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This article originally appeared on 07.24.15

These are called “anti-homeless spikes.” They’re about as friendly as they sound.

Photo courtesy of CC BY-ND, Immo Klink and Marco Godoy.

As you may have guessed, they’re intended to deter people who are homeless from sitting or sleeping on that concrete step. And yeah, they’re pretty awful.

The spikes are a prime example of how cities design spaces to keep homeless people away.

Not all concrete steps have spikes on them, but outdoor seating in cities like Montreal and Tokyo have been sneakily designed to prevent people from resting too comfortably for too long.

This guy sawing through a bench was part of a 2006 protest in Toulouse, France, where public seating intentionally included armrests to prevent people from lying down.

Of course, these designs do nothing to fight the cause or problem of homelessness. They’re just a way of saying to homeless people, “Go somewhere else. We don’t want to look at you,” basically.

One particular set of spikes was outside a former night club in London. And a local group got sick of staring at them.

Leah Borromeo is part of the art collective “Space, Not Spikes” — a group that’s fed up with what she describes as “hostile architecture.“

“Spikes do nothing more than shoo the realities of poverty and inequality away from your backyard — so you don’t have to see it or confront what you can do to make things more equal,” Borromeo told Upworthy. “And that is really selfish.”

“Our moral compass is skewed if we think things like this are acceptable.”

“Space, Not Spikes” reclaimed the spiked area by covering it with bedding, pillows, and a bookshelf stocked with reading material.

The move by Space, Not Spikes has caused quite a stir in London and around the world. The simple but impactful idea even garnered support from music artist Ellie Goulding.

“That was amazing, wasn’t it?” Borromeo said of Goulding’s shout-out on Instagram.

“[The project has] definitely touched a nerve and I think it is because, as a whole, humans will still look out for each other,” Borromeo told Upworthy. “Capitalism and greed conditions us to look out for ourselves and negate the welfare of others, but ultimately, I think we’re actually really kind.”

“We need to call out injustice and hypocrisy when we see it.”

These spikes may be in London, but the U.S. definitely has its fair share of anti-homeless sentiment, too.

Spikes are pretty obvious — they’re a visual reminder of a problem many cities are trying to ignore. But what we can’t see on the street is the rise of anti-homeless laws that have cropped up from sea to shining sea.

Legislation that targets homeless people — like bans on panhandling and prohibiting people from sleeping in cars — has increased significantly in recent years.

For instance, a report by the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty that analyzed 187 American cities found that there’s been a 43% hike in citywide bans on sitting or lying down in certain spaces since 2011.

Thankfully, groups like “Space, Not Spikes” are out there changing hearts and minds. But they need our help.

The group created a video to complement its work and Borromeo’s hoping its positive underlying message will motivate people to do better.

“[The world] won’t always be happy-clappy because positive social change needs constructive conflict and debate,” she explained. “But we need to call out injustice and hypocrisy when we see it.”

Check out their video below:

This article originally appeared on 11.04.15

Photographer James Balog and his crew were hanging out near a glacier when their camera captured something extraordinary.

They were in Greenland, gathering footage from the time-lapse they’d positioned all around the Arctic Circle for the last several years.

They were also there to shoot scenes for a documentary. And while they were hoping to capture some cool moments on camera, no one expected a huge chunk of a glacier to snap clean off and slide into the ocean right in front of their eyes.

It was the largest such event ever filmed.

For nearly an hour and 15 minutes, Balog and his crew stood by and watched as a piece of ice the size of lower Manhattan — but with ice-equivalent buildings that were two to three times taller than that — simply melted away.

As far as anyone knows, this was an unprecedented geological catastrophe and they caught the entire thing on tape. It won’t be the last time something like this happens either.

But once upon a time, Balog was openly skeptical about that “global warming” thing.

Balog had a reputation since the early 1980s as a conservationist and environmental photographer. And for nearly 20 years, he’d scoffed at the climate change heralds shouting, “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”

“I didn’t think that humans were capable of changing the basic physics and chemistry of this entire, huge planet. It didn’t seem probable, it didn’t seem possible,” he explained in the 2012 documentary film “Chasing Ice.”

There was too much margin of error in the computer simulations, too many other pressing problems to address about our beautiful planet. As far as he was concerned, these melodramatic doomsayers were distracting from the real issues.

That was then.

In fact, it wasn’t until 2005 that Balog became a believer.

He was sent on a photo expedition of the Arctic by National Geographic, and that first northern trip was more than enough to see the damage for himself.

“It was about actual tangible physical evidence that was preserved in the ice cores of Greenland and Antarctica,” he said in a 2012 interview with ThinkProgress. “That was really the smoking gun showing how far outside normal, natural variation the world has become. And that’s when I started to really get the message that this was something consequential and serious and needed to be dealt with.”

Some of that evidence may have been the fact that more Arctic landmass has melted away in the last 20 years than the previous 10,000 years.

Here’s the entire video of the crumbling glacier.

