Jim Goad, Taki’s Magazine, 1 January 2018
Writing this on New Year’s Eve and staring at the past annum in the rearview mirror, you can bet every last hair on your ass that I’m annoyed. Then again, I’m offended by nothing and bothered by everything.
With the stark and baffling exception of 2015, I’ve done these “Most Annoying” compendiums for 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2016. In 2012 I listed only 12. With each year, the listicle tacks on yet another annoying individual to the tally, which brings us to 17 walking annoyances for this past year. It is my belief that over the past five years, the world has gotten progressively more irritating, emphasis on the “progressively.”
Keep in mind that “annoying” is not the same as “most vile.” That’s why neither the Chicago kidnappers of a mentally challenged white teen nor James Hodgkinson, the pig-headed Resistance loser who attempted to gun down Republican congressmen who’d just finished playing baseball, weren’t included. There’s a line where annoying crosses over into infuriating.
It shouldn’t need explaining, but this list is not scientific. I’m just going with seventeen people, both famous and obscure, whose very existence on this planet gave me a skin rash in 2017. And they didn’t need to be annoying in terms of their personality so much as they embodied a highly annoying social trend.
Yes, I am fully aware there are people who may have annoyed you more. It’s highly likely that if you and…