The year was 2010: The United States stood at the apex of a financial crisis, and Linkin Park released a new album. For many, things were as bad as they could get, and Americans needed a fix: something quick, cheap, and poorly regulated. But instead of turning to prescription drugs, we turned to the App Store and downloaded Angry Birds.

I was inspired to write this column after looking through my closet and discovering that I owned an Angry Birds sweatshirt. This wasn’t really too surprising, considering I bought it a few years ago, but I mostly wore it on exam days, when clothing standards fall below most other standards -- except for what Chili’s considers food these days.

Then, a troubling realization dawned on me -- every person in my family owns some sort of Angry Birds related apparel. This probably does not shock those who know them, but I was amazed to learn that other people owned these clothes too. If you’ve ever seen the “Tapout” or “Ed Hardy” shirts that people who look like rejected nightclub bouncers wear, you know the danger of advertising your interests to the world via clothing (those people are pretty much the worst, second only to people who ask for your trail mix and only eat the M&Ms). These social judgments aren’t an issue with Angry Birds, though.

(You are the reason people hate New Jersey)

Yes, Angry Birds enjoys immunity from social repercussions because playing it or owning its merchandise is a safe choice, in the same way that driving a Honda Civic, or watching “Air Bud” with your family is a safe choice ("The Seventh Inning Fetch," obviously -- I will hear no other answers). No one is going to get mad at you for playing it, and judging someone else for enjoying Angry Birds was a difficult task since the chances were that you played it too. As someone in the Bible once said, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone”... err, bird.

Angry Birds spoke to something deeper among humans, and it turns out that flinging birds at pigs is pretty universalizing. It’s like when “Piano Man” comes on; even if you hate Billy Joel because he ran over your dog, or something like that, you still sing along. The same is true of these birds, and whether you liked them or not, you recognized that they could bring people together.

Last week, I was watching the Republican debate, and while calculating the over/under for who would still have hair in 10 years, I realized that these people probably played Angry Birds, too. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if Donald Trump borrowed his foreign policy from the pigs’ wall-building strategies.

(This one writes itself)

Speaking of Donald Trump, Americans are no strangers to being victimized by ridiculous trends: Plaid clothing, Journey’s career, and the entirety of 1920s slang (when humans routinely used phrases like “the cat’s meow” to communicate with each other). The reason these things take hold is because they require little thinking and are easy to enjoy.

The same goes for Angry Birds, and the reason it could be enjoyed on the fly was because it wasn’t a particularly deep game. Now I know what you’re thinking, “If I wanted to mindlessly swipe left and right, I would just use Tinder.” Fair point, but Angry Birds revolutionized touch screens and allowed Tinder to be what it is today. Before Angry Birds, touch screens had only one purpose -- turning seemingly innocuous sentences like, “I am going to Home Depot later -- do you need anything,” into “Yes, I murdered her back in 1997 and hid the body behind a Home Depot.” Classic autocorrect.

Maybe this is too much credit to give to an app whose primary purpose was to help you avoid high school classmates in line at your local Chipotle. And the reality is that Angry Birds was best enjoyed in the bathroom while avoiding work. “Angry Birds: the official app for asking to use the bathroom.

All in all, Angry Birds is pretty much the George H.W. Bush of the App Store. Both were inexplicably popular for four years, disappeared, and were followed by lackluster sequels. That’s right, Rovio just released Angry Birds 2, but everyone knows the second ones are never as good (at which point this article has become uncomfortably meta).