This rare footage has gone on record as the largest glacier calving event ever captured on film, by the 2016 Guiness Book of World Records. On May 28, 2008, …

This article originally appeared on 09.13.17

Embarrassing stains on your T-shirt, sniffing someone’s bum to check if they have pooped, the first time having sex post-giving birth — as a new mom, your life turns upside-down.

Illustrator Ingebritt ter Veld and Corinne de Vries, who works for Hippe-Birth Cards, a webshop for birth announcements, had babies shortly after one another.

In the series “#ThingsOnlyMomsKnow” Ingebritt and Corinne depict the reality of motherhood — with all the painful, funny, and loving moments not always talked about.

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1. Pee-regnant.

All illustrations by Ingebritt ter Veld. Reprinted here with permission.

2. How (not) to sleep.

3. Cry baby.

4. The new things that scare you…

5. …and the new things that give you the creeps.

6. Being a new mom can get a little … disgusting.

7. And every mom has experienced these postpartum horror stories.

8. There are many, many memorable firsts.

9. Getting to know your post-baby body is an adventure.

10. Pumping ain’t for wimps.

11. You become very comfortable with spit-up. Very comfortable.

12. Your body, mind, and most importantly, heart, will expand in ways you didn’t know possible.

This story first appeared on Hippe Birth Cards and is reprinted here with permission.

This article originally appeared on 05.18.17

“It may be the most important thing we do in life; learn how to love and be loved.”

At least, that’s according to Harvard psychologist and researcher Rick Weissbourd.

He’s been collecting data on the sex and love habits of young people for years through surveys, interviews, and even informal conversation — with teens and the important people in their lives.

Through it all, one thing has been abundantly clear:

“We spend enormous amount of attention helping parents prepare their kids for work and school,” Weissbourd says. “We do almost nothing to prepare them for the tender, tough, subtle, generous, focused work of developing mature healthy relationships. I’m troubled by that.”

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Now he and his team have finally compiled five years of intense research that asks the question, “What do young people really think about sex and love?”

And maybe just as important: “How should we be preparing them?”

Here are three major takeaways from the groundbreaking new report:

1. Hookup culture might just be a big ol’ myth.

Everybody’s hooking up with everybody these days, right? Not so fast.

The Harvard report presents a startling statistic from a related study in 2008. A group of college students in the U.S. were asked what percentage of guys on campus they thought had sex on any given weekend. They guessed about 80%. The reality? As low as 5%.

Weissbourd notes that because hookups are so culturally visible (especially in college) and gossiped about, it creates a perception that they’re a lot more common than they actually are.

The Harvard study itself found, in fact, that most young people are a lot more interested in sex within a committed relationship or, shockingly(!), things that don’t involve sex at all.

What it means for parents: We as adults, unfortunately, play a big role in this pervasive and harmful myth. “In every era there’ve been complaints about how sexually out of control kids are,” Weissbourd says. “It’s a story adults really love to tell.”

When we play up this stereotype, the study finds it can actually make young people less likely to seek advice or to talk about sex and relationships because they may feel inadequate or embarrassed about their lack of experience.

2. Sexual harassment and assault, however, remain huge, unaddressed problems.

“There are a significant number of young men out there who think that all they can’t do is rape someone,” Weissbourd says. “They can’t drag someone in an alley to rape them.”

What many of them have very little concept of, he says, is how harmful and dangerous behaviors like catcalling, pressuring, and coercion can be.

The study cites endless instances of girls being harassed at school, complaining to administration, staging walkouts; anything to get the problem addressed. But the “boys will be boys” attitude persists, and problems are often swept under the rug rather than tackled head-on.

A culture of sexual violence is harmful for obvious reasons, but the report also found these kinds of attitudes can bleed over into relationships that can “disproportionately involve females servicing males.”

What it means for parents: Talk. to. your. kids. about. consent.

“I was really surprised how many parents had not had basic conversations with their kids about things like consent, or how to avoid sexually harassing a person,” Weissbourd says.

We have to make it crystal clear to young people what kinds of behavior are and aren’t acceptable, and follow up those lines with real consequences. It’s the only way things are ever going to change.

3. Teens and young adults want more guidance than we’re giving them.

Most parents aren’t thrilled about having “the talk,” and admittedly, bringing up the topic of sex with a teen is no easy task.

But with all this dread and hand-wringing over how to talk about the birds and the bees, the Harvard report notes that many parents are overlooking a much bigger topic: love and relationships.

Roughly 70% of surveyed young adults reported wishing they had received more or better guidance on the emotional aspects of relationships, both from parents or from health class. But it’s not just a hindsight thing.

Many parents are overlooking a much bigger topic: love and relationships.

“The percentage of young people who want guidance on romantic relationships was encouraging,” Weissbourd says. “Kids light up when they are talking about love and what love is and what does it mean. That was surprising and really encouraging.”

