Buzzwords of 2024

As always, long words, misty concepts, bloviating and navel-gazing were popular.

reset

agency (Everyone has agency. So what about “You are responsible for everything that happens to you”?)

Mari Lwyds are everywhere. A few years ago it was Krampus.

Attractive women being called “ugly” by TRAs and incels. (And TERFs are "smelly".)

When talking about unions, you must say “over a barrel”, “in hock” and “magic money tree”.

Snow is forecast: There are thick drifts, roads are closed and drivers spend ten hours in their cars in the Pennines. 
Everybody: Single snowflakes seen! Britain shuts down ha ha ha! Oh dear the power’s gone off. I say it’s jolly cold. Where did we put the candles/head torch/extra duvet? How soon do we start eating each other?

"New paradigm" is back from the 1970s.

Twitter is asked: What phrase makes you roll your eyes? The responses are a salami slice through 2023 and the 2000s generally.

accountability, problematic, triggered
mask, cis, whatever
empowered, equity, learnings
toxic, inclusive, kiddos
equity, Win-Win, zero sum

identify as, context, patriarchy
pronouns, wait his turn, I got this.
hypervigilance, climate change, laser focused
genocide, -phobic anything, safe space…
speaking power to truth, healing journey, Just sayin’.

common sense, safe and effective, lived experience
gender assigned at birth, That's just the way I am.
conspiracy theory, Let's unpack that, community
It is what it is, at the end of the day
Let me be clear...

living your best life, follow your heart, my truth
Rest in Power, greater good, The science is settled.
marginalized communities, gender-affirming care
fur baby, white privilege, reimagine
stunning and brave, my journey, existential

trauma response, triggering, heal
queering the..., feminine energy

Adjectiving verbs with a Y – evadey, spy-ey, popular January.
Not to be in any sense spoilerific, but...

People telling others to “cope”.

There are a lot of moving parts... (of a complex situation)

[Absolutely anything] starts with the self.

It’s not the cold, it’s the humidity.


Have the hipsters shaved their beards off? Are there hipsters any more?

agentic: There’s a lot of “agency” around.

An incentive structure has been set up where tons of ppl pretty much can't survive without competing in some kind of victimization Olympics. And of course those ppl get out-competed by a bunch of a**holes who could do just fine, but see that victim Olympics is the game. (@HephaistosF)

What to Say About the Duchess of Sussex: She is such a tasteless, crashing, bourgeoise arriviste snob, it's repulsive.

warm desking: hot desking, but in an area of four desks. You sit with the people you work with, you just move round every day.

crunchy women: what we used to call an “earth mother”. Or perhaps Gwyneth Paltrow. But why crunchy? They eat crunchy granola? “Crunchy millennial tropical trad-wives” says @nealjclark over a pic of a long-haired woman breastfeeding.

Health-worker vaccinated here. No health issues so far. Meanwhile there are so many “Christian” crunchy women that lie to prove a political point and wish death/infertility on you while miscarrying every year despite of not being vaccinated. (@perromediano96) (In the 70s they hated popular culture and scientific medicine etc, and believed in astrology, spoon-bending, Jung and dualism.)

Don’t make me tap the sign.

Effects of lockdown: shoe shops sell 60% trainers and 40% shoes. After lockdown people couldn’t get their office shoes back on, or found they got blisters.

Effects of lockdown 2: Some cafés and food outlets cleared out tables and chairs, and have never replaced them all. Instead we’re offered stools and a counter – or nothing. Americans eat from brown bags while walking and slurping coffee from a sippy cup and we’re expected to do the same. Do we eat like tramps on a park bench? There are fewer and fewer places to sit down. Solution: seek a café where people work on laptops. However: tables and chairs rarely match and tables are far too high. This makes eating with a knife and fork difficult, too. You feel like a child who needs to sit on an Encyclopedia.

Oh, “brisket” was pastrami all along!

Anything other than 100% support of trans people is “transphobia”. Support of women, or claiming they exist, is also transphobia! Any criticism of men is “you just hate men”. It’s the sloppy thinking I mind.

Are the Israelis scattering Gaza with bombs disguised as tins of tuna? Sounds like the rumours that in WWII the Germans dropped exploding chocolate and pens.

Feb: “disgusting” is code for anti-Semitism

Where did all this mimosa come from? Something to do with Valentine’s Day?

Cuddles are now snuggles.

coded: “Do I code as female?”

February rumours: Primark is closing, David Irving is dead, Pope says you can eat what you like during Lent.

