BRACE! BRACE! BRACE!: Filthy Dreams’ 10 Most-Read Essays of 2021

Our #1

“I love cheese–Du dum! I love CHEEEEEEESE! DU-DUM!” Oh, why hello there, faithful Filthy Dreams readers! What’s that? Oh, I’m just singing the iconic song by YouTube mukbanger and the filthiest person alive, Nikocado Avocado, who has become a particular obsession of ours this year! You’re not familiar?! How DARE you? Watch any number of videos on his plethora of YouTube channels and you’ll shortly find yourself singing this addicting ode to dairy products. You may even be rewarded for your viewing with his notorious shout—”BRACE! BRACE!” What does that indicate? Why, a shart is incoming, of course! Hey, we told you he was the filthiest person alive.

On the subject of yearly fascinations, since Spotify has released its annual Wrapped wrap-up, reflecting our unhinged fanatical behavior back to us this week (I listened to Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’s song “Old Time” off of their album Carnage a paltry 231 times this year. I could have done better!), we, here at Filthy Dreams, decided it was time to hold a mirror up to you, dearest readers. Sure, it’s not the true end of the year as we have a few more treats up our sleeves before 2022, but why wait? If it’s good enough for corporate streaming services, it’s good enough for us!

Plus, if you didn’t read the fine print, Spotify Wrapped only includes data from the listening period of January 1 through October 31, which means the period between November 1 and December 31 is a private no man’s land where you’re free to listen to as much Kid Rock as you want! Nobody will know you’ve listened to “Bawitdaba” 150 times in a row if you do it now! Listen to “Down with the Sickness” as much as you please! Likewise, consider this our gift to you. If you decide to furiously read some of our deep-cut articles, we won’t tell.

2021 has been another good year for us here at Filthy Dreams. I mean, sure, it was yet another year of a pandemic. It was also a year with one of your co-founders trying to focus and think with some semblance of clarity (or at least the half clarity she had before) with Long COVID brain while the other hobbled around with a bum knee! Yet, how could a year that began with a low-class insurrection go too poorly for us, people who delight in trashy bad behavior from America’s underbelly?! Perhaps this is why 2021 was also the year with the most reads on Filthy Dreams ever!

This is how we spent our 2021. Really.

We have to give credit where credit is due–part of this popularity is due to the man who made our own 2021, Nikocado. Sure, many in the art world, including writers at publications who wouldn’t touch Filthy Dreams with a ten-foot pole like The New York Times and The New Yorker, fell all over themselves to try to deny they ever liked David Hammons’s construction shed on the Hudson, Day’s End, after our bitching takedown. But faux radicality aside, their reads paled in comparison to the constant stream of peeled eyes, looking for Nikocado Avocado’s OnlyFans page. It’s only appropriate. Nikocado, to us, is what art should look like: binging on fast food, shitting yourself in a Target parking lot, breaking ribs and visiting the doctor wearing a “My Weight Is A Medical Mystery” T-shirt, screaming about swelling cankles during the long walk to the bathroom at the mall, screaming about insults from another YouTuber named MeatCanyon, roving around Walmart in a scooter while shouting about the lack of 4XL sizes, getting shoes thrown at you by your increasingly homicidal husband, and hocking merch on “itsjustwaterweight.com”, including an “Emotions” T-shirt plastered with your own furious face.

And trust me, we’re not just saying this. We watch Nikocado’s YouTube videos religiously. Every. Single. Day. Some people have soaps; others have reality TV. We have a grown man crying in a drive-thru parking lot.

So here’s to you, Nikocado! And to you, Filthy Dreams fanatics! Thank you for making our 2021! And for those of you who missed this and our other top articles, here’s our top 10 ranking, as of today, complete with corresponding GIFs, of course:

1. “If You’re Watching This Video, You’re A Loser”: Nikocado Avocado Is The American Dream This Fourth of July