Things to leave in 2024
From trends to habits to aesthetics. Here's what I think we should ditch in the new year...
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2025 sits across the bar, curling a beckoning finger at you. It’s always a bit sexy, isn’t it, the promise of newness, resolution and general de-cluttering? And there is plenty of clutter to throw out come January. Self-doubt. Job searches. Heartache. Stress. As someone who’s not had the greatest year, it’s all stuff I’d like to leave behind.
But this is a culture publication, not my journal. And there are just as many cultural trends I think we could all benefit from closing the door on in the new year. So, for your reading pleasure, I’ve listed eight things to leave in 2024.
Agree? Disagree? Have any you’d add? The post comments are open!
Audiobook snobbery
Look, I’m not above being a snob about some things, as this list will prove. But I am getting weary of the discourse about audiobooks not being “real reading”. Because yes, obviously, we know there is a cognitive difference between reading and listening, but is one extraordinarily superior to the other? Aside from the fact that audiobooks enable visually impaired or dyslexic people to enjoy books with greater ease, they also release books into every small corner of your life. I remember having a conversation with someone who wrinkled their nose at audiobooks, saying they weren’t the same as reading a tangible book. But when I asked them how many books they’d read all the way through this year, it was - you guessed it - zero!
This year, I’ve probably got through around 30-40 books. Half of those were audiobooks which I listen to on my daily hike, on long train journeys, while I’m making dinner, or when I’m cleaning the house. Any activity that requires my physical presence but not my mental concentration, you can bet I’ll involve a book. Doing this doesn’t detract from the fact that I, too, love to be in bed by 9:30pm with a book and a cup of tea, or lessen how satisfied I am with the many hundreds of real books that are piled dangerously high on my aching shelves. But if I only ever allowed myself to “read” when reading, I couldn’t scratch the surface of what I want to experience through literature before I die.
I believe this makes me more of a dedicated reader, not less.
TikTok aesthetics
Let’s be honest, we could’ve left Living By Aesthetics in 2023, but for some reason, they’ve grimly hung on. Clean Girl. Old Money. Cottagecore. We don’t need to commodify the act of wearing wellies or having a slick-back bun. We also don’t need to worry that wearing Old Money red nail varnish might go against our Clean Girl beliefs. Truly stylish people are versatile, explorative and unafraid of change.
Don’t back yourself into a corner wallpapered with pictures of Hailey Bieber. Release yourself from her dewy beige shackles!
Twitter
Twitter (I’m not giving him the satisfaction of calling it X) in 2024 really has started to feel like that scene in The Simpson’s movie where they go back into the dome to find everyone wearing traffic cones on their heads with various buildings on fire. Porn. Transphobia. Rape threats. More porn. Elon Musk’s jowls. Racism. Someone’s actual butthole looking me dead in the eye. What will the app-button-roulette bring this time? In 2025, I’m not staying to find out.
Ozempic’s influence
It’s been a very tough year for body image. Even the most robustly confident people have had their knees knocked out from under them as a result of the miracle weight loss drug. Whether or not Ozempic is always used - or used ethically - we have seen perfectly healthy public figures shrinking in real-time around us and felt that sinister obligation to do the same.
While I don’t believe Ozempic will stop making headlines or changing waistlines any time soon, we are - at least - over the initial shock of it. We’ve stopped asking “How are they doing it?” with quiet awe. I hope in the year ahead, we can shake off some of that preliminary desire. I hope we can see that, offline, people rarely notice or care if we are ten pounds heavier or lighter than we were. I am not Christina Aguilera or Ariana Grande. I do not have the eyes of the world on me or the paparazzi lurking behind my dustbins. Gratefully, I can live, eat and enjoy life accordingly.
Reading only non-fiction
This is where my own snobbery comes into play, but hear me out. My problem with people who are always reading non-fiction bleeds into what I’ve been saying about Ozempic and TikTok aesthetics. It’s about reaching the epiphany that life is about more than self-improvement.
Most non-fiction books are about figuring out life, whether that’s love, business, health or general success. It can feel good to pay for an author to essentially hold your hand and tell you this is how to do it, but at some point, you’ve got to conclude that there is no singular right path, no chapter-by-chapter solution to the wobbly, muddy terrain that your lifeline falls across. Reading only non-fiction - never allowing yourself that childlike immersion into another’s imagination - is a bit like only ever going to the gym and never running through a field. You don’t need to abandon the gym forevermore, but you have to smell the grass and feel the earth beneath your feet sometimes, too.
The influencer-to-MMA-fighter-pipeline
If we all agree never to mention Logan and/or Jake Paul (don’t know or care which is which) ever again in 2025, then I never have to learn about why - specifically - they’re terrible people. That would be great. So, we agree, yes?
Laminated eyebrows
This is the only one I’ll do that’s based on appearance because of course everyone can choose what they want to look like and it really is no business of mine. But - if you’ll excuse the pun - I believe we’re over the brow of the hill where laminated eyebrows are concerned. All I’ve wanted to do for the last year when I see a beautiful person with vertically gelled eyebrows is to tenderly stroke them down.
Please. Let them be free. Let them feel the breeze again.
Celebrity worship
How many celebrities have been outed this year as awful people? How many have sexually assaulted someone, harassed a minority, or dated someone underage? How many have openly supported genocide, Donald Trump, or the stripping back of abortion rights? How many have dodged their tax bill, or flown their private jet over melting ice caps? How many have trodden on the hands of working people to achieve billionaire status? How many sit on huge piles of accumulated wealth, then ask regular people to give what little they have to charity organisations like Comic Relief or Children in Need? How many flaunt their lives like a big father boa, tickling the faces of those who have so little?
Not to pull a stat out of my arse, but it’s got to be like 70%, right? And even then, I don’t trust the remaining 30% not to be up to other devilish deeds. It’s time we stopped hoping for celebs to be good people. Enjoy their music. Watch their films. Copy their outfits. Emulate their nice hairstyle. But don’t worship them. Don’t love them.
What else would you leave in 2024? Are there any trends, celebs or habits that you want to ditch to become a better, happier person in 2025? Write them in the comments below!
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I agree with every single point!! The audiobook one particularly - I finally got into audiobooks this year and they've helped so much with books I'm reading but struggling to get into.
This might be a little too applicable to me but I'd love to leave comments sections in 2024. Every time I open them something will undoubtedly piss me off.
Very good 👏🏼
‘Have you showered today? Then you are a clean girl’ made me laugh.
Also compleeeeetely agree about all the non fiction books and fixating on ‘which path is the right path’ I think it would do people a lot of good to put them down for a bit, and as you say, relax their imagination into new interesting stories! Also the celeb obsession thing YES it’s driving me mad, don’t get me started with the Kardashians.