[New] HATERS OF THE YEAR Haters Of The Year

BY PETER NOMELAND

Back when we had our Wake 20th Anniversary event, we found an old issue from one of our first years with an article titled “Haters of the Year.” So in honor of 20 years of the Wake and our Burn Book Bizarro theme, here are five individuals and groups who hated the most in 2022.

1. The Royal Family (Prince Charles)

There is an extensive apparatus of hating that came from this family’s orbit this year, most stemming from the death of Queen Elizabeth II this fall. Whether that was memes on Twitter celebrating her death, those celebrations expanding out to Irish soccer match chants (mostly revolving around the legacy of colonialism), racism, or how annoying it is that Harry and Meghan are now Americans. But the biggest hater of them all, Prince-now-King Charles III, is the reason the family takes the top spot this year. Probably one of the most disliked individuals on the planet, the new king is mainly known for cheating on his

Wife

Diana, to his mistress after that previous wife died, and then getting absolutely flamed for it for decades upon decades. After the Queen’s death and during the funeral proceedings, there were several videos of the new King seemingly disgusted by his new subjects touching him, which felt a little too on the nose. Any goodwill the royal family has unjustly kept over the past century probably died with the queen. Oh well, anyways….

2. Steve Sviggm

Getting Married

This past fall, UMN board of regent member Steve Sviggim asked during a board meeting regarding the lower enrollment numbers at the Crookston because the campus is getting “too diverse.” I don’t even have to go into why this guy is on the list or why this is completely wrong and not even true if you do the slightest bit of research. No, this guy is a notable hater because his reasoning for this comment was that two of his friends’ children had not gone to Morris because they “just didn’t feel comfortable there.” I’m just going to go out on a limb here and say that this conversation absolutely did not happen. He really just wanted to say this racist comment, so he lied about a whole scenario to justify it. He is still currently on the school’s board even after the comment, and no consequences for your actions is also a hater staple.

3. Tom Brady

The greatest quarterback of all time, Tom Brady, has been a hater for his entire career. Hating defenses, hating on the media for saying he likes his balls deflated, and recently hating on his former head coach and fellow hater Bill Belichick so much that he moved to Florida and won another Super Bowl without him out of pure spite. But the pinnacle of the GOAT’s hating career came this year when, after years of everyone on the planet (crucially his supermodel wife, Giselle

Bundchen) begging him to retire, he finally did at the end of last season. He released a nice statement about how excited he was to spend time with his family. A month later, he unretired and is now in the process of a divorce. The man took one vacation with his family and decided he’d rather continue receiving brain injuries at age 45. He now has a new 20-something model girlfriend and says he wants to play for a few more years. As Future, the poet of our time, puts it: “Ain’t gotta call out no names, they know I’m married to the game.”

4. Selena Gomez

Stay with me on this one. In her recent documentary, singer/actor Selena Gomez detailed her battle with lupus, including her kidney transplant back in 2017. Doing press for the film, she told Rolling Stone, “I never fit in with a cool group of girls that were celebrities. My only friend in the industry really is Taylor [Swift], so I remember feeling like I didn’t belong.” This is cool and all, except when you remember that the person who gave her the aforementioned kidney is Francia Raisa, an actress who is also “in the industry.” Under a post referencing this quote on Instagram, Raisa simply commented, “interesting.” After the usual social media back and forth, the two unfollowed each other on social media, and the rest of us were left to speculate. That’s when internet detectives found old interview clips of Raisa describing the much harder post-transplant recovery she faced and that, most crucially, she was not the one who suggested the transplant between the two in the first place. If true, pressuring your friend into giving you their kidney and then saying that, actually, Taylor Swift is a better friend is some of the craziest hating I’ve ever heard of.

5. Landlords (written by an undisclosed Wake staff member)

I’m getting really personal with this one. Property management at the UMN is seedy, to say the least, making the people deem their landlords quite possibly the scum of the earth. There’s an entire document written by UMN Legal dedicated to property management companies that have been “blacklisted” for the fresh hell they’ve put their tenants through. Stories range from rotting stairs to sizable plaster lumps on the wall that turned out to be painted-over cockroaches. It’s safe to say I found this list rather late. I have spent the last month on a couch because my landlord can’t seem to fix the deadly sewer gas leak in my room. They’ve tried everything from Drano® to pouring ten gallons of water down the pipes without ever hiring an actual plumber. One day they even went into the polluted room to up our thermostat and promptly fixed absolutely nothing despite the noxious smell. When I asked to forgo rent, our landlord offered me and my four roommates a shared $100 laundry credit instead. My response is to give this soulless career the cherished fifth place on the hater list.