The annoying cultural trends we’re happy to leave behind in 2024

Time: When you think about it, it’s just, like, a construct. You know?

But if the arbitrary division of Earth’s orbit around the sun into calendar units has any real value, it’s in allowing us to decide what to carry into the future and what to leave behind. 

As we prepare to greet 2025, here are a few trends we’re more than happy to relegate to the trash heap. 

Restaurant owners embraced them to decrease person-to-person contact during the pandemic and kept them because they cut labor costs. Fine. But I’m ready to kick QR menus to the curb. I spend enough time looking at my tiny phone screen without having to scroll through four pages of food options too. Please, I’m begging you: Just send a server over to explain the concept of “small plates meant for sharing” for the 100th time. 

If you’ve spoken recently to a member of Generation Alpha (the cohort after Gen Z), you’ve likely heard the term “skibidi toilet.” It works as a vocal filler and a bit of an in-joke that infuriates olds. The origin of the meme is a web series depicting a war between human-headed toilets and electronics-headed humanoids, but, as with most memes, the meaning has been stripped away into an absurd nihilistic nothingness. Is skibidi toilet just a stupid catchphrase or a clear symbol of our general cultural decline? Why not both?

Scroll through TikTok, and you’ll find martinis inspired by just about everything edible under the sun. Stuffing martini? That exists. So does a white mocha martini, an affogato martini, and a salt-and-pepper martini. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: Leave my martini alone. I want it gin-based (though vodka will do), ice cold, and served in a V-shaped glass. I’ll tolerate a lemon peel, but an olive garnish is ideal, and if you could give me a generous slush of brine, I’d appreciate it. Any other cocktails — good as they may be — can find a different name, because I’m done with the martini mayhem.

I get it. It has all the makings of a hip alcohol movement. It has a pretty color, it smells weird, and the places that serve it have a sick record collection and a super chill vibe. But we live in California. We should consider ourselves lucky to be surrounded by a diverse and nuanced terroir that produces some of the best wines in the world. Let’s leave the hipster bullshit to Minneapolis, Philly, and the other cities with no proximity to wine country. Just look at what happened to our once-beloved IPAs.

Like most trends, the incorrect use of “demure” originated on TikTok. Influencer Jools Lebron posted an ironic video explaining how to be modest in the workplace (in part, by managing mustache sweat). As a pedantic word nerds who used “demure” before it was cool, I urge the world to end its use in inappropriate situations. It’s not demure to plaster on concealer in a “Get Ready With Me” video, nor is the word an accurate description of a complex pasta recipe. 

I’ll admit, I got a chuckle when Timothee Chalamet showed up to his own look-alike contest in New York City. And I was tickled by the Dev Patel competition that took place in Dolores Park. But did we really need events to find people with barely a passing resemblance to Paul Mescal or Jacob Elordi, who probably get enough attention as is? Let’s leave these wherever the Harlem Shake ended up. 

The sparsely attended daytime “rave” thrown this month in the downtown SF Ikea might be the death knell for this narrow band of events that are miles away from the illegal dance parties that took off during the 1990s. There was a longevity rave that featured mostly sober health nuts, Little Raver events attended by toddlers, and a Taylor Swift rave (whatever that means). These are clearly not raves — which, by the real definition, are not good for you, are unsafe for kids, and would not be caught dead playing T.Swift.  

With the new year comes the opportunity for resolutions. My ask is that Bay Area media organizations retire the tired “doom loop” cliche that has become an easy shorthand to inject a little drama into a headline. Because there will always be a segment of the population that makes a name out of hating San Francisco, there is a role for the “doom loop” framing, but I’m begging the haters to come up with something more original and more fun. “Shit spiral,” perhaps?

Jim and Pam. Ross and Rachel. Sam and Diane. Everyone loves a good will-they-won’t-they story. But even the most ardent fans of the genre can agree it gets played out after too many seasons of the same conflict. San Francisco’s version is Elon Musk’s flirtation with keeping X based in the city. In September, when he announced that the social media company would be decamping to a new HQ near Austin, the relief was palpable. Musk might be one of the most powerful people in the world, buddies with the president-elect, and a newsmaker extraordinaire, but at least I don’t have to write about his cringy San Francisco puns anymore.