What it means for parents: When you’re done teaching your teenager how to put a condom on a banana, make sure to spend some time talking about the day-to-day work that goes into building a healthy relationship.

That means going beyond platitudes. The Harvard team suggests diving into more complex questions like, What’s the difference between attraction, infatuation, and love? How can we be more attracted to people the less interested they are in us? Why can we be attracted to people who are unhealthy for us?

Those are questions some of us might not even have the answer to, but having the honest conversation with our kids is a major step in helping them learn how to love and be loved.

As Weissbourd says, it’s one of the most important things we’ll ever do.

The full report tackles even more and is jam-packed with must-know findings and statistics. It’s definitely worth a read.

Champagne is a celebratory drink. It’s also something that lifts your spirits when you’re down. A nice way to reflect gratitude for what was or excitement for what’s to come. Point being, there’s just something about the effervescent wine from France that works in myriad occasions — even when you’re digging into a bucket of fried chicken from the Colonel.

Wild take of 2021: Champagne is great. Take that to the bank.

Champagne — the real stuff from France, not the California sparkling wine mislabeled “champagne” — is a complex drink to make. Champagnes all fall under fairly strict guidelines. They need to be a blend of Pinot and Chardonnay grapes (with Meunier making an appearance), generally spend three to five years cellared in oak, must be made in Champagne, France, and so forth. Beyond those law-bound parameters, this is all about taste. Hopefully, this list will give you a sense of which bottle of champers might suit your palate.

Let’s dive in!

Pro Tip: Whichever bottle you choose, you’ll want to get it chilling at least 24-hours before the ball drops. That means the 3oth!

10. G.H. Mumm Grand Cordon Champagne

Average Price: $46

The Champagne:

The Mumms (a German wine-making family from the Rhine) moved their whole operation and family to Champagne to make this now iconic sparkling wine back in the early 1800s. Today, Mumm Grand Cordon sources around 100 crus from the Pinot, Chardonnay, and Meunier fields around Champagne, France. Those wines are mellowed in large oak vats until they reach just the right point of aromatics and texture.

Tasting Notes:

The nose on this one is like walking through a peach and apricot orchard on a warm summer day as hints of vanilla, dried yeast, and even a little honey dance through your senses. The palate, the stone fruit dries out a bit as a tart and an almost creamy sense of pineapple drive the taste towards fruit salad vibe. The finish is fruity, slightly dry, and bright.

Bottom Line:

This is a great place to start. While a bottle of Mumm is perfectly suitable, it is a bit of a fruit bomb. If that’s your vibe, then go for it!

9. Laurent-Perrier Brut

Average Price: $45

The Champagne:

Eugene Laurent and Mathilde Emilie Perrier were a husband and wife team who created the third best-selling champagne in the world. When Laurent died, he left the whole operation to Perrier, who took the champagne worldwide and found massive success.

Tasting Notes:

There’s a beautiful balance of bright lemon citrus and very summery French florals on the nose (think fields of lavender baking in the sun). That citrus leads towards a ripe apricot sweetness and body with a buttery underbelly that’s counter to all that dry fizz and tartness from the citrus. The end is mellow and really embraces the florals, lemon, and apricot.

Bottom Line:

This is by no means mediocre champagne. It’s perfectly suited for toasting in the New Year. It’s just that something had to be stuck in this slot. Also, this one makes for a great French 75 with all that lemony-ness.

8. Veuve Clicquot Brut

Average Price: $60

The Champagne:

The famed Madame Clicquot — or Veuve Clicquot which literally means “Widow” Clicquot — was instrumental in creating the world of champagne that we know today. She’s credited with the riddling process (clarifying the wine), creating rose champagne, bringing vintages (age statements) into the mix, and generally making the sparkling wine a celebratory drink in the highest echelons of the European elite.

Clearly, Clicquot was both an amazing innovator and marketer, and her champagne continues to shine.

Tasting Notes:

Imagine butter-soaked baked apples inside a buttery and slightly salty brioche next to white grapes and sultanas. Hints of tart yet sweet apples mingle with a mist of orange oils as a nutty base leads towards a savory fruitiness. That salty-sweet brioche returns on the dry yet softly sweet end.

Bottom Line:

This is really solid champagne all around. The only real reason it’s this low on the list is the note of sweetness that lingers a little too long.

7. Moët & Chandon Nectar Impérial

Average Price: $60

The Champagne:

Moët is one of the old-school champagnes that goes back to the court of French royalty. The popularity of this wine cannot be understated. They’re one of the biggest producers of champagne in the world. That’s why we’re picking a little higher-range bottle. The Nectar Impérial is a special blend of reserve wines chosen to add a deeper sense of richness and complexity to the bubbly.

Tasting Notes:

The flute pulls you in with a sense of tropical fruits leaning towards mangos and pineapple while stonefruits lurk in the background. Those stonefruits take over on the palate with apricots and meaty plums leading toward a white grape touch next to a hint of vanilla. Finally, that vanilla takes on a slightly creamy edge (thanks to a touch of Chardonnay in the blend) that really brings a well-rounded body to this sip.

