Susie O’Brien: The good, bad and ugly of 2021

In 2021, we were once again bombarded with a crazy news cycle. Here are all the things you forgot happened this year.

2021 gave us more press conference with Daniel Andrews. Picture: Sarah Matray

In 2021, Covid continued to plague us – as did overused virus-related puns.

Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, Trump supporters invaded the Capitol and supply chain issues affected our ability to buy cooler bags with built-in beverage pouches from Kmart.

2021 brought us a new US president, larger sizes of pants and a new type of Covid normal, which was like the old normal but with face masks and longer lines outside chemists.

This year a sprinter with a mullet wowed us at the Olympics, ScoBo (Scott Boland) wowed us at the Ashes, and we applauded Grace Tame and Brittany Higgins.

Bert died, Cleo was rescued, Gladys stood down and the sale of Afterpay helped millions of millennials buy handbags they couldn’t afford.

Also in 2021, doctors overtook scientists as the most trusted professionals. (For some reason, tabloid newspaper columnists remain at the bottom of the pile, behind used-car salespeople and ticket inspectors.)

Words of the year included adulting, awe walking (when you take time to notice things around you) and sapiosexual (a romantic attraction to highly intelligent people).

We also used “thirsty” as a term for needing attention and called things “truthy” if they seemed true but weren’t.

Almost a year ago Trump supporters invaded the Capitol.

Other words of the year were vax from Oxford, strollout from Macquarie (a slow rollout) and allyship from dictionary.com. Allyship means people who advocate on behalf of other marginal groups. Clearly, no one’s advocating on behalf of those who make up silly self-important words.

By the end of the second lockdown, we were making up new words of our own. In our house we suffered from doorbell panic – the rush of fear and excitement that comes when someone rings the doorbell, prompting a discussion about who in the house has ordered UberEats or been shopping online while drunk. Again. Or it could be something really scary – a real life person at the door who wants to come in.

And even when lockdown ended, we experienced a new plandemic – a reluctance to make plans that may need to be cancelled due to Covid.

We also got a new acronym – ASMR – which stands for autonomous sensory meridian response. In other words, sounds that make us feel good. Pie-makers – which were the best-selling gadget in 2021 – had the same positive effect.

We also spent up big on air-fryers, weighted blankets and those $2 plates used by Nadia Bartel’s friends to snort ”white powder”.

Yes you can make ripple cakes using a cheap pie maker from Kmart.

We licked public transport hand rails in the hopes of getting the new milder virus Omicron, and counted the number of times the Premier used the words “pivot” and “flex” in press conferences.

What else happened in 2021?

A Michigan judge ordered parents who destroyed their son’s porn collection pay him $30,000 in damages and a London YouTuber reported that she fell in love with an alien. He’s still waiting for his money and she’s still waiting for a second date.

Sex and the City showed us the power of Botox to cryovac women’s faces, Mark Zuckerberg turned Facebook into Meta and we loved Daniel Craig’s last hurrah as James Bond.

We watched Squid Games, Spider-Man found there was no way home and we fell in love with Ted Lasso. Some filmmakers even managed to make movies that did not star Benedict Cumberbatch.

Others made films about the stray dogs of Istanbul, a nihilistic Syrian refugee who sells his own skin and the softcore exploits of Catholic nuns in the 17th century.

Other terrible cinematic offerings included Lockdown, which was about a quarantining couple preparing to break up which most people thought was a documentary.

Still they were all better than Venom: Let There Be Carnage which should have been called Venom: Let There Be Less Sh-t Marvel Movies.

Music-lovers continued to listen to more songs from artists we’ve never heard of including Masked Wolf, Lil Nas X, Hatchie and Amyl and the Sniffers.

The music world fell in love with Lil Nas X. Picture: Getty Images

But Taylor Swift trumped them all by rereleasing new lyrics to All Too Well, which she used to have a go at an ex-boyfriend Jake Gyllenhaal.

Gyllenhaal is no doubt annoyed that a relationship that lasted three months 11 years ago became the subject of a 10-minute video that was the No.1 song of the year.

Despite the spread of Covid, Aussies most often googled about sport, cryptocurrency and shows to watch on TV.

We turned to the internet to find out how to get stimulus cheques, how to be happy alone and how to pronounce quinoa, charcuterie and dogecoin.

In case you’re wondering, it’s dowzh koyn.

Best of luck in 2022. May your cooler bags have built-in wine dispensers, your politicians be less thruthy and your test results be negative.

PS Just kidding about licking the hand rails.

Susie O’Brien is a Herald Sun columnist