Why we at Time Magazine named Cthulhu, the Old One Who Whispers in Darkness, “Person of the Year”

by Ed’Ward FelSen’thal, Time Magazine Editor-in-Chief

Max Asher Miller
2 min readDec 14, 2021

The selection process for our annual “Person of the Year” issue is always a balancing act. In a world with over 7 billion people (and countless eldritch horrors whose visages bring men to madness), no one individual can ever truly embody the pioneering vision bestowed by that title.

Since announcing Cthulhu as this year’s recipient of the honor, readers have been asking questions like, “Why pick a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline whose cultish followers yearn for the chaos of his rebirth?” and, “Cthulhu hasn’t actually done anything noteworthy beyond hoarding the souls of man in his underwater chasm.” We understand that not everyone will agree with our decision, but since His Great Darkness has been delivering psychic messages to our entire staff and placing us in his thrall, we felt it was the obvious choice. ‘Cthulhu fhtagn’ and such. You get it.

In any case, Cthulhu has had an undeniable influence on the world of man this year. Who can forget the time he hosted Saturday Night Live with musical guest Idh-yaa, who only swallowed half the audience into her great maw?

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Max Asher Miller

Former Managing Editor at Columbia Journal; news/features at CBR, Looper. Columbia University MFA. (Contact via Twitter for inquiries.)