Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2024-01-10/Traffic report

This particular text generator by OpenAI takes the top spot by a huge margin in a way few articles have, feeling less like a brief fascination with the macabre like last year's Dahmer and more like a harbinger of things to come, à la COVID-19's taking of our coveted first spot years ago. And like COVID-19, it's hard to imagine that the advancements that come with the rapid AI arms race brought on by ChatGPT's whirlwind popularity will not come without some barely-understood long-term side effects, loss of smell notwithstanding. Yes, there's plenty to look forward to if you’re part of the AI in-crowd – better healthcare, more space travel, hell, maybe even immortality! But what this all means for the rest of us has yet to be seen, and if AI's frontmen and opinion polls are to be believed, it might even be the extinction of the human race. What are ya gonna do, right? Definitely not lobby world governments to let you make AI more and more powerful while convincing them to push for stricter restrictions on other companies' technology ... right?

The very least we can say about all this is that we're all in it together – but whether or not that the "we" in question even includes us humans will become harder to discern with time. I'll assure you that a human wrote this entry, but I can't guarantee that future reports won't be AI-generated.

A more passive pop culture consumer might have balked at the idea of Taylor Swift becoming any more world famous than she already was before this year, but the eagle-eyed and extremely online among us saw the pieces coming together the entire time (because she's a mastermiiind...) The implosion of Ticketmaster over fans clamoring to get Eras Tour tickets, the growing fervor for the "Taylor's Versions" of her albums, and the budding comparisons of her to Beyoncé, who was unfortunately left in the dust on this year's list despite embarking on her own record-breaking world tour this year, felt like big red signs that something huge was coming.

Admittedly, it's jarring to try and broach the subject of Swift, not only because her now-gargantuan fanbase could pounce at any moment but because anything I could say about her would be redundant. Her music is overplayed, but she's also deserving of all of the acclaim, even if she is a capitalist, which makes her more of a marketing genius, but she's also heavily contributing to climate change, yet all of this talk about her just reeks of misogyny, even if she's really just a white feminist, and who's Taylor Swift anyway? Hearing about the onslaught of ever-changing opinions on a woman whose life and wealth will likely be altered by none of them would be just as exhausting as writing about it, so let's just stick to the facts of what got her on the list this year.

Early on in the year, Swift's pageviews were relatively low (even if low for her doesn't exactly translate to low for the average Wikipedia article) with a brief spike in February for the Grammys, where she won the award for Best Music Video for directing All Too Well: The Short Film. Then, of course, began the Eras Tour in March in Glendale, Arizona, which was briefly renamed Swift City for her arrival. The tour is now the highest-grossing concert tour of all time even with more to come, each date of which lasted over three hours and spanned each of her albums, or eras, and brought billions to the U.S. economy. Tragedy struck in April for Swift when her six-year-long relationship with actor Joe Alwyn, which (likely) inspired plenty of her songs like the atrocious less-than-impressive "London Boy", came to a swift end. She came back stronger than a 90s trend only a month later when she and The 1975 frontman Matty Healy started dating, but that soon spelled out a PR disaster for Swift when Healy appeared on an episode of a "dirtbag left"-style podcast where the hosts called rapper Ice Spice an "Inuit Spice Girl" and a "chubby Chinese lady" and mocked Chinese accents. Swift shook off Healy and rolled out an all too convenient remix of her song "Karma" featuring the neither Chinese nor Inuit rapper that left critics and fans feeling like Swift might be trying to evade her own karma. July brought us Speak Now (Taylor's Version), which gave Swift the most number-one albums on the Billboard 200 chart among any female artist, as well as a literal Swiftquake when her Seattle tour stop led to seismic activity equivalent to a 2.3 magnitude earthquake.

