It’s that time of year, again — time to take a look back at 2011, and see what you liked most about the Big Bad Blog.

How can we tell? We use a complex scoring system which tracks links back to the Big Bad Blog, comments made, and pageviews. Maybe not that complicated. However we came up with the list — and truth be told, even we are not entirely sure — this is it:

5: Google Plus: A first look

We received an early invitation to the new Social Network on the block, and dutifully gave our first impressions of it — and they were positive impressions, indeed.

While an update of those impressions are overdue — first impressions, while important, are not necessarily final opinions — this blogger still feels that Google Plus has the potential to be the best of the available networks, but it still has some way to go before it arrives there.

4: Character creation and alignment

The roleplaying area of the blog has taken a big backseat this year. While the generally haphazard update schedule has reduced the amount of content published, of all types, the roleplaying section has had to address a second deficiency: I stopped running my D&D game.

Most of the content I produced was the result of running a game myself — a weekly article was easy when I was introducing myself to the fourth edition of the Dungeons & Dragons game. Running a game once a month was enough to provide ongoing monthly articles — ideas or actions would arise in planning or playing that were comment-worthy.

But a baby makes for little playing time, nevermind planning time, and the game only managed one session after Maggie’s birth in 2010 to prove itself to be too much work. It went on hiatus, and my impression now is that it is a permanent one.

Since then, I have been thinking about my next game, which will be of the more old skool D&D bent. Although actual game development has been minimal this year — maybe it will get off its feet in 2012 — I read something that triggered ideas about alignment, in terms of the next game, and voila. A popular D&D blog post.

If scheduling permits progress towards running this new game next year — by no means a necessity — we should see plenty of roleplaying goodness on the Big Bad Blog next year.

Otherwise? The 2012 edition might not have a roleplaying entry.

3: Bringing down the meme: Demotivationals

It seems that every year, I get excited about a meme. And then soon in the new year, I get tired of the meme and write about it.

In 2009/10 it was the FAIL meme. In 2010/11, it was the demotivational.

Next year? No idea. I sadly feel as though I’m not amused by any current memes — it could be the end of a Big Bad Blog tradition.

This particular blog entry makes me quite proud: the comments tend to be people stopping in to tell me that I’m unfunny or stupid. This, as you may be aware, is an indicator of blog excellence.

2: Because you’re all horny for Felicia Day

It has long been noted that Felicia Day nude, Felicia Day naked, and their ilk are popular search terms, when it comes to finding the Big Bad Blog, sending over 100 people our way on an average day.

The traffic from these search terms seemed to be spiking over the summer, when I saw this photo on Wil Wheaton’s Tumblr thingy. (I always call then “Tumblr thingies”. Calling it “so-and-so’s Tumblr” seems wrong. Calling it a “Tumblr blog”, also wrong. What to do?)

The forces of Google meant that I had to write something including that photo.

And the popularity of the search term guaranteed its place here.

1: Twitter to Facebook not working

Back in February, I noticed that my tweets had stopped automatically updating my Facebook page.

This was a concern — I disliked, and continue to dislike, interacting with Facebook directly. But I like all the people on Facebook (also known as “all the people”) to be able to follow me, if they so wish.

So … importation.

It had, for whatever reason, stopped working. So I did what one does in these situations, and starting to try to figure out how to fix it.

Once fixed, I figured that I would post the solution, as it was neither easy to find nor immediately evident. Mine was apparently well-indexed on Google, as it prompted plenty of re-tweets, Facebook likes and (for this blog) a healthy number of comments.

A bit boring, maybe, compared to previous year’s number ones, but it’s nice to be helpful sometimes.

It’s late January, which can only mean one thing at the Big Bad Blog — we grow tired of last year’s meme.

Last year, we wrote about the FAIL meme. This year’s meme is nowhere near as insidious as the fail meme. It is not sneaking its way into people’s vocabularies and newspaper headlines. Instead, people have simply started doing it wrong.

The meme? The Demotivational Poster

What is a demotivational?

For those unfamiliar with this particular meme may remember the Motivational Poster:

While your intrepid blogger has been lucky enough not to have seen an actual motivational poster for some time, memory makes them unfathomably common. As above, they would feature some sort of scene out of nature. Underneath this picture would read a virtue of some kind. Below the virtue, a cheesy slogan meant to encourage the reader to pursue the virtue.

Demotivationals make fun of this. So “perseverance” goes from the image above to the image below:

Where does the meme go wrong?

Of course, the format of the meme when directly making fun of the Motivational Poster is limiting, and soon the meme expanded to simply adding two-part captions to funny photos.

And, as with the “fail” meme, people have begun to add captions to photos that add nothing to the humour.

For instance:

Do we really need a caption to point out that somebody who looks like a hard-core biker — possibly even a gang member — is riding a girl’s pink frilly bicycle?

No.

But this is what the meme has become as more and more people jump on board. Rather than injecting humour into a photo that isn’t particularly funny, or adding to a funny photo, captions are now being used to explain the joke.

Ever have somebody tell you a joke, and then explain it? Of course you have. We do not need a meme to do that for us.

What is a good demotivational?

It should be obvious that the best demotivationals, like the “perseverance” demotivational above, reference a potential (if not an actual) motivational poster.

However, if you are going to add a caption, it should add humour. If it does not do this, please do not dirty our demotivational search results with your work.

For instance, create humour out of a photo (and/or caption) that is not itself (or themselves) funny:

Or, use a caption to point out something that might not be obvious on first glance:

What should you do if you have an urge to create a demotivational?

If you have an urge to create a demotivational poster, a few questions might help you to figure out whether or not it’s a good idea:

1. Are you actually making fun of motivational posters?
2. Is your photo funny without the caption?
3. Is your caption funny without the photo?
4. Is the photo/caption combination greater than the sum of its parts?

Now, consult the following table:

In other cases, you might have a decent Demotivational. Wait twenty-four hours (or longer, if you find yourself drunk after twenty-four hours) and review your work to ensure it is still humorous before sharing it with the Internet. Please.

Failing to follow the above instructions will result in tears of rage.

Motivational poster from Sports Poster Warehouse.
Perseverance demotivational from Motivate Us Not
All other demotivationals from Very Demotivational
Click posters for links back to source.