10 “Normal” Things We’ll Be Embarrassed Of By 2024

1. Humblebraggy Facebook statuses.

Right now, they seem normal. You just located a job after ten months of endless resume-sending. It’s only right to log onto Facebook, crack your knuckles triumphantly, and whip up a status along these lines:

“Just found out that I finally got my dream job, and I had planned to take the day off to celebrate, but I ended up cleaning my apartment, helping a friend write their cover letter, and cooking myself a HUGE dinner. Guess I have to pay it forward! #BackOnMyGrind”

And yes, these are also the people who often put hashtags in Facebook statuses because ???. But regardless, these kinds of statuses are going to be the first to look ridiculous once we’ve collectively gotten over the “every life event must accumulate 500 likes via false humility/self-martyring” era of humanity. We’ll all be back to saying things like “Just got a job doing X and I’m really excited about it! Thanks for your support, everyone :)”

2. Struggle filters.

Sometimes you just see those photos where you KNOW the picture was a hot, hot, sizzling mess before the addition of several filters, and perhaps some judicious cropping. But soon enough we’ll all be aware of the tricks of the trade, and even children will be using Instagram, and people will have enough rightful shame not to share the truly unflattering selfies that need to go through triage in order to be posted.

3. Photobooth selfies.

Occasionally, when your hair is just so on point that it must be documented at all costs, a Photobooth selfie is understandable. But as someone who didn’t have a smartphone for the longest time, and had to live and die by the grainy, limited Photobooth selfie, let me tell you that it’s a look that does not age well — particularly when you try all the novelty options, where you can make yourself kiss your mirror image. I think we all have an album or two of misguided Photobooth shots on our 2007 Facebooks, and it’s an era that does not need to be repeated.

4. The eCig phenomenon.

I know that they’re technically better than regular cigarettes, but there’s just something so goofy and hilarious about them. And besides, now that suburban moms are getting all kinds of flavors for their sparkly pink vapes, we know it’s just a matter of time before the teenagers are sucking down unfiltered Luckies to get as far away from their parents, culturally speaking, as possible.

5. Ombre.

The response we will have in ten years looking back on pictures of ombre hair will be the same response our mothers have when looking back at their crispy 80s Jersey mall bangs. It’s a chic look today that will soon rob us of our “maybe-it’s-intentional-maybe-its-out-of-control-roots” dignity.

6. The iPhone vs Android battle.

There are real human beings who pay taxes and exchange their services with an employer for actual money who are putting things like #TeamiPhone on their Twitter bios. This is a cultural phenomenon for which the judgment of time will be cruel. (And besides, our children will all be communicating via Google Glass, where they just blink in morse code at one another or something.)

7. Corporate hashtags.

Frankly, I think they’re already pretty embarrassing as it stands. But hopefully pretty soon the idea of the internal marketing team at Febreeze coming up with some “viral” hashtag along the lines of #FeelinBreezy or #2Clean4U will be seen as the abomination that it is. No one needs to be watching a Charmin commercial and immediately take to Twitter to talk about #MyWipingSaga. It’s just a bad look.

8. Fitspo.

Perhaps I’m an optimist, but I’d like to think that within the decade, we will have gotten to a point as a society where a general state healthiness is considered a norm, and not relegated to the most basic tag on Instagram. And hopefully, in that time, the idea of representing “health” by showing pictures of Kylie Jenner with a full head of makeup and extensions, posing in front of her mirror in a bikini and Louboutins while making a duck face and a peace sign will be considered passé. Fitspo will just be life, and not a heavily-filtered picture of a bowl of greek yogurt with cut up kiwis on top of it.

9. Tumblr speak.

Let’s all close our eyes and collectively hope that, within ten years, the idea of an adult (or even a teenage recluse, as tends to be the demo on Tumblr) responding to something with “This!” “I cannot even” “im dYING” or three paragraphs of hashtags will be considered unacceptable. And also someone will go back in time and stop Supernatural from ever being made, so we won’t have to suffer the endless GIFs or the slash fiction conspiracy theories.

10. Endless amounts of baby photos.

Right now, these babies are voiceless, puffy “like”-machines. They have no say in the matter, and we can’t tell if they are personally mortified at the idea of having several hundred photos of themselves in varying states of undress on their parents’ Facebooks before they can even walk. But one day these children will be old enough to protest, and hopefully they will, and we will all look back on the era of Taking Your Childs Innocence Via Social Media with great embarrassment. Hopefully. Thought Catalog Logo Mark

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Chelsea Fagan founded the blog The Financial Diet. She is on Twitter.

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