From Whence it Came
Internet round-up for 2024
Heads up: Substack is telling me this post is too long for email. I refuse to make cuts because that’s what self-editing is all about. You may need to come to the site, app, or click “view entire message” to see everything.
Hello hello, and happy Friday!
WE MADE IT, GANG! It is officially the last Friday of 2024. Next week, it’ll be 2025, and we can fully return this year from whence it came and move on to something, well, new. (And hopefully much, much better.)
I don’t know about y’all, but 2024 has tried my patience. While on the one hand, I have had some tremendous success professionally (I got my first day job as a writer!), and my husband and I have been in fairly good health, most of everything else I’d be more than happy to just flush directly down the toilet.
It’s been a long, difficult year, with a few little pops of surprisingly nice things throughout. I would like for next year to be the inverse — mostly nice things — and honestly, you know what? Maybe no difficult things. I’ve been through enough of those in the last couple of years. I deserve a break, honestly. We all do.
2025: the year of giving me a break. Or else. (I do not know what that threat represents at this time but I’ll figure something out.)
With all that said — let’s get this year recapped and outta here, shall we??
Predictions and Resolutions
In the very first TMI post of 2024, I shared Pinterest’s predictions for the year, as well as a couple of resolutions for myself.
Pinterest predicted “Be Jelly,” “Bow Stacking,” and “Cute Coins” as themes for the year. After living through the entirety of 2024, I can comfortably say that I still have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about. No jellyfish in fashion (though *I* correctly predicted the popularity of lips that look like they got stung by jellyfish), no major bow trends, and no stickers on money. Nice try, guys.
My personal resolution? I was determined to learn how to properly use chopsticks.
And the result? Well, I tried to do this for a few weeks. A friend suggested I try holding them a little bit differently, closer to how I hold a pencil (technically “wrong” but right for me personally). It definitely helped! And then I probably touched chopsticks less than 5 times throughout the year. I award myself no points for this attempt. I basically used Duolingo for 3 weeks. I am not fluent.
Billionaire Boy joy
This year, the billionaire boys have had a real one. Early on, I predicted Regular Dudes™ might give them a run for their money, but that didn’t last long:
Clive Palmer let us in on his plans to build Titanic II because he’s bored. Larry Connor said he wanted to go down and see the Titanic’s wreckage in a submarine (very original, Larry!) that he, a real estate developer, designed — forcing me to dig into my arsenal of images of deep sea freaks. Melanie Perkin thought it was cool to rap at the Canva conference. I found out about Martine Rothblatt and the body-less robot she made of her wife, BINA48.
We learned the details of Bryan Johnson’s erection calculator and his plans to create his own special city for people that don’t ever want to eat a slice of pizza or be happy in their lives. He also showed us a big bag of his plasma, broke his ankle, and had an fat-derived extracellular matrix injected into his face..
We also met BJ’s anti-aging competition, an equally damp but slightly more normal person named Dave Pascoe, who’s “biohacking on a budget,” and a dry, deceptively reasonable-seeming woman named Leslie Kenny who has spent tens of thousands of dollars on “intravenous immunoglobulin treatments.”
Finally, Mark Zuckerberg tried to rehab his image by wakeboarding in a tux, commissioning a gigantic statue of his wife, and recording an acoustic version of a rap song.
Rats forever
Rats had a pretty good year, too! They learned to drive, got jobs, enjoyed taking selfies, and were immortalized in a concrete Chicago shrine. Thrillist predicted Rat Tourism would be the hot new thing in travel, though if I’m honest, I haven’t seen enough of it.
RatTok pissed me off by spraying deterrents around our boys in grey. NYC made me envious by holding a rat summit and creating the Rat Pack. The also got their first trash cans. BUT: Chicago still took home the crown as America’s Rattiest City.
Most importantly: We had our own personal infestation and I caught the Dorito Thieves red-handed (er, pawed)! And speaking of animals in my personal space, we had a lot of pigeons around as well.
Brands X Brands
As usual, Brands™ continued to fully wild out.
Burger King forced their employees to hand out crowns and tell every diner “You rule.” Hidden Valley Ranch made Ranch dressing flavored chapstick. Fanatics made absolutely awful see-through baseball uniforms. 7-11 made hot dog-flavored sparkling water. Jordanluca made pants that look like they have pee on them. Magnum made menstrual-pad looking ice cream bars. Pringles did a collab with Crocs. McDonald’s released the Grandma McFlurry.
In one single week, Cinnabon put popping candy on their buns, Oreo and Coke Zero joined forces to make equally gross cookies and drinks, Liquid Death made ice cream water, and Krispy Kreme dunked their donuts in Dr Pepper.
Kraft made KFC flavored Mac ‘n’ Cheese (only in Canada). Capri Sun started selling their product in bottles and Dude Wipes made a “DUMPkin spice” ass napkin. Wicked promotion got so out of control there was pink and green macaroni. And Dunkin’ Donuts went absolutely feral with their Halloween Spider Donut.
Just 2024 things
Overall, the year was just a bastion of odd news.
Scientists found a bunch of horrifying sea life and gave mushrooms a robot body. A girl took her pet crawfish to Disney. Google ruined search by adding AI and then had to fix it manually. Two astronauts got stuck in space (THEY’RE STILL THERE.) A girl got a croissant-shaped lamp from Temu that was actually a croissant. We found out King Charles may have “shrieked” when he first saw plastic wrap. And honestly, how the hell do you even quantify the madness of the Glasgow Willy Wonka Experience?
Also, we saw Mike Tyson’s butt.
I read books
Look, am I truly ever going to meet whatever arbitrary goal I set for myself in Goodreads? Of course not. But here’s what I did read this year (affiliate links, duh):
Spoilers: Essays That Might Ruin Your Favorite Hollywood Movies
Lean the F*ck Out: How to Aim Lower, Get Less Done, and Find Your Happiness
Fleabag: The Special Edition (play script)
Animal cuties
Finally, 2024 marked the birth of Moo Deng (and Haggis)! We met the world’s most beautiful mountain lion and Pesto, the biggest fuzzy baby penguin boy (until his feathers started coming in, that is)! I got jealous because a woman had 100 raccoons at her house! And whales wore salmon hats and a dog climbed a pyramid!
I’ll close today with this image of my (still) favorite little hippo boy, Fritz (from the Cincinnati Zoo), whose expression exemplifies my feelings about 2024 finally coming to a close:
That’s it from me this week! I’d say “this year,” but you’ll be receiving my writing stats email on Monday, which will be the actual last time you’ll hear from me this year. But it’s already scheduled, so if anyone needs me, I’ll be hiding in a cave until 2025. Have a great rest of the year!
K
Your rat coverage brought me joy 😂 Happy New Year, Kelley! I need to get my hands on that Fleabag book....