Volume 50, Issue 11: Editor’s Desk
CARLO JAVIER // EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
“It’s hell on Earth and the city’s on fire.” – Frank Ocean
Shortly before Christmas, I saw an interview of Bill Nye the Science Guy on Complex.com. Like anyone in their right mind, I had a lot of questions – none more important than, “what in the world could Bill Nye be doing on Complex?” Nye is a popular television presenter/legitimate scientist, while Complex was a once respected hip-hop and culture magazine that has, in recent years, been a cesspool of contradiction, pointless hot takes and petty clickbait posts.
The answer was just as baffling as the question. Nye was being interviewed about his thoughts on this mind-numbing existence and prevalence of groups and individuals who happen to believe that the roundness of the Earth is an elaborate conspiracy theory, and that yes – the earth is flat.
This movement, if I can even call it that, has recently garnered much attention because of two outspoken advocates: basketball star Kyrie Irving and two-hit-wonder rapper, B.o.B. Nye made an appearance on Complex to put an end on B.o.B’s unbelievably asinine takes.
This particular “debate” captured the spirit of 2017 better than any meme could. If 2016 was the year when a “meme” became more than just an image captioned with big, white block texts, then 2017 was the year when we became a meme – a joke.
It is absolutely representative of the state of society that a debate about the shape of the Earth is even entertained. This debate is dead on arrival. When someone tells you that the earth is flat, you don’t argue with them, you just walk away and hope that your brain cells remain safe and sound.
2017 was a year full of head-scratching events. It was year when it became normal to accept and understand political news through gifs of the US president. A year when the most profound critique of the US president came from Lebron James. A year that, based on worldly issues alone, could have been vastly better.
Many deem the new year as the best opportunity to start anew. To refresh and recalibrate. To learn from the past’s mistakes and to improve on our shortcomings. I usually take the optimist’s way, but I know that hoping to be better in 2018 speaks more to the shit year of 2017 than optimism.
We can get so caught up with grandiose that sometimes we tend to ignore the value of little victories. For a while, I’ve held a stance that the Capilano Courier should aim to be one of the best student papers in the country. While this lofty and ambitious goal is admirable, I developed such a tunnel vision that I forgot about our service to our community.
The reason why most new year’s resolutions fail is because they’re unrealistic. Improvement is never a sprint, always a marathon and along the way are necessary small steps that need to be taken before you catch your stride. We put out 10 pretty good issues last year, and I’m confident that the 11 we’ll publish this semester will be great.
We might not be able to expect the best from the world, but our readers can definitely expect the best from us.
To start this year, Health Canada made a public announcement reminding people not to eat laundry detergent pods. We’re already off to a terrible start, so it can’t get much worse than this!