Bottom Line:

This is a crowd-pleaser! It’s light and fruity yet feels like you’re drinking something with a good body that’ll get you a little tipsy.

6. Taittinger Brut

Average Price: $50

The Champagne:

Speaking of Chardonnay, Taittinger is a blend of old monastery wine-making, modern Chateau culture, and a deep history of Chardonnay grapes. The non-vintage wine leans into the Chardonnay grapes in the blend (basically, flipping on its head the ratio of Pinots to Chardonnay in the average blend), making this an outlier in the world of champagnes.

The result is a nice break-from-the-norm bottle of bubbly.

Tasting Notes:

There’s a lightness that’s a bit of a trick, as the nose will tempt you with hints of peaches, buttery and yeasty brioche, summer wildflowers, and a whisper of vanilla. The palate holds onto the stonefruit as a fresh honeycomb sweetness arrives late and brings the whole sip together.

Bottom Line:

This really feels like a well-rounded bottle that is very easy to drink. Really, we’re splitting hairs on the ranking from here on down.

5. Pol Roger Brut Réserve

Average Price: $55

The Champagne:

Pol Roger goes back to the mid-1800s (like so many on this list). The wine was so beloved that it received a “royal warrant” to become the official champagne of the court of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. That tradition carries on today as it now has the “royal warrant” for the British Crown, in large part thanks to Winston Churchill insisting that he only drink this champagne for decades. Translation: It’s really good stuff.

Tasting Notes:

The champagne draws you in with this medley for bright wildflowers next to a brioche folded with stewed apple and a touch of vanilla and jasmine. The palate revels in apricot jam, stewed plums, and more vanilla before a bright and slightly burnt orange oil arrives with hints of figs, anise, and beeswax candle wicks.

Bottom Line:

This really shines brightly in any glass. It’s complex and interesting while being somewhat earthy in its fruitiness. It pulls off the trick of having honey sweetness without being sweet.

4. Nicolas Feuillatte Brut Reserve Exclusive

Average Price: $36

The Champagne:

This champagne might be the most representative of the region in a single bottle. Nicolas Feuillatte is really more of a collective (or union) of 100 individual winemakers and 82 winemaking cooperatives covering over 5,000 vineyards around Champagne in France. That equates to Feuillatte pulling its juice from a swath of vineyards that cover around seven percent of the wine grown in the region.

Tasting Notes:

There’s a real sense of dry breadiness next to ripe apricots and peaches that draws you in. The body is effervescent and full of bubbles that burst with that fruit alongside hints of vanilla and musty cellars full of old oak barrels.

Bottom Line:

The price of this bottle really helps it scratch into the top five. There’s really no reason this shouldn’t cost $60 per bottle like so many others on the list.

3. Louis Roederer Brut Premier

Average Price: $48

The Champagne:

Louis Roederer is one of the oldest Champagne houses that also happens to be one of the few fully independent shingles. The wine really made a name as the champagne of the Russian Royal Court pre-revolution. As those royals ran for their lives, they spread the love of Louis Roederer to Paris, London, New York, and Shanghai, helping make the wine a truly international brand.

Tasting Notes:

There’s a real sense of an orchard full of stone fruits next to lightly roasted nuts with a hint of a warm croissant on the nose. That butter and yeasty bready fades first as the ripe apricot and gooseberries counterpoint a deep dryness and light bubbles. There’s very little sweetness at play as a touch of oaky vanilla pops on the very end.

Bottom Line:

This is the entry-level champagne that’ll lead you to the infamous Cristal (that brand of champers that rappers wouldn’t shut up about in the 90s.). That aside, this is almost too easy to drink. We’ll put it this way, the bottle will be empty before you know it and you’ll be left wanting more.

2. Dom Pérignon Vintage

Average Price: $200 (depending on Vintage)

The Champagne:

Dom P is Moët & Chandon’s “prestige” line of champagne. So in a sense, this is Moët’s “good stuff.” The bottle was named after legendary monk and champagne cellarmaster Dom Pérignon. The short of it is: Ol’ Dom was instrumental in making champagne into the fizzy wine we love back in the mid-1600s. These days, Moët honors that history with their best stuff.

Tasting Notes:

This is going to vary depending on which “Vintage” you snag. The throughline with Dom is the blend of Pinot and Chardonnay but that can vary a lot depending on the year.

If you come across the 2008 Vintage, expect a really nice dose of mint, lemon oils, and peach up top. That’ll lead towards a sense of orange oils next to musty oak with a creamy body that’s refined to a whipped butter lightness.

Bottom Line:

This is the “good stuff” by definition. Still, we’d argue that there are perfectly good — maybe better — wines that reach these vaulted heights without the price tag.

