Instagram; YouTube; Getty ImagesSocial media is like a brunch-time bottomless mimosa. It's what keeps you coming back to the same places for sustenance, regardless of what else is on the menu, but in reality you can only chug so much.
So you can't help but miss most of it, even though you just spent the last 16 hours (just kidding, the last 27) online.
But if you're at all plugged in, you probably can't help but be gorging on social media, especially now that Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and their many likeminded brethren are more than just connecting you to news of the non-do-it-yourself variety—they're whipping up the content themselves.
Or the people are, that is. Even though we're slowly losing to the machines, it's still regular old people who are making the world go round—they just have more powerful than ever tools to get the word out. Though social media trends tend to be dominated on a daily basis by kitties and guys recreating Beyoncé routines, movie trailers and Scandal excitement, faux requiems for Zayn Malik and "ship" for hot young thangs, some truly important movements have also transpired right between the #loveandhiphop and #HarryandEmma. Still others have become reliable ports in the storm, their social media presences serving as places to get our wits about us and drink in something we may have been thirsty for but didn't even know we needed.
Here are 15 times social media made us sit up, take notice, laugh or cry and really think in 2014:
Bring Back Our Girls: This was more than just a cause celebre for a day, no matter the inevitable backlash because celebrities got involved. First picking up steam on Facebook, Change.org and the White House website, the slogan simplified in humanitarian terms the plight of several hundred Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped in April by the extremist Muslim group Boko Haram. Sure, plenty complained then about the very fact that the issue was being put into digestible terms. But what has silence and lack of awareness ever done for the better?
#CancelColbert: After The Colbert Report's account posted a tweet that reiterated a joke from an intentionally ignorant-sounding treatise on cultural awareness that Stephen Colbert made on the show, this hashtag took Twitter by storm. Finally, had Colbert actually overstepped the boundary between satire and offensiveness? In hindsight…um, no. We're going to weep for days when he signs off in less than two weeks. That hashtag must have been started by the same people who later made #TheDailyShowGoneTooFar a thing because Jessica Williams joked that One Direction was a terrorist cell. Or maybe by those people's parents.
I Am a Liberian Not a Virus: The movement to shatter the stigmatism of Ebola started with a Facebook post written by Comfort Martin Leeco, a woman, not infected, who was tired of being looked at as a walking disease due to her nationality rather than what she was—a Liberian woman. Aisha Brown noticed and thought they needed to go viral, Rev. Dr. Katurah Cooper came up with the hashtag, Shoana Clark Solomon posed for a portrait holding a piece of paper reading "#IAmALiberianNotAVirus" and a movement was born.
#ThingsTimHowardCouldSave pic.twitter.com/j5wPFyjBOT
? Sierra Club (@sierraclub) July 2, 2014#ThingsTimHowardCouldSave: Perhaps the second-most memorable thing from the 2014 World Cup after Germany's drubbing of Brazil. Though it's the one goal that Tim Howard couldn't save that ended the United States' run at the World Cup, the #ThingsTimHowardCouldSave meme made us both laugh (never a result to be discounted) and remember all of the damn things on this planet that need saving, not least of which may be the planet. Where is the Tim Howard of solutions for climate change? Hmm?
#LetAymanReport: NBC News foreign correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin, whose time covering the war in Gaza in 2008 is chronicled in the documentary The War Around Us, scored his own hashtag this summer after he was briefly pulled from his beat. But thanks to those who considered his reporting essential, he was back on the ground two days later and his social media accounts are brimming with enough on-the-ground reporting for a team of reporters. Esquire's 2014 Journalist of the Year (and one of GQ's Men of the Year) lists his location on Twitter as "somewhere in the world"—and that couldn't be more accurate. Whether providing an uncompromising view of Palestinian civilian casualties in Gaza, commenting on the Scottish independence vote from London or watching Beyoncé and Jay Z kill it during the Global Citizen Festival in New York, his Instagram, Twitter and Facebook accounts serve as both travel diaries and one-stop shops for his inimitable take on the day's most pressing political, social, economic and humanitarian issues.
Reasons to love him on a human-to-human level and not just a human-to-fearless-world-traveler level: Because he's not above posting pictures of his food on Instagram, and sometimes he shares things like this:
If Osama bin Laden had been a cop he would've got away with 9/11
? Eli Braden (@EliBraden) December 4, 2014Eli Braden: There are way too many comedians that we could recommend you follow on Twitter to count, and you probably already follow Patton Oswalt, Sarah Silverman and Bill Maher. But give Eli Braden a try: His humor is sharp, topical and unrelenting. And we need that.
