A Third Gift for the Aliens

Edith Zimmerman
The Hairpin
Published in
1 min readDec 5, 2012

You know that scene in Contact where Jodie Foster hears what she thinks are the first thumpings of extraterrestrial communication, and which turn out to be binary bits of a Hitler broadcast the aliens are bouncing back to us? (I think?) Imagine if instead of that, they were bouncing back this montage of 2012 pop music/videos, which you’ve likely already seen, because it came out on Sunday and has more than a million hits, but which is wonderful in case you haven’t and are jubilantly, mindlessly uplifted by things like this, as I am.

It’s the third in DJ Daniel Kim’s Pop Danthology series, making it — maybe? — the myrrh in his holiday-season mashup gift trifecta, if 2010 and 2011 were gold and frankincense, which he has not yet indicated they are. (Although myrrh apparently represents suffering and death, so who knows.) I’d also like to be Gotye’s teeth for Halloween next year, somehow.

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Edith Zimmerman
The Hairpin

Spiralbound editor. Formerly at The Hairpin. Also now making a newsletter: https://drawinglinks.substack.com