When looking back on the past decade, everyone loves to reflect on everything that we have accomplished in this time period, the things we will be known for. However, let us not forget to acknowledge all the worthy endeavor that failed in this past decade. Let’s take this time to salute the most epic failures of the 2000's. FEAR This decade was brought into being on one of the most epic fails, Y2K. The media and government had everyone in a big frenzy that computers worldwide would shut down when the clocks changed from 1999 to 2000. Everyone went about stocking up on necessary supplies in case the world we knew ceased to work. What happened when this decade was rung in? Absolutely nothing.
TECHNOLOGY Blu-ray is likely to be remembered as one of the great products this decade set forth, but don’t forget its worthy competitor that had just as promising a future, HD DVD. Funded primarily by NEC and Toshiba, HD DVD was released to the public in 2006, but Toshiba pulled its support two years later after losing almost a billion dollars on the project. The reason the product failed: Sony, who supported Blu-ray, did a better job of securing big name film companies for releases namely Warner Brothers. However, Toshiba blames the HD DVD epic failure on the popularity of digital video downloading, but wouldn’t this hurt Blu-ray too? As we sail on into the next decade, we wave goodbye to HD DVD because let’s face it, who will have heard of it ten years from now? MOVIE This next failure not only earned a spot on the top failures of this decade, but it even managed to leave its mark on the Guinness Book of World Records. The movie ZYZZYX Roadwas released in 2005 and absolutely bombed setting a record in the Guinness Book of World Records as the lowest grossing film ever. The film had a budget of $2 million, and in the box office, it made...$30! It sold only six tickets in its one week run in Texas, and two of the tickets were bought by crew members. Ouch!
EVERYONE Out of all the failures of this decade, there is one that clearly stands prominent in front of all the rest: the Economic Crisis. Everyone, not simply in this country, has been touched, and worst of all, most people don’t even know where to point the finger of blame. We need a trusty scape goat! Unlike the other failures on this list, we take this one into the next decade, and one thing is for sure, it will not float into oblivion like the others. SPORTS This year in sports, we had another record breaking failure. In 2001, the Carolina Panthers set an NFL record by losing fifteen consecutive games after the one, and only, victory. In five of the games, the team even managed to score less than eight points. "The energy has been sucked out of our organization and our fan base," said owner Jerry Richardson, after firing head coach George Seifert at the end of the year. When we think of laws, the first thing that usually pops in our head is those wonderful rules that hold our society together. However, this past decade saw some of the most ridiculous laws being passed ever. For instance, in 2003, Georgia passed a law making it illegal for any restaurant to sell iced tea unless that restaurant also sells sweetened tea. With all the problems going on in the world and our own country, is this really what the government has been spending their time with? For every one thing that succeeds, there are many more that completely fail. As we look back, we salute everything that could have been amazing but just, how should we put this?...Epically failed.
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