#GetYourGameFaceOn: Originally conceived as an innocent CoverGirl tag to promote the brand's partnership with the NFL, when coupled with a glamorously made-up model with a Photoshopped black eye the slogan was turned into a shocking reproof of the league's soft disciplinary policy on domestic violence. That tore at a few people's souls for a while, but Ray Rice has since been reinstated by the league, his indefinite suspension overturned on appeal. At least a team hasn't signed him yet, right?
Caitlin Moran: The Times of London columnist and self-described "strident feminist" has been "writing the f--k out of s--t since 1992" and thanks to Twitter, her writing is now accessible to all of us. Whether it's her biting commentary about sexism in the media, pop culture and social issues, she has a unique voice - her rantings about hair removal and the culture of porn are a must read for every woman (or man of this world). In summary, Catlin Moran makes us want to ROAR. And she also has a worthwhile new book out, so you've got a lot to catch up on.
#CosbyMeme: Apparently conceived by someone with a shred of misguided optimism, this attempt to generate funny sayings on a picture of one of the most famous dads in sitcom history turned into, at the time, the most unavoidably indictment-by-the-public yet of the predatorial behavior Cosby has now been accused many times over of engaging in several decades ago.
Take us away, David Guttenfelder: The National Geographic photographer's Instagram is iPhone-only—and no one made us want to his the road more this year. But while we save up for that around-the-world jaunt, we can at least take a lot of pictures with our iPhones.
@HandsUpFerguson: In the spirit of 2013's #JusticeforTrayvon (or lack thereof), "hands up" became a rallying cry for the widely perceived injustice that was the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by now former Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson. A grand jury recently chose not to indict Wilson, apparently hearing enough evidence that called into question the widely reported eyewitness account that Brown had his hands up in surrender mode when Wilson shot him to death. The phrase lingers, just as the word "hoodie" has never been used in quite the same way since the death of Trayvon Martin, and just two Sundays ago two members of the St. Louis Rams made the hands-up gesture before their game.
Sadly, just a few days ago, #ICantBreathe, the reported last words of 43-year-old father of six Eric Garner, also became a call to protest after a Staten Island, N.Y., grand jury didn't come back with an indictment for the officer who put a fatal chokehold on Garner that proved fatal (his death was ruled a homicide), proving that reluctance to take on the police in court isn't a regional thing.
#CrimingWhileWhite: This sprung almost simultaneously from the Eric Garner decision, though obviously Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin (and way too many others) were also on the brain. Some are using the tag to make jokes, others to ding the largely white political establishment, while still others are actually "confessing" to their under-punished wrongdoings that perhaps, in hindsight, they would not have gotten away with if they were not white. Reactions have been mixed, with some calling it another lily-white attempt at assuaging white guilt—and the line between self-awareness and self-congratulations has indeed been fuzzy. But one thing seems to have manifested clearly: #RIPclaimsofapostracialsociety.
Young girl burglarizes home. No charges filed. #CrimingWhileWhite pic.twitter.com/BL68V1xyJd
? Yolanda Richardson (@YolandaRichard7) December 5, 2014#CrimingWhileWhite Voting for politicians who promise to cut taxes (education, health, welfare, programs for poor) & promote guns & war.
? Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) December 5, 2014Black people can't do #CrimingWhileBlack because it'll consist of blinking and breathing and walking and driving #CrimingWhileWhite
? O. (@OprahBrown) December 4, 2014I get the point behind #CrimingWhileWhite exposing hypocrisy, but at the same time it doubles as a form of bragging about #WhitePrivilege.
? LEFT (@LeftSentThis) December 4, 2014Bros Being Basic: Just in time for the holidays, what a fun stocking-stuffer! There's close to no one who isn't in need of a cup of comeuppance every once in a while (those who least deserve it would probably be the first to deem themselves in need of it), and girls who think their latte foam looks especially adorable today are no different. This Instagram account is full of pics of bubble baths, selfies taken with small dogs, hashtags like #facialhairdontcare and other shares mocking the I'm-saying-I'm-normal-but-really-think-I'm-fabulous, Gooped-up, well-Preserved crowd. And it's hilarious. (Disclaimer: I Instagrammed an adorable coffee mug that says "do your best" on it just this morning.)
@TweetofGod: By comedy writer David Javerbaum. Because…if only, right?
People should be judged not by the color of their skin but the content of a video in which a man says #ICantBreathe 11 frigging times.
? God (@TheTweetOfGod) December 4, 2014(E! Online is a member of the NBCUniversal family.)