13 things that you won’t believe happened in 2017

However, despite appearances, 2017 has only gone on as long as all normal-length years go on. Want proof? Here are some things that seem a lifetime away, but actually happened in the last 12 months…

SaltBae
Turkish chef Nusret Gökçe was the talk of the internet after footage emerged of him creatively slicing and seductively salting cuts of meat. That’s literally all there is to it.

Plenty copied the human meme, including a couple of footballers of Turkish origin, while he was snapped with A-listers including Leonardo DiCaprio. This all happened since the original clip of Gökçe, or ‘SaltBae’ as he became known, spread online from the second it was uploaded on 7 January.

on Jan 7, 2017 at 2:44am PST

Roll Safe
Can’t be a year old meme if you’re actually from February 2017.

You can’t disappoint your parents if you never made them proud in the first place

— RollSafe (@RollSafeMemes)

Dr David Dao dragged from plane
The American doctor was forcibly dragged from an overbooked flight, but somehow that wasn’t even the worst part: within what seemed like hours but was probably days, because everyone reading this has at best a flimsy grasp of time, folks were digging into his background and sharing criminal records, as if that made his treatment even vaguely okay. 2017, everyone – April, to be specific.

If you haven’t seen the (quite shocking) clip of a passenger being dragged off a United Airlines flight yet, then take a look at it below…

overbook and decided to force random passengers off the plane. Here’s how they did it:

— Jayse D. Anspach (@JayseDavid)

Fyre Festival
Or, as we like to call it, the festival that never happened. The Ja Rule-led project described by one commentator as ‘a gulag for rich people’. It happened in April, and we’re still laughing now.

Here’s the dinner they fed us tonight. Literally slices of bread, cheese, and salad with no dressing.

— Trevor DeHaas (@trev4president)

Robbie Tripp loves his woman and her curvy body
Now this one is a bit more explainable. After all, surely the idea of the internet heaping praise on a man simply for loving his wife can’t have happened as recently as 2017. Surely the bar isn’t still that low. You know what’s coming, here. Robbie Tripp loved his “woman” and her “curvy body” as recently as late July. July!

on Jul 30, 2017 at 6:10pm PDT

Lindsay Lohan and her celebrity mission
2017, has been a busy year for Lohan. In between bouncing from her home in Dubai and the US, the singer and actress made it her mission to get more celebrities to follow her on social media. Her latest hopeful celeb bff was award-winning singer, Jennifer Lopez. It’s been two weeks and she’s still waiting for a …

Professor Robert Kelly’s BBC interview
Probably one of the funniest things we’ve seen all year. If you were living under a rock or taking some me time away from the interweb, here’s what you missed. The BBC interview came at the end of a long day of back-to-back radio and TV interviews with Professor Kelly discussing the impeachment of South Korea’s president from the safety of the office in his apartment in Busan, South Korea’s second-biggest city.

His wife, Ms Kim, was sitting watching the interview with their two children in the living room, with Ms Kim videoing the screen with her phone so that he could watch it back later. It seems that, as the interview began, their four-year-old daughter Marion, saw her father on the screen, recognised that he was in a room in their house, and wandered off to find him – something she’s done before, usually finding the door locked.

However, on this occasion, Kelly had made the crucial error of leaving it unlocked – cue the entrant of the sassiest four-year-old around, who had enjoyed her birthday party earlier that day at kindergarten. This adorable episode happened in March.

So this just happened on – Love the kids!

— (((colin))) (@colinjwright)

Dubai Cucumber Day
The city found itself in great shortage of cucumbers after 35 restaurants announced that they would be giving away a free drink to anyone who presented them with the fruit. This happened in May…

The US Electronic Travel Ban
On March 21, the US Department of Homeland Security issued a ban on all electronic items that were bigger than a smartphone on all direct flights to the US from Cairo, Egypt; Amman, Jordan; Kuwait City, Kuwait; Casablanca, Morocco; Riyadh and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia; Istanbul, Turkey; as well as Abu Dhabi and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. As a result Emirates and the Etihad reported a significant profit loss. The ban was lifted in the UAE in June.

The Oscar Mishap
We’re still a bit sad about this one. Basically, actors Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty gave the award for best picture to La La Land when it was meant to go to Moonlight…. Awks.

The Snapchat Hot Dog
Quite possibly Snapchat’s greatest invention to date. The break-dancing hot dog made headlines for its slick moves and irresistible smile.

The Distracted Boyfriend Meme
The stock photo captured by Antonio Guillem made its debut in January but only went viral after members of the twitterverse made a meme out of it in summer… since then, it can be found gracing the world’s Instagram and Tumblr feed.

— Pixelated “Pixelated Boat” Boat (Pixelated Boat) (@pixelatedboat)