Prophecies of doom: Google is closing its search facility. Twitter was doomed as soon as Elon Musk took over and everybody is leaving or will leave. A year on it looks much the same. Those who joined with the sole aim of getting “engagement” and publicising their thing have moved to duller pastures. We don’t miss them. Those who like arguing about epistemology have stayed.

People really enjoying calling each other narcissists and attention-seekers. As someone points out, people may need attention. There’s even something called “care-seeking”.


Fresh (and there's an irritating silly voice women adopt to say "fresh!" in adverts):

Ultimately, they all want us to see Richard III in a fresh new way. (Guardian on a play about RIII with Michelle Terry as Richard)

UK Eurovision entry is “fresh, modern, contemporary”.

Rescued chairs painted greige will “have a fresh look that will appeal to younger buyers”, claims Bridget (paraphrase).

Grey bathrooms are also “fresh and modern”. They have “metro tiles” (lavatory) and square basins, sinks, loos and bidets.

When you’re my age, you’ve seen “fresh looks” come and go.

March 2024

"Genocide" is being used to mean ethnic cleansing. “Send them somewhere else” is not the same as “kill them all”.

People confuse non-binary with non-biological, and autonomic with automatic. They’ve heard about the autonomic nervous system, but think it means most of our behaviour is automatic.

People still producing “But your loo at home is unisex!” as the ultimate gotcha. It doesn’t contain ten stalls with doors and walls open at top and bottom and it is not constantly visited by strangers, or – still worse – colleagues. Equally annoying are those who say “Language must evolve!” as if it had a mind of its own, every time an organisation removes the words “woman” and “mother” from its website/brochure/leaflet.

It looks as if academies can make up their own ways of disciplining children. The slightest thing becomes an “infringement” and if you collect too many you are isolated all day with only a sandwich for lunch. (Wasn’t it called “detention” in our day? I fear some parents love the idea.)

Narcissist now means “nasty person” and all nasty people are “narcissists”.
Who are the “neoliberals”? What is “neoliberalism” and why is it responsible for all society’s ills?

March 17
This week’s meme:
Well they all have mental health, don't they? No one uses the term mental illness, why don't they? People are getting away with literally murder because the words mental illness are not used. Crisis teams telling people to have a bath, a cup of tea or a walk. (@LizPeecock)

March 2024
doordash: Came out of nowhere. Bad because exploits delivery drivers. Disabled say “necessary”. Big row over why can’t they microwave?

Who is this Eckhart Tolle everyone is so crazy about? Sounds medieval but prob still alive and churning out “benign, self-congratulatory, soothing” mottoes. (Paul Fussell)

Late March kerfuffle about women protesting that the Garrick Club is still men-only. Today's trope: What does it matter if a club for influential people who run the country doesn’t include half the human race? (First women accepted a few months later.)

You have to pre-emptively condemn evil, or people will complain. They’re still complaining that headlines don’t read “SHOCK! HORROR!”

“Who hurt you?” tagged onto practically anything – a love of X, a hatred of Y, an interest in Z.

April 2024
This week nobody wants to work any more.

2024-04-13 Everything is “hard” this week. Things "go hard".

2024-04-17 Hey guys, it’s 2024 and Russia wants its empire back. (Not looking so sunny for Russia, December.)

The Cass Report is published. Everyone is suddenly an expert on research methodology. (@RedMags60. Because they don’t like its conclusions.)

Is “healing” something an injured party has to do? It’s just “get over it” in a new hat, isn’t it?

Qualia popular late May, no idea.

divisive: all-purpose boo word

Some Americans are terrified that Harris and Walz are “communists”. Harris wants equality! Walz is the descendant of German immigrants who have been communists for generations! Harris wants “equality of outcome” instead of “opportunity”.

emotional regulation

high trust, low trust

Percival Everett – where’d he come from?

Temu: an online marketplace operated by the Chinese e-commerce company PDD Holdings. It offers heavily discounted consumer goods mostly shipped to consumers directly from China. Went live in the States in 2022, says Wikipedia. Become a byword for terrible quality.

pickle ball: Tennis with ping pong bats?

received a cancer diagnosis: has cancer

2024-07-23
thug

Resilience – it was everywhere and now it’s gone.

agency (used to be autonomy)

hoovering: sucking you back into an abusive relationship.

“Beautiful” to many means “highly over-decorated”, or “I can’t imagine how they did it”. Horror vacui. If you want "engagement", post a picture of a fan vault.

September
Labour is already “Liebore”.

slop for AI output and more

Subaltern (progressive buzzword like carceral). Just used to mean subordinate or subsidiary but sounds good and keeping up with the cool crowd.

Late Oct
soft power

2024-12-07 This goes hard!
2024-12-09 Manifesto popular this week.

seed oils (all year)

More here, and links to the rest.