I think the good outweighed the bad this year—while there were no fewer than ten to twenty moments that could’ve made my best-of list, I didn’t come up with quite so many to choose from for this list.

Still, 2013 had its share of regrettable, forgettable moments. Here are my top five.

5. Rainbow Rowell banned in Minnesota school district

This one hits a little close to home: the Anoka-Hennepin school district where parents attempted to ban Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor & Park for 227 instances of “vile profanity” is not so far from where I live.

I also take this one personally because Eleanor & Park was easily one of my favorite reads of 2013. This story of two teen misfits who find a brief solace in their unlikely love for one another is exactly the kind of book young readers need. Thankfully, the banning challenge recently failed—though not before it seriously screwed up a possible speaking gig for Rowell in the school district.

I’m not sure if I’d like to forget this one so much as I’d like to live in a world where such things never happen. Adults have a tendency to try to control what teens read—it’s condescending, counterproductive, and it needs to stop. Word of advice: listen to Neil Gaiman on this one. Always listen to Neil Gaiman.

4. “We Saw Your Boobs”

Like Chris, I thought Seth MacFarlane’s Oscar hosting was really, really bad. If I had to pick the worst moment, though, it would be the juvenile and offensive song “We Saw Your Boobs,” in which MacFarlane proceeded to objectify the actresses in the audience as he went through a laundry list of films in which…well, you get the idea. The worst part was when MacFarlane included Jodie Foster in The Accused in his list. That’s a film in which Foster’s character is the victim of a brutal rape.

Leaving us to conclude…what, exactly? That Seth MacFarlane thinks rape scenes are cool because at least he gets to see some boobs? I honestly don’t even want to know. Either way, that one line, for me, brought MacFarlane’s Oscar act beyond tasteless and offensive to the realm of the truly sickening.

3. Amanda Bynes’ public breakdown

One of the ickier parts of living in the digital panopticon is the modern phenomenon of the celebrity meltdown—our relatively recent ability to track some stars’ slide into substance abuse and mental illness via disturbing tweets and Instagram photos.

This year, it was Amanda Bynes who suffered this indignity. I didn’t follow her meltdown (God, how I hate that word), but heard about it second- and often third-hand, through people who seemed to get some perverse, voyeuristic pleasure out of the whole thing. Media outlets like EW and the Huffington Post ran pieces throughout the year updating their readers on the latest drama in the Amanda Bynes saga, as we were all rubbernecking drivers slowing down to look at a car wreck on our way to work.

Yuck. Substance abuse and mental illness are not amusing or entertaining. I hope Amanda Bynes is getting the help she needs. Let’s forget this ever happened and give her some privacy, shall we?

2. Only God Forgives

Nicholas Winding Refn’s anticipated follow-up to Drive was almost universally reviled. Rex Reed called it “one of the worst movies ever made.”

Of course, everyone knew it would be violent. Drive was violent. But what seemed to surprise critics and audiences this time around was how shallow and needlessly cruel Refn’s new film was. Only God Forgives was gore raised to the level (or lowered to the depths, if you prefer) of porn. The film was pretentious and disgusting.

The thorough awfulness of Only God Forgives, in my opinion, reflects back on Drive and makes one begin to wonder why that film was so acclaimed. Personally, I found Drive to be similarly shallow, and overly enamored of its ultra-stylish violence. But that’s a topic for another post. At the very least, I think we can all agree that Only God Forgives is a low-point for 2013.

1. Jonathan Franzen taking on the modern world

Jonathan Franzen’s takedown of the modern world in The Guardian and the subsequent explosion of the entire Internet into paroxysms of angry umbrage-taking had its share of sublime moments—Franzen’s article, if you could look past all his pointless sniping about Twitter, was occasionally insightful, and Maria Bustillo’s take on the whole thing was just about perfect, as responses go.

Still, the whole thing was pretty silly. There was a good argument in Franzen’s essay, but it was buried under an avalanche of words about Franzen’s strong dislike for this and that about the modern world—and the criticisms that followed in the essay’s wake too often made Franzen’s point for him by demonstrating the Twitter-sphere’s occasional inability to grasp long arguments, or devolved into satire that missed Franzen’s tone of self-deprecation and self-critique at the essay’s close.

It wasn’t Franzen’s finest moment—nor ours. In 2014, let’s all move on and pretend it didn’t happen, shall we?