This leads us to…

1. Bollinger Special Cuvee Brut

Average Price: $65

The Champagne:

Bollinger has spent centuries becoming the icon it is today. The wine got a huge boost when it became the champagne of Queen Victoria’s court in the late 1800s, which led to it being the official drink of Ian Fleming’s James Bond. Thanks to the guidance of Lily Bollinger post-WWII, the brand became the champagne the adventurers, jet-setters, and so-called cool kids drank.

Tasting Notes:

This draws you in with a sense of over-ripe peaches next to tart apples stewed with dark spices and wine. That spice and apple bring about an almost apple butter feel as the svelte nature of the sip leads towards a brioche loaded with walnuts and that spiced stewed apple next to a buttery foundation.

This is just smooth, subtly bubbly, and just the right amount of dry on the finish.

Bottom Line:

This 100 percent lives up to the hype. It really is that well-rounded, quaffable, and delightful. Cheers! Someone queue up Auld Lang Syne.

The most-watched primetime telecast in 2021 was football (Super Bowl LV: Tampa Bay vs. Kansas City, 92.877 million viewers). The second most-watched primetime telecast in 2021 was… football (AFC Championship game: Kansas City vs. Buffalo, 42.501 million). The third most-watched primetime telecast in 2021 was… yup, still football. So was the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh. The first non-NFL game to appear on the year’s top rated telecasts was The Equalizer… because it premiered after the Super Bowl.

Football, like it does every year, hogged 2021’s list of the Most-Watched Primetime Telecasts of 2021 (Total Viewers), as compiled by Variety. Seventeen of the top 20 slots are dominated by NFL and college football games; the only outliers are the aforementioned The Equalizer premiere, Oprah’s interview with Meghan and Harry, and the Summer Olympics. You have to go all the way to #45 to find the first “normal” episode of scripted television: the season 18 episode of NCIS, “Winter Chill,” with 13.138 million viewers, followed by another episode of NCIS (“The First Day”) at #46.

Now in its 19th season, the popularity of the long-running CBS series remains a juggernaut. Even as Mark Harmon departed the show full-time this fall, the drama’s first 15 seasons remain a hit for Netflix, where they can be streamed… Seventeen episodes of the series made it on to the top telecasts of 2021 ranker. While most series come and go, NCIS appears to be forever.

17 of the top 100 things to air in 2021 are NCIS episodes! That’s staggering — and further proof that the biggest shows are the ones that no one talks about online, for which you can blame/thank your parents. Speaking of shows your dad probably loves, Yellowstone was the only cable show to make the top 100. And it did so twice.

The Walking Dead, which used to be all over this list, is nowhere to be found.

(Via Variety)

Ariana Grande and Kid Cudi’s involvement with Don’t Look Up doesn’t stop at their song “Just Look Up,” as they also have substantial parts in the film. Furthermore, Adam McKay has heaped praise on the two for their performances in the movie.

McKay said of Grande, “It made sense to have the biggest pop star in the world play the biggest pop star in the world. We got her on set for her first scene with [Leonardo DiCaprio] and [Jennifer Lawrence], and she’s improvising lines. I knew she’d nail the song, but I didn’t know she could improvise.”

He spoke more about Grande’s improvisational skills in a recent video from Netflix about the movie’s improv, starting at 4:19 into the video.

Grande also offered a quote about McKay, saying, “Adam’s one of my comedy heroes. I was jumping out of my skin when he pitched me the idea of playing this pop star in this yucky tabloid frenzy. Playing this little part and getting to work with Adam and this beyond incredible cast was such a special experience.”

McKay also had compliments for Cudi, saying, “[I] knew who Kid Cudi was, but in meeting Scott Mescudi, I was completely taken aback. He can really act. He was immediately natural on set and such a humble guy. Scott was incredibly open and collaborative.”

Of course, it makes sense that both Cudi and Grande would be comfortable on a set, as they’ve both spent plenty of time in that environment. Before music, Grande was known for playing the character Cat Valentine in two Nickelodeon series, Victorious and Sam & Cat. As for Cudi, he been in the main cast of shows like How To Make It In America, Comedy Bang! Bang!, and We Are Who We Are.

Madden is a staple of the video game calendar. It’s the rare game that transcends its target audience — it’s not just a huge football game or even a huge sports game, it’s routinely one of the biggest video game releases every single year. Without fail, people will buy the new Madden for roster updates and they’ll sink hundreds of hours into it until the next one. When a new console comes out, some gamers purchase it solely because they want to continue playing the newest Madden. It boasts one of the most consistent fanbases in all of gaming.

None of this would have happened if not for John Madden. The legendary football coach and broadcaster, who passed away at 85 earlier this week, had a huge influence on the franchise in many different ways — the biggest one obviously being that he was willing to put his name and face on the game. When EA first began formulating Madden, licensed sports games were still in their infancy. Games rarely featured real team logos, rosters full of actual players, or real life broadcast crews. They usually involved nameless pixels and maybe one or two real people with whom the publisher reached a licensing agreement.

