Reality TV Star
The success of the MTV reality show Jersey Shore was a cultural phenomenon that could not be ignored in 2010, and no one was more synonymous with the media frenzy created by the program than its breakout star Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi. Yes, fucking Snooki. Please, just try to get through this story without thinking about the more-deserving people—there are, literally, millions of them—who should be occupying this spot instead.
Snooki’s profane antics and drunken fights drew in millions of viewers each week and propelled the 23-year-old to national fame, helping her to eclipse—among others it honestly would be too painful to bring up—the men and women behind the Large Hadron Collider, perhaps the most significant piece of experimental technology in centuries of scientific research, developed by people whose work in the field of physics this year forced us to entirely rethink the way we view the universe and, consequently, our very existence.
Snooki got punched in the face on TV.
In addition to appearing on countless talk shows this year, Snooki announced that she is currently writing a book entitled A Shore Thing. That’s right! A book. Though the reader should be advised at this point to block out all the other books of actual importance released in 2010, such as the first new novel in nearly a decade from American master Jonathan Franzen, the memoirs of former president George W. Bush, or even another Stieg Larsson bestseller, which, though not the greatest piece of literature in the history of the world, at least features complete sentences and a plot structure. Just, please, don’t think about those authors.
Or, for that matter, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke—hell, even fucking Ryan Seacrest actually accomplished something in 2010. No, this article is about Snooki, and we’re all just going to have to deal with it.
As evidenced by this piece, Snooki has also dominated year-in-review lists nationwide, which, let’s be honest, is as much the fault of readers as anyone else: those who continue to pay attention to this irrelevant, diminutive shrew in some weird attempt to feel better about themselves, thereby perpetuating this disgusting, cannibalistic media circus that you all purport to despise and yet continue to fuel. And to which we have to respond, or risk becoming irrelevant ourselves.
Had we any faith in the American public being interested in a profile of Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who won the presidential election in Sudan as the genocide-wracked nation edged further toward a split; or award-winning Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima; or really, almost any other living being doing almost anything else, we would be happy to oblige. So don’t try to pin this whole thing on us, you fucker. We’re right and you know it.
But again, it’s probably best to avoid thinking about it too much. It’s just easier that way. Snooki, one of the most important people of 2010. Really.
