Populist: 2008

By David Topping

It’s a New Year’s tradition: every year for the past three, Torontoist has looked back at our most read, most recommended, and most commented-on articles from the past twelve months. (Here’s 2007’s list; here’s 2006’s.) Sure, it seems self-indulgent, but really, it’s all for you, dear readers, particularly those dear readers who have been lax in their Torontoist reading or who haven’t been with us the whole year.
So here you go—a few dozen of our most-read, best-liked, and most-talked-about articles from the three thousand that we’ve published this year.

Most Viewed

1The Ones That Mother Gives You, Obay Unveiled, and Obay Phase Two Revealed (225,000 views)
BY JONATHAN GOLDSBIE, DAVID TOPPING, AND SARAH NICOLE PRICKETT; FEBRUARY 15, 21 & 25
Sometimes advertising is fun, and Obay was a near-perfect example of a mystery ad done right: with a thought-provoking but totally ambiguous product (a drug that promised parents their kids’ subservience), the campaign’s backers (Colleges Ontario) stayed tight-lipped as thousands upon thousands of ads went up across the country—even though we still had them mostly figured out from day one.
2 Steal My Sunshine (81,000 views)
BY DAVID TOPPING; JULY 7
Hypocrisy aside (wouldn’t not reading a newspaper constitute ignorance, cynicism, and distrust in public institutions?), one enterprising person with some printable sticker labels had a bit of fun with a few newspaper boxes around the city, and, through our article, ended up getting more than a few worldwide fans (and Fox News–hating sympathizers).
3 Massive Fire Guts Queen West Block, PhotoTO: Queen Street West Fire, and History Lost (60,000 views)
BY MARC LOSTRACCO & MILES STOREY; FEBRUARY 20
When a fire broke out on a popular stretch of Queen Street West on a winter’s morning, we covered the news for the duration of the day, had exclusive photos by Miles Storey online well before the smoke cleared, and looked back later that day at the stretch of buildings as it once stood.
4 Scientology’s Legion of Doom (55,000 views)
BY TODD AALGAARD & MILES STOREY; FEBRUARY 10
Over the course of the year, the guys hanging out outside of Scientology’s Yonge Street headquarters wearing Guy Fawkes masks became as ubiquitous, persistent, and annoying as the Scientologists they were protesting. That might well have been the point, but for a brief moment the entire world’s thetan-infested hearts seemed to be captured by Anonymous, an informal but extraordinarily well-organized group that originated in the bowels of the internet and that protested Scientology incessantly, cleverly, and perhaps most important of all, legally.
5Something Awful, Something New (52,000 views)
BY DAVID TOPPING; JULY 16
It wasn’t the anthem that Hockey Night in Canada got, but it was the one they deserved. After the CBC created an “Anthem Challenge” to attempt to fill the embarrassing void created after CTV acquired “The Hockey Theme,” Logan Aube of Aurora made a joke submission—a magnificently bad joke submission that opened with a baby’s cry and concluded with a round of gunfire—and harnessed the power of the Something Awful forums to quickly turn it into the most viewed, top rated, and most-commented submission.
6PhotoTO: Pillow Fight! (34,000 views)
BY MILES STOREY; JUNE 2
Newmindspace once again took over Nathan Phillips Square for a massive free pillow fight, featuring as many photographers as there were participants.
7 Blue Banana You Ho This Is All Your Fault (23,000 views)
BY JONATHAN GOLDSBIE; SEPTEMBER 29
When Kensington Marketeers found out that their enclave might be getting a Starbucks, they responded with an Arial assault.
8 Remember Dimitri the Lover? (21,000 views)
BY DAVID TOPPING; JUNE 28
Dimitri, Dimitri, Dimitri. This year, one of Toronto’s dirty little secrets became the target of an internet meme that reached levels of worldwide attention typically reserved for hamsters looking dramatically at things. We tried to connect the dots.
9Er…. and Bell Er (17,000 views)
BY DAVID TOPPING; AUGUST 5 & 7
Especially compared to Obay, Bell’s attempt to create mystery around their company-wide rebranding seemed a bit lame. Seriously: a suffix? Suffixes are great and all, but there are way better ones than the hesitant-sounding “er.” Still, at least we got to call someone the “French Prince of Bell Er” in an article.
10 A Good Pac-Man Is Hard To Find and A Good Pac-Man Is Hard To Find: Spadina Bust (12,000 views)
BY DAVID TOPPING; MAY 26 & 27
We didn’t know it at first, but our very own Vandalist curator Posterchild—whose work we feature a lot here anyway—teamed up with Teeth to create one of our favourite street art pieces in a while: a Pac-Man scene recreated on the transparent walls of several streetcar shelters.
Honourable mentions: PhotoTO: Museum Unveiled, Untrust Us, Naked News, um, Embiggening?, “Here We Are. Let’s Take The Gardiner.” Ashley Madison Beats Eliot Spitzer to Death, What Jesus Wouldn’t Do, Is This the Most Awesome House in Toronto? and Stuff White People in Toronto Like.

