Farewell to 2025, a year that started off with modest hopes and quickly soured, then curdled and soured some more. By March, the whole mess resembled a disastrous family reunion with the strangest cousins possible. We were certain we deserved better but we couldn’t figure out how to excuse ourselves, let alone find the exit.
Things deteriorated. It was a theme. By late summer, we felt as if we were covered in a fine fuzzy mold or something even worse. There was a strange smell in the air and we wondered if we might need a neurologist.
The year wasn’t all bad, though. It brought us excitement and moments of joy, along with controversy, disgust and great sorrow. A real mixed bag, though the mixture depended heavily on where you fell on the wealth scale and how much AI you had smoked.
All year long, we swam through a constant flood of slop, spam, kayfabe and gambling ads, straining to keep our heads above the surface. We enjoyed erotic tractors, labubus, and Shrimp Jesus. We paid too much attention to the Coldplay kiss cam and not enough to unidentified, masked gunmen abducting people in the streets. Everything seemed fleeting. There was briefly, war with Iran, Taylor Swift singing about Travis Kelce’s penis, Katy Perry in “space”, and a 5-second martyrdom. We seem to recall something very weird concerning Cracker Barrel, but can’t recall the details. Through it all, we felt ourselves getting dumber and poorer, and wondered if we might actually be minor characters in a Phillip K Dicktopia. We should be so lucky.
We wanted something else, but were resigned to our fate. We complained about being stuck in the worst timeline and moaned on about how tired we were, and each morning we got up again and got back after it because we had a stock market to support.
We suffered losses in 2025. We lost many celebrities, though not nearly enough. We lost battles, we lost rights, we lost jobs, we lost the plot. Many of us lost our ever loving minds, but in this place, who can tell anymore? Though we suffered many tragedies, most of the tragedy happened to someone else. To be honest, that’s how we like it. We assuaged the sinking feeling by donating to GoFundMe campaigns. Saving the world, 15 bucks at a time.
Through it all, we remained steadfast, buoyed in our faith that though we might suffer greatly, the billionaires would continue to get wealthier. And ultimately, isn’t that what it’s all about?
In the end, we were left with a year that we’re still trying to make sense of. What was 2025? Was it good, bad, a step forward or backward?
Who the fuck knows?
All we can say for certain is that the calendars listed 2025 as a year that started on January 1st and ended on December 31st, and it lasted approximately 365 days, give or take a few minutes.
And yet, on the other side of the line, in this strange new land we have taken to calling 2026, a fear stalks us that perhaps 2025 never ended at all. It simply changed its face, took on a new suit of skin to fool us into thinking we were safe.
As disturbing as that is, there are those among us who argue that 2025 never existed at all, that we had been fooled by the illusions of some previous year, say 2020, or that monster, 2016. But that way lies madness, a never ending recursion of doubts questioning the very integrity of reality. Why not 2008? 2001? Hell, maybe 1939 never ended and we are all stuck in its endless loops and echoes?
No, the whole point of a year is being able to shoot those doubts between the eyes and bury them in the backyard with all the other dead yesterdays before they can become brain-eating zombies.
In the final analysis, we can state unequivocally that 2025 was a year, a finite period with a beginning and an end. It lived and it died, and we survived it.
Now, let us see what fresh horrors await us.