The State of the Internets in 2014

The Year In Review

• The Plateau of the Social Media Narcissism: After taking the centerstage of memes in 2013, selfies seemed to have passed its saturation point with heads-of-states, including Barack Obama, jumping on the bandwagon, then it took on a self-parodical tone with the Selfie Olympics, before the selfie to end all other selfies arrived with Ellen Degeneres’ A-list studded photo at the Academy Awards ceremony. Oh and yeah, and there was that song, "Let Me Take a Selfie".

• Sign Holding Activism: While just plain, old gratuitous photos of ourselves may be going out of fashion, it doesn't look like the selfie trend will die out any time soon, as it has begun to take on some of the less conspicuous forms, most notably its association with countless "sign holding" campaigns that took over the trending topics bars of Twitter all year around.

• A Golden Age of Sports Memes: Boosted by this year's double-whammy celebration of the two biggest international sporting events in the world, the Olympics and the World Cup, we saw more athlete and sports-related internet memes this year than ever before, not only owing to increased efforts from the sports fans, but also the teams and the leagues themselves.

• The Looming Fog of the Gender War: Even looking back at some of the moments from just a year ago, it doesn't come as a total surprise that we witnessed the cataclysmic event that is now being called #GamerGate, the most enduring online debate of the year that happens to grind the gears of people who are wired to never concede or admit fault: feminists, gamers and journalists. The scope of the conversation has become so convoluted that the discussion has reached a meta-stage where both camps are now debating the validity of certain debate tactics used by each others.