Liam Williams's guide to 2014 for hermits

Liam and the hermit. Illustration: Peter Strain

Hermit: I can’t believe I fulfilled my new year’s resolution.

Liam: Wow, well done. What was it?

Not to engage with pop culture for a year.

I didn’t know you were doing that.

Why do you think I’ve been living in a shipping container on The Lizard, Cornwall for 12 months?

I didn’t think about it at all. We don’t really know each other very well. In fact, I only ever see you at these kind of events. (Gestures vaguely around the small living room in which about 12 23-28-year-olds are celebrating NYE in quite a low-key way)

Give me just a [roughly 600-word] precis of the biggest stories?

Well, I think the biggest thing was Gamergate.

“Gamer gate”? Oh as in “-gate” like Watergate. Like a scandal involving gamers?

Yeah, in August this story emerged about a female games developer being romantically involved with a male games journalist who had, prior to the relationship even beginning, once written a positive piece about her work. Then thousands of gamers went crazy and threatened to kill her.

Why?

I guess they thought she had slept with the guy just to get a good review for her game.

So the story was really about the death-threats?

I think it was really a debate between some people, on the one hand, saying, “The gaming industry doesn’t reflect the complex diversity of society and it needs to innovate quickly as a matter of ethical and artistic necessity” and other people, on the other hand, saying, “I’m going to kill you.”

So the games industry’s pretty regressive but slowly that’s changing. Fine. What else.

There was the Ice Bucket Challenge, which required people to be filmed having a bucket of icy water poured over their heads before giving a little shivering yelp of self-satisfaction and then nominating two other people to do it.

Well anyway, it all seems quite fun.

It all seems quite teenage. “Pour some water on your head” – it’s all symptomatic of the culture of a generation using nascent technologies to prolong its adolescence, a generation refusing to grow up.

Or maybe it’s just a bit of mostly harmless and quite knowing levity in an otherwise bleak world.

Surely the act of pouring ice-cold water over ourselves is an expression of our sublimated anxiety about both climate change and waterboarding.

Please stop. What else happened?

There was the Dapper Laughs controversy.

Dapper Laughs? Sounds like the name of a pseudo-comedic character operating within the contours of the relatively new “deluxe lad” archetype, the kind pioneered by Joeys Essex and Barton: all undercuts and ink, hyena-banter and pre-feminist swagger.

That kind of thing, yeah.

Let me guess: he made misogynistic jokes on the internet and people complained.

You’re half right: he made misogynistic jokes on the internet and ITV gave him a series. Then people complained. A petition to get it cancelled bagged 70,000 signatures. And ITV caved to it, the pussies.

So what are his jokes like?

One goes: “If she cries, she’s just playing hard to get.”

Sounds like early Jimmy Carr.

Yep, except without the ironic mouth.

Why was it ever commissioned?

People love the banter! Also, it was co-produced by Holly Willoughby’s husband’s company. Presumably ITV didn’t have much choice.

Scandalous.

The worst thing of all? Turns out Mike Skinner did the theme tune.

That’s devastating!

I know, that the man who brought us Fit But You Know It could stoop so low!

Right. Did anything good happen?

Erm… Oh yeah, there was this pretty funny video on Adult Swim called Too Many Cooks.