It’s been a common refrain for a while now but, man, what a weird year. A mixture of hopeful breakthroughs and disappointing setbacks, 2021 wasn’t quite the triumphant post-pandemic year many of us had hoped for, but instead a strange mix of pseudo-normal-life and still-lingering anxiety. Within all that, dumb news stories seemed to register as even more alien, and the pop culture landscape could feel sort of fragmented and siloed, until certain left field events became more universal.