This year has been more strange than most in just about every respect. Obviously, the only logical conclusion is that we are actually taking part in an incredibly meta social experiment yet, in which we are all actors in a poorly scripted reality TV show. Just like normal reality TV, we are in control of our own decisions and reactions, but all of the events taking place are staged following some pretty common tropes to make a more interesting show and get more viewership, for reasons unknown.
Big Bad Ensemble
But Thou Must and Big Bad Ensemble are the tropes that perfectly describe this election. Are most Americans disappointed by the choices? Absolutely. Are real life people profiting off of this? Sure. What are we going to do about it? Vote for the lesser of two evils, the same as every year, and maybe we'll actually think about rectifying the flaws in our system before we forget about it until four years from now.
Meaningful Death
We've lost quite a few amazing human beings this year, and many more who were generally unknown by the public and will likely be forgotten. Every now and then, when someone passes we take the time to temporarily update our profile pictures and spend a moment remembering their life as a distraction from, you know, all of the other lives also being lost at any given time.
Police BrutalityListen.... it's a thing whether you like it or not.
Accidental Murder
#Harambe. It is also good to note the change of the role of memes within society. Especially because this is a headline that actually exists in our universe on an actual political campaign website, and other headlines also exist very much in a non-comedic sense.
Big Storm Episode
This is about where we are now. Just when we thought our contrived man-made squabbles were the worst of our problems, nature reminds us that at the end of the day we are all equally insignificant and weak and petty with poor infrastructure.
Halloween Episode
This explains the scary clowns.
but not this response:
Body-Count
We've actually been doing this one for a while, but instead of two friendly rivals in a war, it's just any "mentally disturbed" person with a gun.
First World Problems
Remember that one time when Syria was being completely destroyed, displacing thousands upon thousands of refugees and leading to the deaths of many others? You know, like an actual war? Man that was wild, luckily we can avoid this hot-button "political" issue unless someone shoves it down our throat since it doesn't directly affect our lives.
Apocalypse How?
Okay, so we all know that we're heading toward the end of the world. The bees are dying. Antibiotics are increasingly ineffective. Climate change is a thing. International tensions are boiling. The country is completely divided.
We know that we're the sequence at the beginning of every apocalypse/zombie/dystopian movie where they summarize the collapse of the world in five minutes. But like, isn't all of this a little bit excessive, a little too on the nose?