and the fact that he maybe probably doesn’t have cancer even though he acted like he did all season. In order to save face, his now ex-girlfriend and likely co-conspirator Vicki Gunvalson has come out and basically admitted that she doesn’t think Brooks is really sick. Brooks, however, is sticking to his story because I suppose there’s nothing else for him to do at this point, but my god I just want the satisfaction of a confession from him. There’s also the microscopic chance that he does in fact have Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, in which case, yikes, and I’ll see you in hell.

People who acted like Kylie Jenner’s lips were real

Watching people defend Kylie Jenner’s farcical explanation that she was just overlining her lips with some really good lip liner was kind of a marvel. Did people actually believe that or were they just stanning for her? They had to have been stanning, right? Because people didn’t actually believe that her lips ballooned in size because of a lip liner technique? Right? They don’t actually believe that lip liner has the power to increase the area and volume of human lips, RIGHT?

The black women in Spokane who let Rachel Dolezal do their hair

I’m from Washington state so I’m familiar enough with Spokane to know that those women likely had very few choices. And yet. And yet.

Rihanna’s album rollout

2015 is nearly over and we still don’t have a goddamn Rihanna album. Let’s go back to simpler, more hopeful times: January 24, 2015, when she released the “album’s” “first single.” Remember way back then when “FourFiveSeconds” dropped and we legitimately thought we would be getting an eighth Rihanna album by the summer? Fools we were.

The fake-outs just kept on coming in March with “Bitch Better Have My Money” and “American Oxygen” in April. The full video for BBHMM was released on July 2nd and still there was no album in sight. Over and over again we fell for the rumors like parched wanderers stumbling towards a mirage. Meanwhile, Rihanna’s basically just been kicking it, releasing shoes for Puma and designing some fancy socks. She now has a mysterious campaign with Samsung that nobody paid attention to because it’s NOT AN ALBUM. Tickets are being sold for a world tour slated to begin in February named after an album nobody has heard yet.

This utter disaster of a launch is all the more baffling coming from a woman who, along with her team, practiced military-like precision when it came to making and pushing music. Nobody knows what’s happening and I’m getting worried that we’ll be having this exact same conversation a year from now.

The Katy Perry Left Shark

The entire 2015 Super Bowl Halftime Show was overshadowed by an adult in a baby blue shark costume.

I didn’t get it at the time and it still makes no sense to me. I mean, sure, he looks kinda goofy but he’s in a stupid costume with what seem like pretty restrictive arms. He’s off-beat and doesn’t nail the choreography, but this is a Katy Perry show, so what difference does it make?

Usually I’m happy to express my dissent from the prevailing pop cultural ethos, but this time I mostly kept it to myself because there were moments when I thought I was genuinely missing something, and asking people to explain jokes is annoying. But now the year is over, so fuck it. The whole thing is just that the shark was off-beat and waving its arms strangely? If that’s all it is, I think the rhythmically challenged among you—and lord knows there are many of you—need to reassess what’s worth a chuckle before we all start some sort of global Soul Train line and see what you’ve got.

Wait, Serena Williams didn’t win the US Open?

This is still unprocessable.

That woman who found her boyfriend’s wedding pictures but still wasn’t sure if he was married

Love can turn a sane person into a boiling pot of obsessive delusion—I know this. There is a strain of infatuation that can destroy all your critical thinking skills which makes sense: it’s hard to think straight when you’re drowning in an ocean of all the worst possible emotions. What I’m saying is that I understand the state of mind this young woman maybe been in. Still. STILL. Girl.