The 10 Most Entertaining Social Media Days Of The Year

You can say a lot about our digital culture, in which our conversations and social interactions have increasingly become contingent upon ignoring people IRL to converse with our real friends, the ones on our coveted screens. But whatever gripes we may have, it’s hard to deny the degree of unintentional entertainment value that gets shoved in our faces day in and day out.

With that in mind, here are some of each year’s most consistently outrageous social media days:

1. Seminal Television Event

Think “Red Wedding” in Game of Thrones, or the series finale of Breaking Bad. 

These go down once or twice a year, and inevitably bring out one of the most brutal subsets of humanity; people who perceive themselves as superior because they talk loudly about niche things in public forums, complete with a tone that insinuates they are worth more than you because they spend 60 minutes every Sunday night consuming a thing.

This is the social media equivalent of going to lunch with three college friends who all went high school in LA, and having to sit through 60 minutes of them talking about how awesome LA is. (While also mentioning, without any warning, that your favorite character died in last week’s episode.)

2. The Super Bowl

The Super Bowl is a perfect storm of social media doom. You have (a. an event that literally everyone is watching (b. an event highly hyped up and coveted by the media (c. an event that demands media participation, thus allowing professional twitter accounts to tweet things like “THAT. JUST. HAPPENED.” (d. an event equally focused on entertainment as it is sports, allowing literally anyone with an opinion to weigh in on something.

The Super Bowl is like a massive crowd being in the same room. If something unexpected happens, the place will go nuts and become slightly dangerous. Remember when the lights went out last year? I’m all for obscure tweets that liken a Super Bowl blackout to a 2001 Nelly Furtado song, but where’s the line here?

3. Cinco De Mayo

Only entertaining if you know a guido kid named Tony who you haven’t spoken to since high school, but has a prolific mupload/instagram game.

4. New Year’s Eve

New Year’s Eve is probably the leading leader in “time of your life” desparation. Mainly, there is a lot on the line in terms of proving to your former acquaintances that you lead at life worth celebrating, or at the very least are better than they are at celebrating

Thinking about not even going out this year and just watching the magic from the screens.

5. Third Week In January

In addition to being prime Breakup Season (more on this in a few weeks), the third week in January is also when people have, with moderate success, begun acting upon their New Year’s resolutions. Three weeks in, and it’s now acceptable to share your remarkable, barely-noteworthy-because-you-started-a-week-ago achievement to the world.

Brace yourselves for endless rounds of faux-encouragaging–a great strategy to appease your friends for the time being, that also nicely sets the stage for their inevitable long-term disappointment, disillusionment, and unshakeable resentment.

6. Halloween

I’d argue the best part has little to do with the costumes, and ALL to do with the accompanying hashtags the costumes inevitably inspire.

7. Election Day

In the words of aughts notable Terrell Owens, getcha popcorn ready. Election day is sure to be a wild ride, in which:

• Your democrat friends, as per usual, will remain completely unbearable.
• Your republican friends scratch their heads and talk in a tone that seems to imply that when the apocalypse comes in two years, we shouldn’t be surprised because we’ve brought it on ourselves.
• Your libertarian friends do everything they possibly can to make sure you know that they are libertarian.

8. Major National/World Tragedies

Before people start yelling at the screen at lighting themselves on fire in protest of an article they spent 59 seconds of their life reading, I am not saying there is anything remotely positive about tragic and mind numbingly senseless events.

What I am saying though, is that the way people react to these events on social media can be disturbing to the point where it creates a misguided dialogue that’s, admittedly, twistedly entertaining. Be it people trying to make the horrific tragedy about them, someone completely missing the mark on a joke, or somebody capitalizing on the event to tell you how this wouldn’t’ve happened if people just listened to the Facebook status they made 3 months ago, it’s all but guaranteed your social feeds will become train wrecks of the greatest degree. Weirdly, this can actually become a coping mechanism.

9. Valentine’s Day

Love is in the air, but passive-aggressive digs at friends in relationships are in the newsfeeds. Some things are just meant to be.

10. Thanksgiving

In which you finally get to reveal to the world that your Uncle made a racist remark.

As always, the best part about social media is that it’s always filled with information you really need to know about.