Why We Love to Blame 2016 - Facts So Romantic
▻http://nautil.us/blog/why-we-love-to-blame-2016
You may have noticed it by now: the—I guess I’ll call it an impulse—to anthropomorphize “2016.” It began gradually. First, we objectified it, likening it to a disturbing film, a force of nature, broken hardware. As Slate put it: In trying to wrap our heads around 2016’s all-reason-and-logic–defying onslaught of tragedy and absurdity, we objectified the year. We gave it a shape and form, likening it to a melodrama, a malfunctioning machine, an unstoppable meteor, anything to get some small grasp on the year’s surreal and hellish parade of events. Then we subjectified 2016. We wrote letters to the year, chastising its bad behavior (for, among other things, offing beloved celebrities). John Oliver went further, detonating a large “2016” structure in an arena. A recent Atlantic article ran with (...)