Most Recommended

1New Year’s Resolutions and New Year’s Evolutions (81 recommends)
BY DAVID TOPPING; DECEMBER 12 & 23
No, it definitely wasn’t a stunt, but yeah, some good might yet come of it. Torontoist somewhat awkwardly found itself the subject of news for two cold, windy weeks that we’d have really rather been holiday shopping during. But we learned a lot about ourselves in the process. Did you know that we are exclusively a forum for “young indie left-wingers” (also, “young, trendy Queen West types”) and that our staff page features lots of photos of staffers making “the sort of ironic gestures now typical of hipsterdom”? According to the National Post, it’s all true!
2 Urbanaut (∞ recommends)
BY REY ORTEGA; JUNE–SEPTEMBER
Everyone loved Urbanaut. On any given week while it ran, the latest edition of the comic featuring an alien–turned–Toronto flâneur (or whatever a flâneur would be if they had a spaceship) was almost always that week’s most popular article. Gleebax is back home safe now, but we hope he’ll come back to visit soon.
3 Massive Fire Guts Queen West Block, PhotoTO: Queen Street West Fire, and History Lost (90 recommends)
BY MARC LOSTRACCO & MILES STOREY; FEBRUARY 20

4The Ones That Mother Gave You, Obay Unveiled, and Obay Phase Two Revealed (62 recommends)
BY JONATHAN GOLDSBIE, DAVID TOPPING, AND SARAH NICOLE PRICKETT; FEBRUARY 15, 21 & 25

5 The Sun Plagiarizes Torontoist and The Sun Apologizes to Torontoist (57 recommends)
BY DAVID TOPPING; JANUARY 20 & 21
When we caught the Sun with their hands in our intellectual cookie jar, it got ugly—as ugly as it’s ever gotten on Torontoist—fast. (It’s no defense, but we were gone the whole day without internet as comments piled up, which certainly didn’t help.) Yes, we could have and should have handled the situation better. And yes, it was plagiarism, and plagiarism sucks.
6 Metrocide (40 recommends)
BY DAVID TOPPING; JULY 21–27
Metrocide didn’t set out with any thesis in mind, but it eventually grew to counter the mainstream media’s treatment of crime coverage and the perception it created around homicides in particular. As it turns out, Toronto’s really not that dangerous. We’re really glad that our readers think so, too.
7 Scientology’s Legion of Doom (35 recommends)
BY TODD AALGAARD & MILES STOREY; FEBRUARY 10

8 Terroni Abhors Your Unsophisticated Palate (34 recommends)
BY MARC LOSTRACCO; AUGUST 11
This article touched a nerve with two bitter, divided camps of food-lovers: those who believe diners can treat their meals like a choose-your-own-adventure, and those who believe in the sanctity of menus. Eating is serious stuff, all.
9 Watch What You Drink at Pride (28 recommends)
BY MARC LOSTRACCO; JUNE 28
Ah, Pride. When people of all types get together and drink beverages backed by companies who have tried to ban the lifestyle those people are celebra—hey, wait a minute.
10 The Travails Of Mr. Stickman (27 recommends)
BY VAL DODGE; JULY 17
Stickmen around Toronto die in many horrible ways; we documented far too many of them.
10 Making Your Connections (27 recommends)
BY SARAH NICOLE PRICKETT; JANUARY 18
We offered some neighbourhood-appropriate missed connections templates to kick off a year that, as it turned out, would see many missed connections.

Most Commented-On

1 The Sun Plagiarizes Torontoist and The Sun Apologizes to Torontoist (178 comments)
BY DAVID TOPPING; JANUARY 20 & 21

2TTC Strike Status (167 comments)
BY DAVID TOPPING; APRIL 26–27
We covered the strike continuously from before it was even announced to the moment that streetcars, buses, and subways were rolling again. Everything about it sucked.
2New Year’s Resolutions and New Year’s Evolutions (167 comments)
BY DAVID TOPPING; DECEMBER 12 & 23

4 Terroni Abhors Your Unsophisticated Palate (93 comments)
BY MARC LOSTRACCO; AUGUST 11

5 Massive Fire Guts Queen West Block, PhotoTO: Queen Street West Fire, and History Lost (92 comments)
BY MARC LOSTRACCO & MILES STOREY; FEBRUARY 20

6 Fashionista Alert: Anti-Fur Protest in Yorkville (87 comments)
BY SARAH NICOLE PRICKETT; JANUARY 4
Anti-fur activists are all gung-ho about saving animals, but we don’t suggest bugging them if you’re concerned about preserving sarcasm, irony, or gravitas.
7 Things Just Got Weird on Parliament Hill (86 comments)
BY JERAD GALLINGER; NOVEMBER 28
This year’s most accurate article title.
8 Hitting Rock Bottom (80 comments)
BY MARC LOSTRACCO; SEPTEMBER 8
CFRB and advertising agency zig launched the worst ad campaign in recent memory, plastering questions accompanied by “we need to talk” all over the city. Should panhandling be illegal? What better way to ask the question than by giving a placard asking it to a panhandler, who you pay meagerly to hold it? Turns out it the whole thing was a tad more exploitative than it was thought-provoking.
9 Rob Ford, Bold Visionary For Canadian Heroes (72 comments)
BY CHRISTOPHER BIRD; FEBRUARY 28
Rob Ford (who else?) had this really stupid idea to name all new streets in the city after deceased soldiers. When we made fun of it (suggesting, for instance, that the CN Tower be renamed the “Dead Canadian Soldier Hero Tower Of Hero Soldiers”), people thought that we were insulting soldiers, not Rob Ford. You can pretty much guess how it went from there.
10 American Apparel: Now Hiring (71 comments)
BY SARAH NICOLE PRICKETT; NOVEMBER 6
“The sign of the hipster apocalypse is spelled out in Helvetica.” So began an article that some claimed would spell the demise of Torontoist, for some reason, and from which we learned one very important lesson that others have learned since: people get really really worked up if you talk about hipsters.