Blazer’s Edge Readers have chosen a Best Thing Ever for the year 2026. For those who missed out on the offseason festivities, this summer we organized 64 pretty good things in life into a March Madness-style bracket, then asked readers to vote each day on head-to-head matchups between them. Day by day, we narrowed down the 64 to 32, 16, and on down to just two. Last week we made the final post of the tournament. It pitted the Oregon Coast against Kissing. The coast had defeated Star Trek, Halloween,
Golden Retrievers, Guitars, and Dolly Parton on a surprise run to the Finals. Kissing had vanquished Computers, the Beatles, Cows, Books, and Beer on an impressive march to the top of the bracket.
And now, we are proud to announce that the Best Thing Ever for 2026 is…KISSING! That’s right, the humble smooch walks away with the crown. Good job, Blazers fans!
For those who want to see the final bracket, a photo is just below. Before we get there, here are a couple things we learned from this experiment.
- People’s definitions of good things are really wide and varied! The most common complaint we heard was, “This matchup is lopsided! X is clearly going to win because Y doesn’t even matter!” Often that was followed by multiple votes for Y from people who wondered why X was even considered.
- Pursuant to that, before we run next year’s tournament, we’ll publish a post asking for suggestions for entries!
- There was one more thing…perhaps the most important to me. For three weeks, we had spirited debate, conflicting votes, and lots of back-and-forth. Over multiple hundreds of comments, I saw pretty much zero unfair arguing, putting others down, or the usual gunky B.S. that often accompanies online arguments. People were genuinely interested in the thoughts of others, genuinely illuminating when they disagreed. We had passion and conflict, but also community and a good feeling surrounding it. I really loved this. It’s an example of how internet discourse should be, here and elsewhere. Thank you all for that!
Congrats again to Kissing, the Coast, Dolly and Santa and Pizza and Kittens and all the participants in this year’s tournament! We look forward to seeing some of you back next year when we see what the Best Thing Ever in 2027 is!
