the instant win.

The 50 Best Things I've Seen on the Internet in 2011

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 06:32:00 -0800

In no particular order, here's a compilation of the web's greatest pieces of content from the last twelve months....

50. Elfster - Better management for secret santas. Though everyone will still buy each other iTunes gift cards...

49. The Huffington Post's thorough article on the rise of Ron Paul. My favorite part: He wants to lower the presidential salary to $39,000 to match the median income of the American worker.

48. Pajiba's passionate thoughts on why we need Community.

47. Redditors raise $31k in a matter of hours for a toddler needing a bone marrow transplant. I think I have something in my eye.

46. Rick Perry's debate meltdown.

45. Malcolm Gladwell's fascinating TED talk on the Norden Bombsight.

44. The New York Times' op-ed on millenials being defined as The Entrepreneurial Generation.

43. Mark Cuban's blog post on how he'd fix the economy.

42. The TIL subreddit. Someone shares something they learned and the community votes up what they found most interesting. Fascinating to find out Vin Diesel plays Dungeons & Dragons and that Rebecca Black donated all of the proceeds from Friday to earthquake relief in Japan.

41. Alec Baldwin's impersonation of Tracey Morgan.

40. Monopoly board from HBO's The Wire.

39..Farhood Manjoo's near-perfect Slate article on Facebook's decline -- drowning out signal with mundane, overshared noise. Considering their pending IPO, it could be the most important read of the year.

38. Salman Khan's TED Talk on disrupting the current American education model. It's the greatest 20 minutes I've ever spent with TED. Truly a must-watch and Bill Gates makes an appearance at the end to discuss Khan Academy.

37. @jessedee's cleverly titled "You Suck at Powerpoint" powerpoint presentation. Oft-neglected points for those of us who are pitching or presenting on a regular basis.

36. The 101 Most Useful Sites on the Internet. Agree with the lion's share of the list.

35. The official trailer for the second season of Game of Thrones.

34. Paste Magazine's Kirk Hamilton plays and reviews Square Enix's Final Fantasy VII for the first time. 14 years after it was accurately described as "quite possibly the best game ever made," his "Final Fantasy Letters" series with Leigh Alexander (blogger for Kotaku) were heartwarming, sad, and funny all at the same time.

33. Jimmy Kimmel trolls kids on Halloween.

32. Zenhabits' always excellent coverage on productivity.

31. Ricky Gervais interviews Warwick Davis while he's sitting on Karl Pilkington's lap. Hilariously awkward.

30. Philly Mag's article on the rise of Wawa.

29. The Forbes feature on Sean Parker's influence on Silicon Valley.

28. Chuck Klostermann's profile of Tim Tebow and the people that hate him.

27. RedBubble -- my new favorite online shopping destination.

26. Bears rookie J.T. Thomas took a girl to the prom after hearing she didn't have a date. Class act.

25. Buzzfeed's reading list for Harry Potter's hypothetical MBA.

24. The trailer for David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

23. The 99 Percent - perhaps the best overall blog on the web right now.

22. Staff sergeant surprises his daughter during her school spelling bee. I'll give you a minute to compose yourself.

21. Guy performs the history of hip-hop in a four minute beat-boxing video.

20. Evernote.

19. Dropbox.

18. Ken Jennings (of jeopardy fame) does an AMA ('Ask me Anything') on Reddit.

17. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's speech at TED about why we have too few women leaders. Pretty good advice for men, too.

16. Cringe-inducing piece from Rolling Stone on internet bullying and comment section 'snark' that turns ugly.

15. Another Rolling Stone article -- this time on how Roger Ailes built the biggest propaganda mill in U.S. history.

14. Jonathan Franzen pens a fantastic NYT op-ed on passion -- an oft-ignored emotion in the age of weak-ties. "The simple fact of the matter is that trying to be perfectly likable is incompatible with loving relationships." Yes.

13.Grantland's Charles Pierce pens the internet's most insightful article on the Penn State scandal. A must-read.

12. The Man Who Sailed His House. GQ's article on Hiromitsu Shinkawa -- the man who spent 2 days floating along Japan on the roof of his house post-tsunami.

11. Sara Bareilles covers Mumford and Sons' Little Lion Man at Central Park. As great as it was on the internet, it was even better in person.

10. Tommy from Norway is pretty mad at us.

9. The tumblr devoted to Kim Jong-Il looking at things. I know what you're thinking, but don't worry.

8. A tumblr devoted entirely to dressing up corporate brands in Comic Sans.

7. Louis CK successfully kills the entertainment industry's distribution model. He produces and edits his own special, sells it to the internet DRM-free, and charges $5.00. Highly recommend you buy one copy...or five.

6. Tyrion Lannister slaps Joffrey Baratheon for 30 seconds. If this list were ranked in some sort of order and half my readers watched Game of Thrones, this would be number one.

5. The most comprehensive wallpaper search engine on the internet. Nothing else comes close.

4. Duncan Harris captures in-game screenshots from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim on Flickr. The most beautiful game ever released.

3. Pajiba's scathing review of New Year's Eve. Girls - this sounds like the type of movie that makes us question our relationship wtih you. For your benefit, don't force us to go.

2. Troy & Abed plot to infiltrate Santa Claus' operation. Then Childish Gambino goes off.

1. Mona Simpson's eulogy for her brother, Steve Jobs.

I certainly don't expect you to get through this entire list in one session. Overall, it's about 3 hours of content if we factor in the length of the TED videos. Hope you enjoy the list though, and that it serves as penance for my lack of updating.

(Guess what my resolution for 2012 is...)

Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Superb Spaghetti Monster, and have a killer start to 2012.

-The Instant Win

If you think I missed something, post it in the comments.

the instant win.

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