One of the best things about being human is our relative mastery over memory. Compared to frogs or pipistrelle bats, we really are great at remembering things. Can a rhino recall the plot of 22 Jump Street at three in the morning? Doubt it. Do otters possess the ability to instantaneously see an image of Ainsley Harriott in their mind’s eye? Probably not, no. And that’s why we’re at the top of the food chain—who’d dare attempt to tuck into a creature that’s developed the necessary skills to never, ever forget any bit of pop culture fluff that’s ever existed?
If I said, “Hey, do you remember Dutch producer Fedde Le Grand’s smash-hit 2006 single “Put Your Hands Up for Detroit”?” to an aardvark, they’d probably just scuttle off, returning to whatever bus they live in. You, on the other hand, would smile a nostalgic smile, sigh a nostalgic sigh, and tell me that yes, you remembered that song. You used to love it, you’d say, all those years ago. And then you’d weep, for years have passed, moments have passed, life has passed, and there’s nothing to show for it except the memories of what once was.
Videos by VICE
All of our memories live virtually now. This is what we have turned the Internet into. It isn’t a space of potential new lives and experiences, but a digital mausoleum of detritus. It has slipped all us inside a permanent bubble of suspended-remembrance, and inside that bubble we succour on the thrill that only memory can offer. And where, you ask, is the best place to feast on all that the bubble has to offer? The world of content of course!
Here in content, everything is remembered—and here is everything we remember happening since that magic day some arbitrary date-ago when an old song was released.
1) Cornish farmer George Rogers grew and displayed a 100lb cabbage.
2) Apple decided to remove the headphone jack from their popular range of mobile phones. Chaos was unleashed.
3) There was a very brief spell where people tried to convince themselves that terrariums were fun and interesting. This inexplicable blip in collective taste has been quietly ushered to one side, never to be spoken of again.
4) Vine existed and then Vine died and then people pretended that Vine was the most important medium of the digital age.
5) ITV broadcast several series of the moderately enjoyable sitcom, Benidorm.
6) Pulled pork was everywhere! Remember pulled pork! Remember where everywhere you went people were eating pulled pork! Everyone! Every single person on earth ate nothing but pulled pork! You couldn’t move for the stuff!
7) Keith Lemon burst onto our screens and a national treasure was born. We love you Keith! Bang tidy!
8) Former Prime Minister David Cameron was alleged to have had sex with a dead pig. This was then downgraded to “Former Prime Minister David Cameron was alleged to have placed his penis in the mouth of a dead pig.” While there is no concrete proof that Cameron did actually place his penis in or around a pig, dead or living, we all had a big laugh about it.
9) Pharrell Williams wore a big hat at an award ceremony.
10) Cadbury made the popular Wispa Gold chocolate bar permanently available.
11) Brands became woke.
12) Twitter was willed into being which was great because not only could you tell the world exactly what you thought about that night’s cliffhanger on Corrie, you could also go on to use the platform as a means of transforming yourself from an author of popular books about boarding school into a political commentator.
13) Jamie Oliver singlehandedly stopped child obesity.
14) A Playboy model who changed her name to “Dogface” won Big Brother 10. In the same series of the then-popular reality TV show, another housemate changed his name to “Halfwit”.
15) A young man had the word ‘Stormzy’ tattooed onto his bottom.
16) Bernard Matthews, arguably the most famous turkey farmer the United Kingdom has ever known, passed away at the age of 70. Early on in his illustrious career, Matthews and his wife lived entirely surrounded by swarming turkeys. The psychological impact of such living conditions is a probable cause for the man’s rapacious desire to see the near-total extermination of the noble bird.
17) The E4 voiceover man was a flippin’ epic legend!
18) A country grew to love Len Goodman, an irascible, grumpy old man who prior to a TV series in which he was whisked to various restaurants by Ainsley Harriott, refused to eat foreign muck. Goodman says “SEVEN” in a theatrical voice, and we cannot get enough of it.
19) September 2007 saw the launch of the worst advert ever broadcast. Watching Head & Shoulders’ “Everyone knows a bloke like Mickey,” clip was akin to torture, and reports surfaced that some viewers found the experience so harrowing that they had no other option but to lob their 28″ set out of the window.
20) In 2014, David Daniel O’Reilly AKA Dapper Laughs, released his debut single “Proper Moist” which entered the UK charts at number 15, and at 35 in Scotland.
21) The nation of shopkeepers was sent catatonic by the arrival of the fidget spinner on our chalk-white shores.
22) A poll of 2,000 Brits found that Chinese grub was ‘far and away’ the top takeaway for Brits, with 35 per cent of the vote.
23) Erudite funnyman Russell Brand revolutionised how the world perceived news, with his truly excoriating “The Trews” project, wherein the long-haired lothario revealed that traditional avenues of news reporting were prone to bias. It is believed that he was the first man alive to have had such thoughts.
24) Dawn French and Lenny Henry split. Very sad!
25) Steve Carell reprised the role of “Gru” in Despicable Me 2.
26) Allan Debenham managed to con his way into a two night stay in a Somerset pub under the pretense of being BBC documentarian Louis Theroux. Debenham’s cunning ruse was rumbled after he requested “two bottles of sparkling wine and some fags” to be left outside his room.
27) Boris Johnson was hoiked over London by his knackers within the nylon webbing of an abseiling harness. The image of his limbs bulging through the frame, trapped like an oversized cod stuck in a carrier bag, will follow him for the rest of his political career.
28) Alt-J released a new single, “3WW”—described by the Independent as “a shamanic and deeply sexual song.”
29) The world’s first test-tube burger – engineered using bovine stem cells – was fried and eaten in London, alongside three slices of tomato and a gem lettuce.
30) Ready Steady Cook was cancelled after 16 years on the air.
31) Devendra Banhart published a booking of drawings and paintings, titled I Left My Noodle on Ramen Street.
32) David Gest died.
33) Euro 2016, and England beats Wales 2-1 thanks to a dramatic injury time winner from Daniel Sturridge. Victory is, however, short-lived for the English who then went on to lose to relative underdogs Iceland before proceeding to vote the Tories into power again at the following general election.
35) I got a C in my Food Technology GCSE.
36) U2 embarked on their 360º Tour, which would go on to gross a whopping $736,421,586…hellfire!
37) Andy Murray looked a bit sad in an interview.
38) The global financial crisis of 2007 and 2008 saw a crash in America’s subprime mortgage market balloon into the worst economic catastrophe since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
39) Danny DeVito tweeted a picture of his toes.
40) Bulgaria joined the EU.
41) 69 branches of Byron Hamburgers opened.
42) Fedde Le Grand came 14th in DJ Mag’s Top 100 DJs list.
43) In the Australian soap-opera Neighbours, Jarrod “Toadfish” Rebecchi’s luck ran out once again when his a rogue gas canister exploded at his wedding, killing two guests. Ryan Moloney has played Toadfish since 1995 and has won two “Inside Soap” awards.
44) Manchester United winger Ashley Young got a nasty surprise when a bird pooped in his mouth mid-game!
45) Paul Rudd was…the Ant-Man!
46) Nigel Farage grew a moustache.
47) Nigella Lawson made cocaine cool again.
48) Skream decided to stop playing dubstep, and became a techno DJ.
49) Coventry was last year’s greenest city in Britain, according to the Department of Energy and Climate Change. The city beat twenty other UK cities after managing to cut carbon emissions by 450,000 since 2008!
50) Writing, a once noble profession, nay, an art, became content and content became an excuse to pretend that everything that’s ever happened is of the utmost importance, and is eternally significant. And yes, we love it!
