Looking back on the year 2023, there were so many new trends, movements, and positives that we can take away. Despite everything that happened and is currently going on in the Middle East, there is still peace across the world. This peace can sometimes be found in the most unusual ways, but without a doubt, it makes a good story.
Leading the way for embarrassing moments can be found on the breeding grounds of humor, and social media. Social media is one of the easiest ways that people, in the modern world, can turn a
real news event into something that makes people laugh. Take Philadelphia for example, many people who live in or around the city know or have heard of an account named “Barstool Philly.” This account embodied the culture of Philly by displaying its one-of-a-kind inside humor. There are plenty of embarrassing moments to be found here. Of the funniest segments are videos captioned “Only in Delco” where it usually is something dumb, but typical. By now, most cities have their own barstool account that offers insights into their individual culture, but many don’t compare to Philadelphia’s.
Over the past year, AI has become one of the fastest-growing tech implementations ever. Not only has its popularity become strong, but, it also created a bull market for the tech industry, interest in global basics, and a new beginning. Today, AI is everywhere: websites, social media, Picture creators, and more. Its impact has undoubtedly questioned mankind’s decision to create this in the first place considering the risks. With this being said, an embarrassing moment last year was when AI created an image of the Pope wearing a white puffer coat. Tons of people found it to look real and believed it was, but it was played out as a joke for quite some time. This image scared a lot of people by making them question which news stories and pictures were actually true.
Further into the year, a viral video was posted all over social media and blew up featuring Joe Biden. Climbing up the stairs of Air Force One, President Biden slipped and fell face first. Along with all the current politics, this video was used to embarrass him. People were using this as proof of him “being too old.”
2023 matched a year of change and growth for two specific billionaires: Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerburg. These two men are the richest people in the world and run very successful businesses. Thriving on money, Elon decided that he would purchase Twitter to restore certain freedoms. This ended up in an internet fight between Twitter and Facebook. Many people even created images of the two in a boxing ring fighting it out. Contributing to this fight was the blue verification check. Musk allowed people to pay a subscription to acquire the blue check. Ending horribly with fake accounts thought to be real, Zuckerberg used this as his firepower. If these men didn’t already have enough attention, well, they certainly do now.
To find the relevance of these moments, I conducted a small experiment to see if they were attention-grabbing enough. Asking 13 people, 9 of them knew about or heard of each of these events. By using the same question between all participants, the presence of variability was significantly reduced.
Wrapping up the year in a nutshell, it’s easy to look back and think about all the humor that comes from people in today’s world. Sometimes even the smallest things can turn into a social media joke and be talked about for months. Either way, humor is what America needs, something to laugh at while living life.
