OK. I'm doing a Tournament of Years. I'll do a poll about the last 16 years, scrambled. Winner of each round goes on to a championship at the end. Here are the brackets (randomized):
@amye I had a great year! We went to Venice, Florence, Genoa before spending six weeks in Marseilles in a home exchange. I have a lot of good personal memories of 2019!
Also, there were like 20-plus candidates running for the Democratic Presidential primary, and it was like, hmm, which universal healthcare proposal is the most generous? Which of these candidates has the strongest free public university plan? How many of them endorse Governor Ingram's climate policy? It was a heady time.
@amye no, that was the other poll! I'm doing one poll per day this week with four random years out of the last 16, and then on Friday I'll do a poll with the winners from the previous days. That way we'll find out what was the best year lately
@evan the fact that I picked 2014, the year I nearly died from heart failure, as my best year tells us something about the general state of things in the past decade
@Aviva_Gary Usually when I do polls, part of the value is starting a discussion about how we answer the question. "What is a good year? What makes one year better than another?" When I over-specify the parameters, it makes for a really frantic process for me, and no fun for everyone else. So, I'd rather leave those things undefined.
@Aviva_Gary that said, some people have a hard time with that kind of open-ended thought process. I understand we all have different kinds of minds, and some aren't going to enjoy questions like that.
@RedtheBean I assume you are referring to 2008 being voted as best in this bracket by so many people?
Well I think part of it is that the fediverse is considerably less US-centric than many other online audiences, and I think Americans felt the effects of the financial crisis much more immediately than most of the rest of the world. For me personally 2008 was a very good year and 2009 was when I actually lost my job, and I think people are voting in these polls based on their own life experiences and of those around them rather than considering world events first.
Surprising, but also my pick. My son was born in 2008; so was identi.ca. Obama was elected. I didn't have a real strong impression from the other years.
@Quinnypig I'm doing a tournament of the last 16 years. Each day, I do a poll for 4 years selected randomly, then on the fifth day, I'll do a poll of all the winners.
@evan This is tough. 2010 I moved Philly -> Manhattan, 2015 NJ -> Philly, 2021 I moved across Philly entirely by bicycle. Each improved my life. But 2010 I hated law school, 2015 I had no purpose, and 2021 there was COVID.
Tiebreaker to world events, I think 2010 wins because of WikiLeaks and the Arab Spring. I thought that technology was discomfiting the powerful and that the Internet was helping the people rise up to change things for the better. Sadly that doesn't seem to have panned out.
@evan All terrible years again, 2009 was the worst year of my life. Given world events I'll go with 2011, when Occupy suggested people might be fed up with big business ruining everything and they might rise up to demand change. I have nostalgia for rooting for Anonymous.
(It was a currency/economy created by teenagers and pre-teens, but they were teenagers and pre-teens who recognised the flaws of adults' economic system and decided to try to do better)
@evan Man, all of those years really sucked. Disabling knee injury and shitty relationship, moving away from the country and city I called home due to my mum's terminal illness, finding myself utterly destitute despite having a job and getting really sick myself, getting burned out from a 6-hour daily commute and another shitty relationship with a pushy manchild which massively triggered previous relationship trauma. 🙃 But 2012 was the year of my mum's lung transplant, so that.
Well, there it is. The tale of the tape. Congratulations to 2012, the most popular year in the last sixteen years. It was a hard year for me, but also an important one.
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