After a quarter of a century, one console still reigns supreme.

It has been nearly 25 years to the day since iconic photos and video of the Paris launch showed just how crazy the world was for PlayStation 2.

‘I never leave my house.’

On November 24, 2000, crowds in Europe lined up, camped, and even pushed through crowds to get their hands on a PlayStation 2 for the first time. The launch was almost a month after the American Oct. 26 debut and signified a true consumerism-fueled riot that became synonymous with Black Friday.

From its launch day through Christmas 2000, Sony said it sold 1.35 million units in North America and another 1 million units in Europe during that same period.

The PS2 has sold an average of over 6 million consoles per year since then, or 500,000 per month, totaling more than 160 million lifetime units sold as of this November.

RELATED: A kid got a mint PS1 from his grandpa, and the internet is freaking out

As reported by Techgaged.com, the PS2 eclipses two Nintendo products at the top of the list.

The second-most sales are for the handheld Nintendo DS at 154 million, followed by the Nintendo Switch portable console at 152 million.

A steep drop occurs for fourth place with the original Game Boy, released in 1989, having 118 million units sold. Sony’s PS1 and Nintendo’s Wii are the only other gaming systems to have sold over 100 million.

Interestingly, the PlayStation 2’s main competitors during its era, the Nintendo GameCube (launched in North America on Nov. 18, 2001) and the original Xbox (launched in North America on Nov. 15, 2001), do not even crack the top-20 list.

The Xbox, Microsoft’s first foray into gaming systems, has sold 24.65 million units in its lifetime, while the GameCube has sold 21.74 million units.

Both company’s modern systems — Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch — have already surpassed the sales of their 2000s counterparts.

RELATED: The price tag on Mark Zuckerberg’s bid for ‘superintelligence’ will blow your mind. Will the product?

Photo By Eduardo Parra/Europa Press via Getty Images

The PS2 was so pervasive, historical image banks provide a bounty of time capsules showing celebrities flooding PS2-themed parties that were constantly taking place to promote the product.

There were events like the PlayStation 2 and the Hip-Hop Summit “Race to the Polls” event in 2004, or the mouthful, PlayStation 2 Celebrates Red White and Blue with Poolside Party at the Bentley Hotel in NYC, temporarily referred to as the PlayStation 2 Hotel for the occasion, in 2003.

Super Bowl parties became linked with the console during that era too. The Sony PlayStation 2 Game Over Party saw celebrities like NSYNC in its first year and Paris Hilton in its second year. In fact, the celebrity sightings and performances connected to PS2 events at that time are nearly limitless.

If readers don’t believe the PS2 was as much of a cross-cultural phenomenon as it seems, refer to this quote from “Friends” actor Matthew Perry in 2000.

“I used to have a social life, go on dates, go to dinner parties, have a job. Now all I do is sit in a big chair and play PlayStation 2,” Perry said, per Digital Journal. “I never leave my house. My friends have wondered what happened to me. Howard Hughes must have had one of these.”

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The confusing saga continues surrounding a Dallas Cowboys tradition that happens almost every year.

During a spectacular 31-28 Thanksgiving win against the Kansas City Chiefs, Cowboys tight end Jake Ferguson somehow avoided a fine for performing a controversial celebration, but he may have gotten off on a technicality.

‘Nothing like a Zeke being dropped into one of our kettles!’

As announced by tattoo-laden singer Post Malone, the Cowboys continued their Thanksgiving- and Christmas-season partnership with the Salvation Army. This included the tradition of placing giant red kettles behind the endzones, directly in front of the first row of fans.

During the third quarter, Ferguson seemingly tapped his toes into the endzone for an epic touchdown, ran over to one of the kettles at AT&T Stadium, and jumped in. No flag was thrown on this play for excessive celebration, and the NFL has not announced any fines.

However, this is where things get confusing.

RELATED: ‘We’re getting set up’: NFL running back says league is baiting players into getting celebration fines

Dallas Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott climbed into a Salvation Army kettle after a touchdown run in the second quarter against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday, Dec. 18, 2016, at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. (Richard W. Rodriguez/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

After a lengthy review, Ferguson’s touchdown was overturned and taken off the scoreboard, adding another curveball to an already convoluted situation given that the kettle celebration has been overlooked by the NFL at times, while also resulting in fines in some instances.

