KYM Review: The Most 'Only In [Current Year]' Stories Of 2021

In 2020, we introduced a new editorial to our usual lineup of year-end wrap-ups: The Most “2020” Stories of 2020, a list of some of the wackiest “only in 2020” stories that happened in one of the weirdest years in recent memory.

It was supposed to be a one-off list — after all, 2020 had a fraught presidential election and the onset of the coronavirus. Surely, the following year wouldn’t be nearly as weird. Then 2021 happened and proved to us all that “weird” is just the reality we live in now.

This year, we saw multiple catfishes on individual and academic scales, anime in Congress, a man destroying his career over beans, possibly the most important pair of testicles in history, a boat getting stuck in the Suez Canal and Chris-Chan doing that.

This year was an absolute whirlwind of headlines that left many a head buried in its owner's hands, all while we struggled to make it back into “normal” life in a post-vaccine world. Let’s get into it.

Paul Gosar’s Attack On Titan Tweet

As may have only been a matter of time, anime shitposting has finally brought on dire political consequences. On November 7th, Arizona Republican Paul Gosar posted an Attack On Titan intro parody in which he, as Eren Jaeger, slaughters titan versions of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Joe Biden. The video was meant as a joke, but it swiftly raised questions among onlookers, such as, "Who made this?" "How much does Paul Gosar know about Attack On Titan?" "Is he aware of the actual arc of the show, which reveals the titans were actually the 'good' side by the end?"

For Congress, the most important question was, "Does the video constitute a threat?" Particularly in a year that started with a violent riot at the United States capitol, Congress was forced to look at Gosar’s video with the utmost seriousness. Ultimately, Congress voted to censure Gosar, meaning he lost all of his committee seats and his ability to influence any policy. The debate itself was a circus, with Republicans including Andy Biggs outing themselves as weebs in Gosar’s defense. All in all, it left viewers with the lesson: Anime. Not even once.

Vivian, The L.A. Lakers Catfish

One of the lesser-known but wildest stories of the year is the story of Los Angeles Lakers superfan Vivian, a semi-popular podcaster and cancer patient, who it very much looks like doesn’t exist. In April 2021, Vivian Flores’ co-host Josh Toussaint reported that Vivian was missing. This set off a series of prominent Lakers-world celebrities signal-boosting the report, including the actual Lakers Twitter account. Some things didn’t quite add up, however. Why wasn’t Vivian’s family involved? Soon, the rumor that Vivian was a catfish began to spread, and once people followed that thread, they found a surprising amount of evidence supporting the idea that Vivian didn’t exist.

For starters, Vivian’s pictures were very clearly photoshopped. It came out that Toussaint had never spoken to Vivian in person, and that all of her podcast audio was pre-recorded. One Twitter user claimed they’d “fallen in love” with Flores over Twitter DMs, but never actually saw her face (which somehow caused Kevin Durant to make fun of him). Some believed Toussaint had actually made up the whole thing and used some pitch-editing software to make him sound like “Vivian.” To this day, it’s unclear what actually happened with Vivian, but for those in NBA Twitter, it was by far the scandal of the year.

Nicki Minaj’s Cousin’s Friend’s Testicles

For a period of the year, the most important testicles in the world belonged to a Trinidadian man who may or may not exist. In September, Nicki Minaj tweeted that she’d heard from her cousin that his friend got the COVID-19 vaccine, which allegedly made his testicles swollen and his genitalia impotent, thus causing his fiancée to leave him a week before the wedding.

The wild bit of hearsay somehow snowballed into a matter of global importance. The White House offered Nicki Minaj a phone call to answer her questions about the vaccine. The health minister of Trinidad and Tobago clarified that the nation’s health officials attempted to track down the mysterious man to no avail. Tucker Carlson invited the man onto his show, if he even existed.

Of course, to many, the symptoms relayed by Minaj sounded much less like a vaccine side effect and more a gonorrhea side effect. It sounded much more likely that a man had had an affair, contracted an STD and lied to his fiancée about his disease's origin than a man had gotten the vaccine and his genitalia stopped working. We may never know for sure, but Ballgate was truly one of the year’s more gripping thrill rides to spiral out of control.

ESPN Duped Into Airing Fake High School Football Team

One would assume that ESPN, being “the worldwide leader in sports,” would have a general idea on whether or not the teams they air on national television actually exist. However, this basic tenet of the channel was thrown into question this year when ESPN aired a high school football game between IMG Academy (real) and Bishop Sycamore (probably not real). IMG Academy blew out Bishop Sycamore 58-0 in a drubbing so bad, the game’s announcers wondered if they may have gotten duped into letting Bishop Sycamore onto national TV.

After the blowout, people began doing a little digging into Bishop Sycamore and discovered a mountain of shady facts about the school. For starters, it has no official address, just a P.O. Box. Former head coach Roy Johnson, who was fired after the game, is in lots of legal trouble for using the football team to cover his debts. His scam allegedly involves asking big schools to cover the cost of travel and equipment and then never paying the money back. Moreover, athletes at Bishop Sycamore allegedly don’t actually go to school. The exposure caused the governor of Ohio to look into the case, which appears to still be ongoing.

Carnell Tate AGAIN! This one was all EFFORT 😤@carnelltate_ l #GEICOHSKickoff pic.twitter.com/IxP6UxVmxn

— NIBC (@NIBCOfficial) August 29, 2021

Jeopardy! Host Search

Jeopardy! was an American institution for decades. The long-running game show seemed controversy-proof, as the show’s simple answer-and-question format made it a wholesome, fun, nightly half-hour in American households. This was aided by Alex Trebek, the beloved host whose nerdy yet unobtrusive presence kept the show nice and snappy. When Trebek sadly passed away, it was always going to be tough for the show to find a suitable replacement. However, no one could expect the degree to which they’d mess it up.

