Here at Time Magazine, We’ve Decided This Is One of Those Years We Pick a Person Who Sucks

Every year, we pick someone to be our “Person of the Year.” It’s one of the things we’re most famous for doing. Some years, we pick someone really and truly good and brave, like Martin Luther King Jr., or healthcare workers, or the Apollo 8 astronauts. And other years, we pick someone who’s not so great, like Richard Nixon, or Joseph Stalin, or, you know, Hitler. Well, we’re excited to announce that this is one of those years we pick a person who just, like, totally sucks.

Now, it’s important to remember: we pick the person who has done the most to influence the events of the year, for better or worse. So just because we pick, say, Hitler, that doesn’t mean we love Hitler. All right? Hitler sucked! All it means is that we think that in that year, Hitler did the most influential stuff. So, really, you should be grateful we picked him only one time.

Look, this year’s Person of the Year is definitely not Hitler-bad. But they’re also not healthcare-worker-good. Healthcare workers do amazing things, like, say, pay taxes.

This year’s pick is pretty controversial, but once you go through all the pros and cons, it’s clear they fall into the “kind of pretty shitty” category instead of the “actually pretty good” column. As you can tell, we’re nothing if not organized.

Now, you might be thinking, “But calling them the ‘Person of the Year’ kind of implies that they’ve won some type of award. Don’t you think even a ‘kind of pretty shitty’ person will see that and think, ‘They like me! They really like me!’ and so will all their weird fans?”

And to that we say, “Hm, good point. Oh well.”

You might see the person we picked this year, and think, “Wait, did that person actually do the most to influence the events of this year? Wasn’t that, you know… COVID-19?”

And to that we say, “But COVID-19 isn’t a person.”

And you may retort, “But you don’t always pick a person. One year you picked ‘the computer,’ and another year you picked ‘Earth.’ So what the fuck are you talking about?”

And to that we say, “Another good point. Oh well.”

You might even see the person we picked and think, “Wow, that guy is, like, way too rich, right? And a few years ago, you picked another super-rich guy. Same thing a few years before that too. In fact, a lot of the people you pick who aren’t mass murderers are people who are just way too rich and don’t pay enough in taxes and seem to hate unions. Aren’t you kind of equating social influence with unreachable and disgusting wealth hoarding?”

And to that we say, “Ugh, stop.”

At the end of the day, all we can tell you is this: in an age when traditional media has lost a lot of influence, and shares and clicks drive revenue, we can assure you that we would personally never, ever pick a Person of the Year based solely on how well their headline will perform on our website and socials. Instead, we let our AI SEO tool do all that, and then we just run with it.