EA had the idea to put big names on the cover of games and create interest through recognizable faces. One on One: Dr. J vs. Larry Bird served as something of a proof of concept in 1983. Then, in 1988, they released John Madden Football, thereby starting one of the most successful video game franchises ever.

But to make a successful football game, you couldn’t just have a recognizable face on the cover. By bringing in Madden, EA struck a partnership with someone who was fully invested in making the project as good as possible — he famously gave the team his full playbook from his coaching days.

EA also had its biggest critic. Madden wasn’t just going to let someone slap his name on something he didn’t approve of, so the game had to be as close to realistic football as they could get at the time. This famously meant the game had to be 11-on-11 with actual plays and an experience that felt like watching a game of football. While Madden wouldn’t get that final wish until much later, the game featured realistic elements such as injuries, player fatigue, and penalties.

Madden’s demands created a franchise baseline that it would follow from there on out. These games placed an emphasis on being realistic and creating the feeling of watching football. Considering one of Madden’s original hopes was to make the franchise a teaching tool for those who wanted to learn more about the sport, it makes sense why he was so uncompromising in this regard. Madden would go on to do just that, as its namesake proudly stated in a 2012 interview with Grantland, “It’s a way for people to learn the game and participate in the game at a pretty sophisticated level.”

Madden would go on to become one of the most influential sports games of all time. When John Madden Football was released in 1988, it didn’t feature any actual teams or logos. By 1990, the games were being released yearly, and by 1993, once EA acquired licensing for teams and players, it became the Madden NFL franchise.

The series played a major role in creating a giant in the gaming industry in EA Sports. Every game they made was going to use the Madden series as the model. Lakers versus Celtics and the NBA Playoffs would go on to become the NBA Live franchise. Bill Walsh College Football would eventually become NCAA Football, NHL Hockey became the long-running NHL series, and FIFA International Soccer would turn into the extremely lucrative FIFA franchise. Every single one of these games made it a point to create a presentation that felt like watching a television broadcast.

These days, sports games have emphasized being realistic over most everything else. The arcade sports game, which dominated the genre in the ’80s, is rarely a priority for developers. Why? Because everyone wanted to copy the model laid out by EA Sports. While people certainly have issues with some elements of how sports games exist today, and those gripes are very much understandable, we also can’t say that NBA 2K or MLB: The Show would be what they are today without the model that Madden laid out.

Obviously, the Madden franchise would change, and eventually, Madden’s role in it would decrease. He moved away from the box art in 2001, with players now donning the cover exclusively. He started to phase out his role in the commentary booth in Madden NFL 09, as he only appeared in the Wii, PS2, Xbox, and PSP versions. Despite this, he never stopped promoting and talking about the game, because in many ways it was as much his creation as it was everyone at EA.

Not only was John Madden a legendary football coach and TV broadcaster, but he is high on the list of people who are responsible for what sports games look like today. Without him, the entire industry just wouldn’t look the same.

Lil Xan’s reign of terror over rap is a few years in the rearview, but while the controversial rapper hasn’t been quite as visible for a while, he still has at least one bone to pick with the music business — or more specifically, with his former manager, former Shady Records rapper Stat Quo. In a recent Instagram Live session, the now 25-year-old — who was able to get clean last year after quitting pills cold-turkey during quarantine — called out his ex-manager for enabling his addiction, comparing the situation to that of his late SoundCloud Rap peer, Lil Peep.

“Do you guys remember the whole Lil Peep, the story when his management was giving him drugs and it just wasn’t helping out and all that?” he asks. That happened to me on tour. My manager — well, I don’t even like to call him my manager anymore — Stat Quo, remember that name, Stat Quo… He’s gonna act like he didn’t do that, like a f*ckin’ hypocrite, and I’m really feeling like I should take him to court. Because that was a time I almost died from the drugs. I was so skinny, unhealthy.” Xan claims Stat knew his dealers and spend thousands of dollars to have drugs sent if Xan was experiencing withdrawal on tour.

Xan also says that Stat “took away” his car and is demanding $30,000 to finish paying it off. Xan — who recently made the effort to change his stage name to his given name, Diego, was open about his addiction to prescription drugs throughout his career and his breakout hit, “Betrayed,” is an ode to the dangers of pills.

Where would we be without memes? In our increasingly digital lives, memes have become a shorthand for expressing our feelings in a way that feels both relatable and familiar to hundreds if not thousands of strangers online. We can throw down a certain template, put our own spin on it (or share someone else’s), and get that immediate dopamine boost from mutual friends and randos online who either share the same feelings or appreciate our skill at flipping the original concept.

High culture it’s not, but we deserve a little stupid, mindless fun. Especially after a year like 2021.

Even if you’re one of those rare few on this planet who are able to keep their screen time in check, you’ve probably shared a good dozen or two memes amongst your family, friends, or coworkers these past 365 days. Your parents probably even attempted to throw down a meme or two. Badly, but hey, bad parent memes are a meme within themselves! So in celebration of all the meme-idge of 2021, here are the 14 best memes of the year, how they impacted us, and what they say about us (if anything at all).

