You made my post for me, right down to the very same adjective!
They should have changed the feature to “story of the year” a long time ago. If you think of it that way, there is probably a lot less to complain about.
I actually thought this was a good choice. What a year -seeing those protests in Cairo. Now in Russia - wow.
Moved Cafe Society --> IMHO.
It’d have been even better if you said “Poll: Poll:…”
Yeah, but the “common people” apparently don’t get individual names. Such as, say, Muhammad Bouazizi, who would have been a good choice.
Lame lame lame.
This is pretty much the exact point I was trying to make in my posts above. It’s like they started by asking themselves what kind of person they wanted to honor and then just stopped there without picking an actual person. There have been individuals influential in all the various protest movements that have gone on over the past year, but just saying the Person of the Year is “The Protester” is a cop-out from actually picking one of them. I agree that Muhammad Bouazizi would have been a great choice, but as it is, Time didn’t bother to make any choice.
It would help if they did that. It’s pretty much what they’ve been using it as in everything but name.
My guess is that the actual editorial staff wanted Bouazizi, the marketing people wanted Steve Jobs, and the focus groups said no one would pick up a copy that featured some foreign guy no one had heard of, so they all compromised on Generic Protestor Number Thirty-four.
It’s Kinda Lame, in that this is the fourth time in ten years that they’ve gone with a generic group. If they’re going to set themselves up as the arbiter of who’s the most important person each year, they should have the balls to name someone.
OTOH, I think it’s the right idea. The protests are certainly the story of the year, imo. I’m glad they talked with Bouazizi’s family and recognized him as the impetuous for this year’s events, even if they didn’t name him solo.
Agreed - that copout still annoys me. But as far as these things go, I think “Protesters” is a fine choice.
Not lame. It was a good call.
This seems entirely (and depressingly) plausible.
EDIT: Looking agian at the list of past honorees, I notice that in the last 10 years, they’ve only picked one specific, non-genericized individual who wasn’t American (that individual being Putin in 2007). Maybe it’s time they go with “some foreign guy”. (Yes, Bono was on the cover in 2005, but as a representative of “The Good Samaritans” another non-specific, general group.)
I voted not lame.
Maybe because I grew up in the somewhat radical 60’s and 70’s, the dearth of activists has always been perplexing to me. It has been as if nobody gives a shit about anything.
Glad to see the protests in the Middle East, Russia, Wall Street and, although I think they are idiots, I even admire the fact that the teabaggers at least showed their colors and are singlehandedly ruining the Republican Party (thanks!).
Besides, I can’t think of any individual who really jumped to the forefront this year. Many worthy nominees perhaps, but no clear-cut, hands down winner.
For this reason - which I find plausible - I vote lame. They have established a pattern of only picking individuals who are “Great Men”, otherwise they pick these type of generic group identifiers. The whole Great Man theory of history is so 19th century…
How about the guy who was the catalyst for it all? I hate when Time does stuff like this because it’s a total cop out. Why not make Mohamed Bouazizi the Person of the Year? He’s someone that the world should know more about, since he was willing to die for freedom and his sacrifice sparked a wave of change throughout the world.
After typing that and finishing the thread, I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who thinks Bouazizi would have been a phenomenal choice.
I agree. Protesters have made a huge impact this year.
It’s really, really lame because now we have to watch them interviewing those smug occupying assholes on tv again.
Really freaking lame — while naming any abstract concept “Person of the Year” is at least two reallys’ worth of lameness, the bottom category of any such ranking is exclusively reserved for the 2006 “You!” issue, which went beyond equivocating over personhood and just applied its superlative to whatever random dumbass picked up the magazine.
In other news, Motor Trend’s 2012 car of the year is “the blue ones”.
Maybe it IS a specific person but they can’t see who it is because the face is covered? 
I’m voting not lame in this specific case. Part of what’s defining about the protests this time around is that it’s not limited to a narrowly-defined demographic, like “young people facing the draft.” In the US and around the world, it feels a little like the protestor is today’s “everyman/woman.” That makes nominating the archetype “protestor” as if it described an individual seem clever in a subversive way, and not lame like some of the past choices.
Geez, that’s frighteningly close to the truth. People have mental blind spots for things that scare them.
Every once in a while I mention some timeworn, well-established environmental fact that I think people should be more motivated to change (like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or the extinction of an animal), and people at first think I am making it up, then think it’s new and they get upset, then when I show them it’s been known for a long time they get hostile and defensive, then they go back to reading about the Kardashians. Later I can tell them the same fact and the same people go through the same cycle of emotions as if they have utterly forgotten this knowledge they found so important last time we discussed it. And I guess they have.
I came to the thread to post this. Time’s “Whatever of the Year” is useless to me.