In 2024, the kettle’s use in post-touchdown antics caused such a stir that Cincinnati Bengals running back Chase Brown boldly made the claim that the league was baiting players into getting fined.

With four kettles placed around the field, Brown apparently couldn’t help but jump into one during a matchup against the Cowboys. He was subsequently fined $5,481 by the NFL for unsportsmanlike conduct.

The enforcement surrounding the celebration has been about as inconsistent as imaginable, dating back to former Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott performing the act in 2016. That year, the celebration was so well received it even garnered praise from the Salvation Army.

“Nothing like a Zeke being dropped into one of our kettles!” the organization wrote on X, then Twitter.

Strangely, the following year the NFL started its own confusing tradition of going back and forth on punishing the celebration.

RELATED: Salvation Army gives perfect response to reporter who ripped Ezekiel Elliott’s epic TD celebration

ARLINGTON, TX – NOVEMBER 23: Dallas Cowboys cornerback DaRon Bland (26) jumps into the Salvation Army Kettle after returning an interception for a touchdown during the game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Washington Commanders on November 23, 2023 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. (Photo by Matthew Pearce/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

In 2017, Seattle Seahawks cornerback Justin Coleman jumped into one of the kettles after returning an interception for a touchdown; he was not fined but got penalized during the game.

In 2018 though, Elliott performed the celebration again, but this time was fined $13,369 by the NFL.

Fast-forward to 2022 when the NFL managed to confuse players and fans even more. A Whac-a-Mole celebration in late November had three Cowboys players get into a kettle and see no discipline at all. One week later, the Cowboys, including Elliott, used a kettle in a different unique celebration. This time, participants Elliott and quarterback Dak Prescott were fined $13,261 for unsportsmanlike conduct.

On Thanksgiving 2023, a seemingly preplanned celebration that involved four Cowboys players eating turkey legs that were inside a kettle did not result in any fines.

As the confusing tradition continues, the Salvation Army did not make mention of the celebration on its X account in 2025. The charity showcased only its partnership with the Cowboys, sharing a video of the aforementioned Post Malone.

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Two West Virginia National Guardsmen patrolling the national capital were shot the day before Thanksgiving, allegedly by a 29-year-old Afghan national who Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem indicated “was one of the many unvetted, mass paroled into the United States under Operation Allies Welcome on September 8, 2021, under the Biden Administration.”

While 24-year-old U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe is reportedly still fighting for his life, Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom succumbed to her wounds on Thursday evening.

“My baby girl has passed to glory,” the fallen guardsman’s father, Gary Beckstrom, noted in a Facebook post on Thursday. “… This has been a horrible tragedy.”

‘Apologize and repent.’

Amid the general outpouring of prayers and support for the victims and their families, the New Yorker magazine’s chief Washington correspondent, Jane Mayer, decided to publicly trivialize the military members’ sacrifice.

“This is so tragic, so unnecessary, these poor guardsmen should never have been deployed,” wrote Mayer. “I live in DC and watched as they had virtually nothing to do but pick up trash. It was a political show and at what a cost.”

Mayer’s apparent suggestion that the National Guardsman who died and others overseeing a historic and transformative decrease in violent crime in Washington, D.C., were glorified garbage pickers did not go over well with the American people and their White House.

White House communications director Steven Cheung, responding on X from his official account, wrote, “Jane, respectfully, shut the f**k up for trying to politicize this tragedy.

“They were protecting DC and trying to make the nation’s capital safer,” continued Cheung. “People like you who engage in ghoulish behavior lose all credibility. Not like you had any to begin with.”

RELATED: Trump to ‘permanently pause’ migration from third-world backwaters in wake of National Guard member’s grisly murder

Military members and civilians pray outside the hospital where the two wounded National Guardsmen were taken. Photo by Tom Brenner for The Washington Post via Getty Images.

