James Weir: A very accurate recap of 2018

Whether you are a royal, a TV star or a pollie, you’d better watch out because in 2018 we learnt there’s one thing Aussies love more than anything else.

2018 is a relentless madam that won’t seem to let up.

Just when you think you can throw in the towel and eat your feelings in these final hazy days, she hurls a news story into your feed about a new kind of office chair that “gives your core a workout”.

Very passive aggressive.

How about an office chair that does my work for me? Or an office chair that comes with one of those hats that has two beer cans on either side and straws that curl down into your mouth.

I’d settle for an office chair that comes with a crude cardboard cutout of me attached to it so my editor thinks I’m at my desk when I’m actually very late due to “traffic” (sitting in a coffee shop in a completely different suburb).

In 2018, insecurity is already a full-time job. We don’t need to be body-shamed by our office equipment. An Ab King Pro with a detachable keyboard is of zero interest.

We want simplicity and practicality.

What we need is a computer virus to attack all the attractive people on Instagram and apply fun-house filters to their photos to make them look bloated.

Maybe it could also delete all their sponsored posts about meal prep programs and replace them with ads for embarrassing ointments and fibre supplements.

These ideas are fast and loose and obviously we’d refine them to ensure we completely wipe out all attractive people but, my point is, you’d think we’d be further advanced by the end of 2018.

It was a year that served up stories of shock and suspense. We learnt a lot. But also not much at all. Mostly we just sat back and judged.

If we’ve learnt anything from 2018, it’s that obnoxious weddings turn people against you. It happened to some TV host we used to know and it also happened to Meghan Markle.

We loved her but months after she threw an OTT wedding, her staff and the public decided they were no longer fans. “Duchess Difficult” is what she’s reportedly being called. On the bright side, at least she now has a cool rap name in case she ever wants to ditch this whole royal thing and go down the hip hop route.

Meghan Markle has gone from blushing bride to ‘Duchess Difficult’. Picture: Owen Humphreys/WPA Pool/Getty Images

This year saw us become obsessed with every single detail of stories around the world.

That Thai soccer team got stuck in a cave and all of sudden we all became engineers, talking with unqualified expertise about how the rescue would unfold in the flooded caverns of the underground labyrinth.

The story had everything. Tragedy, hope, suspense, a happy ending plus a globally humiliated billionaire entrepreneur.

Elon Musk rocked on up to the cave with a homemade mini-submarine under his arm and none of us wanted to play with him.

I’ve never seen the mini-submarine but in my mind it’s a Milo tin attached to a really long piece of string. I wouldn’t want to be locked in there either.

Still, we shouldn’t have dismissed it. The man invented the car. That doesn’t sound correct and I could be wrong but he seems smart and we probably shouldn’t have laughed at him.

He even told us he tested the mini-submarine in his swimming pool. Why were we questioning it? In 2019, we should be a little bit more trusting of eccentric billionaires who want to save people with inventions they’ve tested in their swimming pool.

This year, we became fed up with mediocrity and accepted no excuses for careless missteps.

Shock jock Johanna Griggs was at it again when she pulled on her welding mask and applied a blowtorch to the botched Commonwealth Games closing ceremony. When it comes to searing editorials, Griggs and national treasure Liz Ellis have both delivered among the most surprising and spectacularly articulated take-downs of the year.

An unimpressed Joanna Griggs and Basil Zempilas after the Commonwealth Games closer debacle.

If Nine’s scrambling executives are indeed considering two female hosts to front the troubled Today show, Ellis and Griggs in the morning would be sensational.

Speaking of missteps: Australian politics.

To say Barnaby Joyce was left red faced by his cheating scandal is an understatement, and not just because his complexion is naturally that tone.

Among the many other disasters at Parliament House, Julie Bishop still came out on top in the public eye and proved she’s a genius who can walk through the minefield in a terrific pair of shoes.

She was one of many people who were robbed. One of the year’s other shock heists was pulled off by Grant Denyer, who pilfered the Gold Logie from Tracy Grimshaw. It was a true upset — one this country should still be railing against.

Thief! Gold Logie winner Grant Denyer. Picture: Nigel Hallett

We also lost a lot of icons this year — the grey plastic grocery bag among the most high-profile of the deceased. Its demise was a win for Waleed and a loss for cynical people everywhere who just wanted free and convenient bathroom bin liners. Australia will never be the same.

This year saw some of the biggest stories of our time break on social media. Lindsay Lohan showed us how you throw a party in Mykonos, bitch. White girls everywhere fell out of moving Hyundais while attempting the viral Keke dance challenge. And Big Dick Energy swung across the globe. We can still feel it.

Ignoring the chaos and drama in our own lives, we found security in reality television. Watching a bunch of loons make stupid choices and judging them for it provided the perfect distraction from our own terrible decisions.

Married At First Sight cheaters Davina and Dean became national villains. In hindsight, we probably got a bit too swept up in the mayhem and should’ve showed a bit more restraint in derailing the lives of these strangers. But that’s what hindsight’s for. You live and you learn and then you make the same mistake a few more times and then maybe you eventually change your destructive ways.

This year’s biggest baddies Dean and Davina on Married At First Sight. Picture: Channel 9

What I’m trying to say is we’ll probably get swept up in more hoopla throughout 2019 and bring down more Davinas and Deans. Maybe even another Honey Badger or two.

Especially if they’re attractive and on Instagram.

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