The North American leg of her tour ended in August, by which point The New York Times had defined it as "both a business and a cultural juggernaut", and she announced that her next re-recording would be of her 2014 album, 1989. Pageviews started to decline until September when, out of left field, in came 1989-born Kansas City Chiefs player Travis Kelce as her new lover. Her spirited appearances at Chiefs games throughout October led to Kelce becoming a veritable sports superstar and the NFL to experience the "Taylor Swift effect", while her release of 1989 (Taylor's Version) made her a billionaire and her 2019 song "Cruel Summer" rocketed to number one on the Billboard Hot 100, four years after its release. Also that month, her concert film Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour came out in theaters and became the highest-grossing concert movie. So overall, I guess it was an okay year for her.

Neil Druckmann, who wrote and co-directed the game, co-created the show with Craig Mazin. In addition to Druckmann, many of the game's developers were involved with the production and several of its actors make cameos. The Last of Us became a massive ratings success following its January 15 premiere, with an average of 32 million viewers per episode, and received widespread acclaim for the performances, writing, production design, and music. Unsurprisingly, a second season, adapting the events of the 2020 game The Last of Us Part II, has been greenlit and is set to premiere in 2025.

I haven't watched it yet, partly because I haven't had time and partly because I remain bitter that they massacred my boy. (Seeing how broken the PC port of the remake of the first game, which was rushed out to capitalize on the show, was at launch was the most wonderful schadenfreude I've experienced since the first time I sat down and watched Sony's glorious E3 2006 conference, an HD recording of which surfaced this year.)

The series stars Lily-Rose Depp as a pop star who falls victim to/develops a relationship with a cult leader portrayed by Abel "The Weeknd" Tesfaye, who co-created the series with Levinson. Months before The Idol's premiere, reports emerged that after its original director, Amy Seimetz, departed, Levinson attempted to remold the series—ostensibly a satire about the predatory side of the entertainment industry—into a clone of Euphoria. While the reports haven't been 100% confirmed, the series is undeniably that same Euphoria brand of misery porn that masquerades as "thought-provoking" and "deep" drama.

If #9 was HBO's yang, then The Idol was its yin—critics lambasted the series for its writing, performances, and handling of the subject matter, with at least one critic describing it as one of the worst TV shows ever made. Poor ratings led to it being canceled just two months after its premiere in June, which provided even more schadenfreude for me.

Perhaps Musk's most bizarre action of the year was his decision to rebrand Twitter (#40), which he acquired last year, as "X", phasing out its iconic bird branding. The rebrand has (pretend to be shocked) failed to catch on, with the vast majority of Earth's populace continuing to refer to it as "Twitter", posts as "tweets", reposts as "retweets", and so on.

There's plenty more I could say about Musk, such as an incident in November in which he triggered an advertiser boycott of Twitter (see?) after expressing support for the white genocide conspiracy theory (for which he later apologized), but it is simply a waste of my time, effort, and brain cells (many of which I have lost while writing this). People, please stop clicking links to his article.

In February, US president Joe Biden (#46) made a surprise visit to Kyiv. In March, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against Russian president Vladimir Putin for alleged war crimes. On 4 April, Finland officially became a member of NATO.

In May, Russia finally captured Bakhmut after months of bloody fighting, though the Wagner Group's leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, later withdrew his forces amid continuing conflict with the Russian Ministry of Defence. This culminated with the Wagner Group rebellion on 23 June, in which Wagner forces took control of the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and marched a column toward Moscow, before abruptly ending it the next day after Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko brokered a settlement. Prigozhin and several other key figures of Wagner died on 23 August when the business jet carrying them crashed.

Also in June, Ukraine launched a counteroffensive, drawing on the aid it received in the preceding months, though as the months passed, analysts assessed it had not met its goals and the war had turned into a "stalemate". And the war continues to 2024...

50 years ago, the Yom Kippur War ended after a month. This one is about to finish its third month of conflict, and right as 2024 started, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated "this will take six months at least, and involve intense mopping-up missions against the terrorists", no matter if the international community would just prefer for the bloodshed to end as soon as possible.