The official White House rapid response account similarly castigated the liberal journalist, writing, “You sick, disgusting ghoul. Two of these heroes were just SHOT IN BROAD DAYLIGHT. The Guard has saved countless lives — backed up by evidence (which you’re clearly too stupid to notice). They are American patriots.”

In August, President Donald Trump federalized the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., and deployed the National Guard there in order to “re-establish law, order, and public safety” to a city that had a higher violent crime, murder, and robbery rate than all 50 states.

D.C. immediately witnessed a dramatic drop in crime.

There was a 44% decrease in violent crime in the first three weeks of the anti-crime initiative when compared to the same stretch the previous year and a 27% drop in crime from Aug. 11 through Oct. 15 relative to the same period in 2024. In addition to saving lives, the reduction in crime led to savings of over $450 million as of Nov. 4, according to the America First Policy Institute.

The White House was not alone in its disgust over Mayer’s remarks.

Georgia Rep. Mike Collins (R) responded, “Apologize and repent.”

“Stop supporting the murder of American soldiers,” wrote BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier (R) wrote, “All these sick people on the Left do is blame the victims. I’m thankful for our guardsmen and praying for them and their families as they keep protecting the peace.”

While others similarly bashed Mayer over her rush to politicize the attack on the guardsmen by a suspect apparently imported by the Biden administration, some critics refuted the New Yorker writer’s narrative by providing accounts of critical actions taken by the National Guard in the District of Columbia.

— (@)

For instance, Wallace White, a reporter at the Daily Caller News Foundation, noted, “On my walk back from work a few weeks back, a man was dangling off the ledge of the metro tracks at Farragut West clearly trying to commit suicide by train. If two national guardsmen weren’t there at the time, he’d be dead. These people are heroes.”

Logan Dobson, vice president of the political advertising agency Targeted Victory, noted that he lives in D.C. and that the city is safer thanks to the National Guard, adding on the basis of murder statistics, “Dozens of Washingtonians are alive today that wouldn’t be if not for the Guard.”

When confronted by Dobson with evidence of the drop in crime following the National Guard’s deployment to D.C., Mayer said, “I’ve covered crime in Washington since 1981- let’s skip the mansplaining. You can play with the stats but homicides were dropping before the troops got here.”

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A decade ago, Julian Assange warned that “we are the last free generation.”

Now, Americans are living in the dystopian reality he once predicted.

And Gabriel Shipton, the brother of Assange, is continuing to sound the alarm, sitting down with BlazeTV host Nicole Shanahan to discuss what has turned into a nearly full-blown surveillance state.

“We are at a tipping point now where it’s not even being hidden,” Shanahan tells Shipton. “It’s actually in clear daylight that the government has every intention to rip away our civil liberties, our constitutional rights. Julian’s watching all of this go down. What does he think?”

“You can look back to his writing, you know, even from 10 years ago, and he was predicting all this, predicting this surveillance even before the Snowden leaks. They knew it existed, but they didn’t have confirmation in black and white from actual leaked information about this NSA spying,” Shipton explains.

“But he’s written about this and, you know, said things like ‘we are the last free generation.’ You know, soon we’re going to be manipulated in more and more subtle ways that we don’t even understand,” he continues.

“And I think this FISA bill, combined with things like, you know, the potential for AI integration with all this surveillance,” he says, before Shanahan chimes in, “Well, it’s already happening.”

“We are very well aware that many government agencies are using AI for censorship and surveillance. I mean, they go hand in hand. They’re not even truly even hiding it after the pandemic,” she says.

“I think generally there’s awareness, but I think there’s an outcry that is being limited and almost herded. I feel like everyone who’s stepping out there and trying to show everybody what’s going on and what’s at stake is being quieted and herded,” she continues.

However, while Assange predicted the surveillance state we currently reside in, he is optimistic about some things.

“I believe he is excited about those independent journalists that are out there doing work. I know he, you know, engages with a lot of independent journalism as much as he can given his limited connection to the outside world,” Shipton says.

“You know, you can draw a line from Wikileaks’ work to this flowering of independent journalism, the loss of confidence in corporate media. And I think that is due to a lot of Wikileaks’ work,” he continues.

