2019 was the year of the tube, from the salmon cannon to long Furbies
To celebrate reaching the end of this year, we asked our reporters to look back on 2019 and pick one thing they thought stood out from the rest of the cultural chaos and cursed images. You can find the complete selection of our choices here.
2019 sucked. Hard.
Why (besides all the extremely obvious reasons)? Because it was the year of the tube. You may not have even realized it, but if you spent every day as deeply sunken into the internet as I do, you’d have seen tubes pop up again and again, in various disturbing forms.
You May Also Like
Here are just a few of the tubes that rose to prominence this year. In the process of compiling these, my brain worm-addled mind has come to see them as a fitting symbol for a year which we constantly feel like we’re being whooshed through a terrifying ride with no end.
1. The Salmon Cannon
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
The Salmon Cannon, also known as the fish tube, had been around for a number of years, but it wasn’t until August that it went viral, thanks to a video from Cheddar. The salmon cannon is actually a useful and good thing, but our collective desire to be removed from our current suffering and shot into the fish-equivalent of the unknown made it perfect meme fodder for this particular year.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
2. Straws
Straws were arguably the most talked about tubes this year. First came the uproar over the plastic straws and their considerable environmental cost. There was action to ban them, there was the reminder that actually many people need them.
In-the-know consumers rushed to find a suitable alternative, and finally metal straws came to be a must-have accessory for VSCO girls. Sksksksksk.
3. Lightsabers
Lightsabers are perhaps the most iconic and powerful kind of tube. (Though there's an argument to be made that that title should actually go to pasta, but that's for another time.) Lightsabers have had a VERY big year, what with the release of The Rise of Skywalker. That thing is chock full of the light tubes!
4. Long Furbies
Not all oddbody Furbies are long, but the ones that are long are absolute tube units. Each and every long Furby deserves your love and admiration, and if you have some cash to spare you can even buy one on Etsy to cuddle in the new year.
5. Long egg tube
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
Like the fish tube, the long egg has been around before, but it blessed us with a return to our collective minds this year. If the long egg is not a tube — and a deeply upsetting one, at that — then I don’t know what is.
6. YouTube
YouTube, the video platform, is not technically a physical tube, but that doesn’t stop it from being the biggest tube of all. This year was a wild one for YouTubers — they got canceled and then uncanceled, got unverified and then re-verified, and even got fake married. Let’s hope next year brings less drama and more news bloopers.
7. Fish penis
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
There could have been no more fitting end to the year of the tube.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
I rest my case. And perhaps, if the universe is on our side, 2019 itself will have turned out to be one giant tube that drops us in some heavenly other world that we had no idea was just on the other side of that dam.
Topics YouTube
Cassie Murdoch is Mashable's Culture Editor.. Before coming here, Cassie was Senior Culture Writer at Vocativ. She previously wrote for Jezebel and The Hairpin. Cassie spends most of her time thinking about and consuming cheese in all its glorious forms.
