This week we continue Crikey’s 15th birthday celebration with another commemorative timeline, this time for 2012.

It was the year #Kony2012 empowered us all to harness our deepest-felt compassion, and to strive, nobly and without fear, to bring peace to our tortured Earth … well, for all of about 10 minutes anyway, until Channel Nine announced it was disinterring hit reality TV show Big Brother and everyone was suddenly preoccupied with questions like “… seriously?”

Of course, things more important than reality TV happened that year. For example, US President Barack Obama was elected for a second term. During the US election year, we also saw the rise of the unstoppable meme known as “Texts from Hillary” and, in a moment of deplorable elitism — perhaps  even worse than Joe Hockey’s “poor people don’t drive” gaffe — Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney was caught on camera saying he didn’t care about 47% of Americans.

Closer to home, former PM Julia Gillard delivered her resonant (and infamous, depending on where you stand) “misogyny speech”, the Finkelstein Report was released and, tragically, ABC employee Jill Meagher was murdered.

Here at Crikey, we were working day and night to deliver the most up-to-date and insightful coverage of the Julian Assange/WikiLeaks controversy, which was proving a proverbial onion of a scandal — the more layers you peeled back …