“They exposed the corporate media for what it actually was,” he adds.

Want more from Nicole Shanahan?

To enjoy more of Nicole’s compelling blend of empathy, curiosity, and enlightenment, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

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The Department of Homeland Security confirmed earlier this week that it was initiating a review of the hundreds of thousands of refugees imported by the Biden administration, citing evidence that many of the migrants were rushed into the homeland without adequate vetting.

While activists clutched pearls over the Trump administration’s new initiative to ensure that Americans today aren’t further endangered by decisions made by the previous administration, a 29-year-old man whom Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem confirmed was among the horde of migrants admitted from Afghanistan in 2021 allegedly drove across the U.S. and gunned down two members of the National Guard.

‘The seriously retarded Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, does nothing, either through fear, incompetence, or both.’

After the death of one of the victims, 20-year-old Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services indicated that it had halted the processing of all immigration requests pertaining to those Afghans previously brought into the U.S. “pending further review of security and vetting protocols.”

President Donald Trump made clear, however, that he intended to go far behind just pausing immigration requests, announcing that he will cut off the flow of migrants to the U.S. from third-world backwaters, seek to remove all noncitizens presently squatting in the homeland who are not presently making a positive contribution, and denaturalize those radicals who threaten American peace.

The president noted in a Truth Social post on Thursday evening that the country has been “divided, disrupted, carved up, murdered, beaten, mugged, and laughed at, along with certain other foolish countries throughout the World, for being ‘Politically Correct,’ and just plain STUPID, when it comes to Immigration.”

Trump suggested further that the foreign population — Current Population Survey data indicates that as of January 2025, the foreign-born or immigrant population was 53.3 million, 15.8% of the total — is not only heavily reliant on U.S. taxpayer-funded benefits but greatly contributing to “social dysfunction in America” as manifest in “failed schools, high crime, urban decay, overcrowded hospitals, housing shortages, and large deficits.”

RELATED: SHOCK: Trump administration finds Biden policies let in terrorists, including ISIS plotters

Photo by Drew ANGERER / AFP via Getty Images

The president pointed to the Gopher State for evidence of the “refugee burden,” noting that “hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia are completely taking over the once great State of Minnesota.”

Trump added:

Somalian gangs are roving the streets looking for “prey” as our wonderful people stay locked in their apartments and houses hoping against hope that they will be left alone. The seriously retarded Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, does nothing, either through fear, incompetence, or both, while the worst “Congressman/woman” in our Country, Ilhan Omar, always wrapped in her swaddling hijab, and who probably came into the U.S.A. illegally in that you are not allowed to marry your brother, does nothing but hatefully complain about our Country, its Constitution, and how “badly” she is treated, when her place of origin is a decadent, backward, and crime ridden nation, which is essentially not even a country for lack of Government, Military, Police, schools, etc.

Trump announced last week that he was terminating the Temporary Protected Status designation for Somalia following a report by BlazeTV host Christopher Rufo and investigative reporter Ryan Thorpe on the alleged fraud perpetrated by numerous members of the Somali community in Minnesota as well as on the alleged direction of stolen Minnesota Medicaid and welfare funds by members of the Somali community to terrorists abroad.

‘Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation.’

Minnesota Rep. Omar, who claimed last year that the “U.S government will do what [Somali-Americans] tell the U.S. government to do,” vowed in response to help members of her community avoid status revocation and removal.

Trump, however, emphasized in his Thanksgiving message that he is deadly serious about seeing America unyoked of its imported problems.

“I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by Sleepy Joe Biden’s Autopen, and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States, or is incapable of loving our Country, end all Federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens of our Country, denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any Foreign National who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilization,” wrote the president.

“Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation,” wrote Trump. “HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL, except those that hate, steal, murder, and destroy everything that America stands for — You won’t be here for long!”

Joe Edlow, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, noted Thursday in a post on X that at the direction of the president, he has “directed a full scale, rigorous reexamination of every Green Card for every alien from every country of concern.”

When asked for clarification, USCIS stated the countries of concern are those listed in Trump’s June 4 proclamation, namely: Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela.

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