Bernie Sanders At The Inauguration

Kicking off our list is a meme that’s still making the rounds nearly a year later. When Bernie Sanders rolled up to the Biden Inauguration in a comfort-focused fit, a homely pair of mittens and a basic surgical face mask, all sorts of political pundits and center-left Twitter personalities attempted to roast the senator for exhibiting such a gloomy attitude during Biden’s big day. Flash forward 11 months and it feels downright prophetic. Although we’ve got Trump out of office, things are largely the same — grim. Bernie was ahead of the game, thumbing his nose at the shallow pageantry that comes along with electing a new president. (Or maybe he was just an old dude who didn’t want to freeze.)

The Bernie meme was soon recontextualized into all sorts of weird and wacky scenarios — Bernie at the Met Gala, etc. At the end of the day, it’s just a funny image. One popular enough to inspire cardboard cutouts in storefronts and murals on walls in cities across the country.

Kathryn Hahn/Agnes Harkness Winking

You don’t have to be a WandaVision fan to fall in love with this exaggerated wink from Kathryn Hahn in her role as Agnes Harkness. Case in point, me! I have no idea who Agnes Harkness is, I’ve never seen WandaVision, and I don’t plan to but I’ve been known to Kathryn Hahn wink at all manner of things!

The scene this was taken from first appeared in the debut WandaVision trailer and since people first got a glimpse of that wink, they’ve been repurposing it. Most people used the Hahn wink anytime they were openly lying, whether to their friends, their employers, their families, and, most often, themselves.

Oprah Shock!

Oprah is a meme machine. For as long as memes have been a popular form of internet discourse, we’ve been recontextualizing GIFs and photos of Oprah. In March of this year the famous journalist sat down for an exclusive interview with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. Upon hearing that members of the royal family expressed their concern over the possible complexion of Meghan and Harry’s baby, Oprah threw her hands up in shock and disbelief.

Then the internet took it and used it for any shocking moment we had to deal with this year. The thought of jumping on a call for a conversation that could just as easily be held over email? Oprah shock! The possibility of another lockdown or another covid variant? Oprah shock. Standing next to an anti-masker while they cough and sneeze in line at Target — Oprah shock! That entire interview was filled with moments ripe for meme-ing.

DogeCoin and Meme Coin Cyrptocurrency

Earlier this year, a bunch of people on Reddit, Twitter, and Discord came together and decided to bet big on GameStop shorts and it threw the entire stock world for a loop. The play resulted in a lot of real money and it also gave birth to a whole bunch of “stock bros,” people whose entire identities revolve around talking about stocks.

First came GameStop, then AMC, then the rise of the meme coin cryptocurrency, resulting in all sorts of ridiculously named virtual money like DogeCoin, Shiba Inu, CumRocket’s Cummies, Dogelon Mars, MonaCoin, Loser Coin, Pepe Cash, and… really just way too many to name. Are any of your friends who care about cryptocurrency meme coins rich? No (except the DodgeCoin millionaire!), but I bet they won’t shut up about NFTs.

Sadly, everyone’s sudden obsession with checking their Robinhood account can be attributed to the fact that a lot of people are struggling financially right now. We all desperately want to believe we can get lucky and flip a few thousand into tens or even hundreds of thousands and be set for the years ahead. It’s certainly possible, but we wouldn’t bank on it.

My Fall Plans/ The Delta Variant

This simple framework was used aside a bunch of different stills from cartoons, television shows, and movies that at the end of the day boil down to one singular feeling — despair. It touched on the optimism we all felt for the early months of 2021 when the vaccine was being rolled out and it looked like we were actually going to have a regular summer, and how quickly that all faded away with the Delta variant.

It was a serious situation, but the meme helped us all cope just a little bit. Then came Omicron.

French Dispatch Premiere Meme

Taken during the Cannes premiere of Wes Anderson’s French Dispatch, this photo was snapped of the film’s director standing alongside cast members Timothée Chalamet, Tilda Swinton, and Bill Murray, and the foursome couldn’t look more like they were part of completely different worlds. Timothée looked like a modern-day Hollywood celeb (so basically, a dude from the ‘90s) Tilda Swinton looked like Bowie during his poppy ’80s era, Bill Murray looked like he toured the country following the Grateful Dead, and Wes Anderson looked…well like you’d expect Wes Anderson to look.

Soon the internet took this photo and used it as a basic template to show the stark differences between anything they felt the need to compare. This is one of those memes that got old painfully fast. In fact, we’re sorry we even brought it up and made you relive it.

Anakin Skywalker & Padme Amidala, ‘For The Better, Right?’

People might not be able to agree on whether the Star Wars prequel trilogy is any good, but one thing we can all agree on is that it’s a goldmine for memes. GIFs of Jar Jar being a jackass, anything with Ewan McGregor looking overly emotional, the phrase “I hate sand,” there is a lot of good material fit for memes! This year gave us this gem, a four-panel template from Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones.