Rather than simply announcing a new host, Jeopardy! attempted to spice things up by running months of guest hosts, one of which would presumably become the permanent host. This led to some hosts being better suited to the job than others, while fans clamored for Levar Burton to step into the role. Ultimately, Jeopardy! chose its own executive producer, Mike Richards, to take the gig, angering fans. Fans were angered further when they learned of Richards’ history of sexist jokes and scandals from his time producing The Price Is Right.

Richards quickly stepped down from the role, which then went in part to Big Bang Theory star Mayim Bialik, who herself has a history of questionable comments that made viewers raise their eyebrows. As of now, Bialik is sharing co-hosting duties with former Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings, but only time will tell if they’ll stick around.

Gorilla Glue Girl

In early 2021, the most, uh, gripping story of the year was the tale of a woman who froze her hair solid with Gorilla Glue. Earlier this year, Tessica Brown ran out of hairspray and figured that the next best thing was Gorilla Glue. She figured she could eventually wash the glue out with shampoo. Turns out, that wasn’t the case.

The TikTok-driven saga went viral, sending a score of memes, jokes and support Brown’s way. Rumors of a lawsuit spread, as Gorilla Glue does not explicitly state to not use its product on hair. That didn’t come to pass, and ultimately, Brown received some generosity when Dr. Michael Obeng offered to perform the surgery to get the glue out of Brown’s hair for free, ending what was 2021’s stickiest situation.

Bean Dad

Right before 2021 went straight to hell, the internet was amused by the tale of John Roderick, or as he came to be known, “Bean Dad.” In a (far-too-lengthy) thread on Twitter, Roderick told the tale of how his daughter asked him to open a can of beans. Rather than do it for her, or even tell her how to use a can opener, Roderick insisted his daughter figure out how to use a can opener herself. Hours passed, and, in Roderick’s telling, his daughter grew resentful and frustrated until she finally figured out how to open the beans.

What Roderick thought was an amusing tale quickly turned out to be his social demise. Many accused Roderick of child abuse, while others dug through his past social media and uncovered some legitimately awful tweets. The controversy caused the podcast My Brother, My Brother and Me to stop using Roderick’s song “It’s a Departure” as their theme song, and Roderick ultimately stopped posting after publishing an apology that apologized both for his parenting crimes and the anti-semitic “jokes” people had discovered in his past. The lesson from Bean Dad is: Never Tweet.

Evergiven Jam

Remember when that boat got stuck in the Suez Canal? It’s hard to believe nowadays, but for a week in March, a cargo ship called the Evergiven was an extremely funny but very dire global economic crisis. The boat got itself wedged between two sides of the canal, blocking one of the planet’s most vital trade routes, delaying shipping and costing numerous countries billions of dollars.

The boat became a social media sensation, as the days-long blockage provided a lengthy life for memes. Memes were made about excavators trying their darnedest to unbeach the ship, while the gijinka crowd took to making the Evergiven look like a sexy anime girl. Ultimately, the ship was freed after six long days in the canal. Heck, it even made return journeys to the canal, which were much more successful and event-free than its fateful March voyage. It may seem like a distant memory now, but the Evergiven remained stuck in our hearts throughout 2021.

Stonks and The GME Short Squeeze

For a brief period of time early in the year, everyone had to do a crash course in stock market lingo, because the biggest story was that everyone was making buckets of cash on GameStop stock. Reddit’s /r/WallStreetBets noted that crafty stock market traders were borrowing GameStop stock on the bet that the stock would trend downward. If and when it did, the trader would make an easy profit. Of course, the hitch in that plan is that if the stock went up, they would be forced to sell at a loss. Reddit jumped in and began buying GME stock in droves, sending it soaring, causing panic among short-sellers and making those in the know incredibly rich.

Soon, similar meme stock trends happened with AMC, Nokia and Blackberry, sending their prices “to the moon,” to use the proper parlance. If nothing else, the “short squeeze surge” proved to many how much of a blatant joke the stock market is, which was made all the more clear when trading businesses tried to limit the organic surge of /r/WallStreetBets traders.

Chris-Chan Saga

The saga of arguably the deep web’s most notorious figure came to a horrifying climax this year when it was revealed that Christine Chandler, aka Chris-Chan, allegedly raped their elderly mother, Barbara. Considering the lengthy saga of Chris-Chan, Sonichu and Chris’ unwitting position as the internet’s most infamous lolcow, this was the worst possible ending to the Chris-Chan tale.

Once a niche internet microcelebrity, Chris-Chan became a household name to people out of the loop, leading to days where Chris-Chan wasn’t just a back-of-the-mind horror story for former browsers of Kiwi Farms, but a prominent topic on Twitter and other mainstream social media feeds. Ultimately Chris-Chan was arrested, and the trial will begin early next year.

Looking for more of this year's best viral phenomena and memes? Be sure to check out our other 2021 meme roundups below:

• The Top 10 Memes Of 2021
• KYM Staff Picks Of 2021
• The Top Gaming Memes Of 2021
• The Slang Of 2021
• The Most 2021 Stories Of 2021
• Top 10 Streamer Moments Of 2021
• Breakthrough Meme Formats Of The Year
• 10 Best TikToks Of 2021
• Top 10 Lewd Memes Of The Year
• Trolls, Rumors And Hoaxes Of The Year
• Top Exploitables Of 2021
• Top Meme Creators Of 2021
• Top Meme Revivals Of 2021
• Best Gimmick Twitter Accounts Of 2021