Such decisions included the overhaul of the verification system to make it entirely reliant on paid subscriptions, hampering the ability of non-registered users to browse the site, and limits to the amount of tweets a user can see per day, just to name a few. Concerns over the app's growing instability and a rise in hate speech led to many users jumping ship to alternatives, such as Bluesky and Threads. Even dril left—let that sink in for a moment.

One of the few positive changes, however, was the introduction of the Community Notes feature, which allows users to add context and/or fact checks to others' tweets. It's led to some hilarious interactions and takedowns, the best of which have been documented by the "community notes violating people" account.

2023 saw multiple big movies crash at the box office, with the biggest ones being Shazam: Fury of the Gods, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, The Flash, Blue Beetle, The Marvels, and Wish.

Combined with other disappointments, the strikes – 2023 Writers Guild of America strike and 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike – and the success of #12, #40, and #4 making 2023 the first year since 2001 when there are no sequels among the three biggest movies of the year, it looks like this year might be a turning point for Hollywood.

On the other hand, for those not familiar with the NFL (which is probably most people outside the United States), and even to some Americans, it is undoubtedly a connection with another singer which Kelce is most-known for. Yes, he started dating #8. Chaos ensued on social media when Swift showed up at one of his games to cheer him on, then the two of them got in his car and drove off into the sunset. Sales of his jersey went up 400%, and his podcast shot to No. 1. New viewers, particularly women, tuned in in droves, which the NFL quickly capitalized on, to the point that Kelce thought they were "overdoing" it. Swifties began pranking the men in their lives by claiming she "put Kelce on the map" and filmed their reactions. And chaos continued to ensue whenever they were spotted together, like when they made a surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live, or when she changed the lyrics to a song in reference to him.

So what is it about this relationship, described by one publication as "Gen Z's Posh Spice and Becks" (#31), that has captivated so many people? Maybe it's the old rom-com archetype of the "All-American athlete dating the All-American pop star". Maybe it reminds people of the title character of #12 and Ken. Maybe it takes people out of the sorry state of the world, e.g. #24 and #27. Whatever it is, no doubt people will continue to pay attention in 2024, as Kelce vies for a third Super Bowl and Swift resumes her record-breaking Eras Tour.

In 2023, Trump had four criminal indictments filed against him: a March indictment for the Stormy Daniels hush money scandal; a June indictment for his alleged mishandling of classified documents; an August indictment for attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election; and another August indictment for his election obstruction efforts in Georgia. That last indictment brought us the first (and currently only) mug shot of a US president, which quickly became fodder for memes and merchandise.

And all this happened as Trump began another run for the White House. Despite these legal hurdles, his rhetoric becoming increasingly inflammatory (to the point that many are characterizing it as authoritarian), and disputes over whether he's even eligible to be on the ballot due to his involvement in the January 6 attack, he maintains a large lead over his Republican primary rivals in polling. 2024 appears to be shaping up as a rematch of 2020, and Trump's even ahead of #46 in current polling.

God, I fucking dread the next election cycle.

Biden doesn't have any indictments to worry about (the impeachment inquiry that House Republicans initiated this year doesn't seem poised to go anywhere), but he ended the year trailing Trump in polling and his approval rating sits at just 39%. His hardline support for #29 in #27 has proven unpopular among fellow Democrats, and polling indicates an overwhelming majority of Americans believe he is too old for a second term. His son Hunter's legal woes are also certain to be weaponized by political rivals.

Will 2024 end up being the first presidential rematch since 1956? Will Biden pull a Lyndon B. Johnson and drop out? Will Trump end up in a prison cell before the polls open? Will Robert F. Kennedy Jr. actually end up on the debate stage alongside the major party nominees like current polling suggests he will? Stay tuned for more from America's favorite soap opera, coming in 2024!

The franchise shows no sign of slowing down, either—a prequel series, The Continental, premiered on Peacock in September, while the Ana de Armas-led spin-off Ballerina is set to hit theaters next year. Meanwhile, John Wick: Chapter 5 is in development, so it's safe to say we'll be seeing plenty more of the Baba Yaga in the near future.