The original scene concerned Anakin and Padme’s differing views on the Galactic Republic, then it made its way to Twitter with altered dialogue as a sort of proto version of the Red Flag Emoji meme. Now people use it as a simple four-scene joke where the punchline is always shared by panels two and four. The above example doesn’t follow that simple rule, but it’s a masterful use of the tempalate.

Anakin Skywalker as a character goes through probably pop culture’s greatest heel turn, and as such the meme is usually used in reference to people or ideas we previously thought were good and universally loved but have a darkness lurking beneath them. Like the internet itself.

Mary Jane Defending Peter Parker

The title of this meme is a bit deceptive, Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane isn’t actually defending Peter Parker here, she’s talking to her boss Enrique, but context doesn’t matter to the internet. Instead, this scene has been repurposed by anyone looking to defend someone else over something they might otherwise get bullied for. The context it’s now used in is always a bit lighthearted, as such, there isn’t a lot of depth or a deeper meaning here — it’s not a mirror that reflects where we are as a society or anything like that. It’s just a silly meme that people like to have fun with.

Sometimes that’s all we need.

Kim Kardashian Met Gala Outfit

You have to give it to Kim Kardashian, she has a certain skill for breaking the internet. We have to think a small part of her knew that she’d inspire the internet to give her the meme treatment when she rolled up to the Met Gala in a full-body black Balenciaga fit that made her look like a Dementor from Harry Potter. Soon every photo of her snapped at the Met Gala became a template ripe for memes.

Our favorite is this photo of her standing next to younger sister Kendall Jenner, soon the two figures began to represent the duality of our own identities.

Red Flag Emoji

The Red Flag Emoji meme was widespread to the point of exhaustion. It was the buzzing fly of your social media feed, always showing up with a tired joke that felt a week too late, but hey, we’ve got to give credit where credit is due — people got a lot of mileage out of this meme.

What started out as a wholesome attempt on TikTok about legitimate dating red flags became shorthand for separating yourself and your interests from those with differing views. It was a way to have a take and be entrenched on your side without explanation. Ultimately it was a less imaginative and less funny version of the Anakin and Padme meme. As such, it was considerably more popular.

Two Guys On A Bus

Credit goes to Brazilian cartoonist Genildo Ronchi, who illustrated this image way back in 2013. The original caption read, “escolha o lado feliz da vida!” Which roughly translates to “Choose the happy side of life!” How that cartoon became a meme template in 2021 is anyone’s guess. The image circulated with swapped text within Brazilian Twitter circles back in 2019, according to KnowYourMeme, but didn’t appear widespread in the US until this year where countless people used it to represent the duality of choice. It’s a modern-day choose your own adventure.

Some people hit this meme solely for the laughs, while some used it in some seriously dark ways. Are we always better off in life for making the “right” decision? You decide.

Fat Joe — Yesterday’s Price is Not Today’s Price

This is a meme that is surely near and dear to the fans of Verzuz. The phrase was uttered by Bronx rapper Fat Joe during his Versuz battle with Ja Rule. Consensus says that Ja won that battle, but the only thing anyone really remembers from that battle is all the beautiful Fat Joe memes we’ve gotten out of it. It then hit the stratosphere when Joey crack yelled it after seeing Jadakiss singlehandedly demolish the LOX vs. Dipset Verzuz.

This clip, where Fat Joe says “Yesterday’s price is not today’s price” to us represents the way many of us stopped taking shit from our employers this year and started viewing ourselves as the invaluable assets that we are. When you’re working hard in the midst of an almost three-year-long pandemic and it seems like your employers are doing everything they can to put you in harm’s way while raking in all the profits, you’ve got to ask yourself — is it really worth it? The heroes amongst us let our bosses know this year that yesterday’s prices aren’t today’s, so pay up.

The Feminine Urge

For the better part of a year, whether you spend your time on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Tumblr, or Instagram, you’ve probably been hearing about the feminine urge to… do pretty much anything. That soon morphed into the less often used “masculine urge” and “non-binary urge,” but for the most part, it’s all about the feminine urge.

This isn’t a meme that is divided by gender and it doesn’t even really need to make sense to be funny. Some of the most successful implementations of this meme have to do with seemingly nonsensical urges that have nothing to do with feminity or masculinity. The more absurd the better.

Yassification

If you’re not super keyed into memes, you might not know that the Yassification meme — which took Twitter by storm last month — has been brewing for quite some time. In late 2020 the term “yassification” first started making the rounds on social media platforms and by February of 2021 people were comparing minor celebrities to super celebrities and referring to them as the post-yassified form.

But the yassification meme was arguably in its most popular form by the fall of 2021 when people would “yassify” photos of celebrities through a Face App filter that made them look otherworldly attractive. We did it to everyone, from the cast of Seinfeld to Shrek, to Joe Biden. In an ugly year, it represents our need to surround ourselves with beauty, no matter how banal.