14 Things We Need To Let Go Of In 2014

1. GIFs

Does anyone even know how to say this? For two straight years I’d been pronouncing “GIF” like the things you get on Christmas morning only to find out recently that the G is soft and it’s supposed to sound more like the peanut butter brand. Now I’m living in complete denial, like when I found out my cat was a boy and not a girl after two years of having him and refused to switch his gender in my mind. I just can’t bring myself to pronounce it properly. Besides, GIFs were cute at first when they were only on sites like myfriendsaremarried, but now I feel like I need seizure medication just to open my homepage. If I wanted to be stuck in a perpetual state of Déjà vu, I would make it the time I crushed Billy Barnes in an arm wrestling match in the third grade and not Tina Fey being awkward in every possible scenario.

2. Saying “That moment when”

“That moment when you’re not in Oregon and you go to buy gas and realize you have to pump it yourself.” What?! I don’t live in Oregon and I don’t own a car, so I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. While I understand the general concept behind the “that moment when” quips, I feel like they’re heavily abused. The only thing that would make these hashtags mildly entertaining would be if they were obviously relatable, which they often aren’t. This leaves anyone who bothers with Twitter sifting through a sea of “moments” that have happened to other people that they have no idea how to interpret. It’s enough to make you put down your phone and go back to work.

3. Twerking

Not the actual act of twerking, but the incessant hype surrounding it. Or more just the word “twerking” itself. People act like shaking your ass is a revolutionary idea that only materialized within the last twelve months. However, anyone who’s spent any time in a second rate Tampa strip club in the nineties knows this isn’t true. “Twerking” has been around for ages, it’s just never had such a ridiculous moniker. Yet now that it does, every talk show host in the world can demand that their guests do some awful, watered down, kitschy version of it to get a rise out of the audience. It’s embarrassing for everyone involved, not to mention slightly disrespectful to the tried and true pioneers of the movement. This is what real twerking looks like. I’d like to see Bethenny put that on her morning show.

Speaking of which…

4. Bethenny

Bethenny’s had a good run. She was the only tolerable cast member of the original Real Housewives Of New York where in a world chock full of false sophistication and fabricated pedigree, you could always count on Bethenny’s rude antics and brash speech to cut the others down to size when they started to believe they were anything but reality TV stars. It was easy to root for her when she was building her empire of low calorie booze and stumbling through the perils of marriage and motherhood, even if her constant roller coaster of emotions did begin to wear a little thin at times. However, since being unemployed, I’ve found myself watching her self-titled talk show from behind pulled covers and through squinted eyes, as it’s so cringe worthy, it easily rivals Julia Stiles’ performance in Save The Last Dance. Not that I can blame her. If a major TV network was waving a million dollar check in front of my face with the stipulation that I had to be sassy (!), and “keep it real,” and not at all afraid to talk about sex, I’d probably do it too. But that doesn’t mean I have to watch. Yes Bethenny has had a good run, but I think her ride is over.

5. Kale

Kale is absolutely vile, yet for whatever reason, people can’t seem to get enough of it. I’m guilty. I’ll admit it. For the last year I’ve been downing kale in everything from juices, to salads, to chips, yet I’m not all together certain why. At some point, eating kale just became something we were all supposed to do and I’m sick of it. Now brussel sprouts are on the rise. You can’t go into a restaurant without seeing them prepared a hundred different ways and often in the company of some kind of cream sauce or pancetta, which to me, sort of defeats the purpose of eating a brussel sprout in the first place. How anyone could get this excited over something so healthy is beyond me. So I think it might be time to curb the kale frenzy. It’s a vegetable for Christ’s sake, not a cronut.

6. Cronuts

Can everyone just chill the fuck out about cronuts?

7. Saying “I just threw up in my mouth a little bit”

I can’t believe I’m even writing this in 2014. Zoolander was thirteen years ago! Yet saying “I just threw up in my mouth a little bit” is still, 100 percent, the go-to expression for communicating disgust. And it’s not just everyday, oblivious people who are guilty of it. Actual comedians on television and in movies, who should know better, are still spewing this tired old line. It blows my mind every time I hear it simply because I’m amazed that the person who said it isn’t embarrassed by what a stale, exhausted, and worn-out reference they just made. I’ll make you a deal. If we all agree to let this barfing business die, I’lI stop trying to bring back “slow your roll.”

8. Miley Cyrus

You need me to explain this?

9. Using A Sign To Beg For Likes And Shares On Facebook

No way! Your dad’s gonna buy you a puppy if you get a million likes on Facebook? Guess what? Your dad’s a dick for whoring you out to a world where your self worth is determined by the amount of clicks you get on a link you posted. Why didn’t he just ask you to clean your room or something, like a normal parent?

10. All Of These Words:

Totes, Obvie, Rando, Convo, Deets, Amaze, Cray, YOLO and any other stupid abbreviations that serve absolutely no purpose in life other than to annoy the shit out of the people who don’t say them. However, with all of the extra time the people who do say them save, you would think they might have gotten the types of jobs by now that don’t require their parents paying their rent.

11. Everyone Trying To Make Me Cry All The Time

I feel like I’m surrounded by emotional challenges. I get emails with subject lines that say “If this doesn’t make you cry, you have no soul.” I look on Facebook and see links to videos that tell me “If you’re not in tears by the end of this, you have no heart.” “You’re basically an android.” “There’s something WRONG with you.” Well maybe there’s something wrong with you! You ever think of that? After all, you’re the twisted asshole who keeps trying to turn me into a sloppy, weeping, mess on my living room floor with all of these horrendous faithit links! So just knock it off already!

12. Needing A Password To Order A Pizza

Seriously? I get that in the age of the internet identity theft is rampant. If I want to shop online, or make a reservation or leave a comment on a blog, I have to open several different accounts, which nearly always require passwords, so that no one may impersonate me whilst doing something as mundane as browsing iTunes. However, I went to order a pizza online the other day and was asked to create an account with very specific instructions as to what my password should contain. One upper case letter, one lower case letter, a numeral, an eye scan, a DNA sequence. I’m sorry, but are you fucking kidding me? Just who the hell is going to hack into the pizza mainframe and intercept my order?! Exactly how secure do my pizza preferences have to be? Because having to create a password to get one delivered, almost makes me willing to walk the sixty feet to the corner to pick it up…almost.

13. People Taking Pictures Of Themselves In Cars

Is there a more boring place to take a picture of yourself than in a car? Let me answer that for you: No. There isn’t. And telling me where you’re going (to dinner, the recording studio, on the way to your history final) doesn’t make it any better. It goes without saying that via the explosion of different forms of social media, people’s shameless self-indulgence is at an all time high, however the car selfie has got to be the worst offender in a vast ocean of unbridled conceit. Why? Because there is absolutely nothing of interest happening in a car. No landscape, no ambiance, no other people. So when someone takes a picture of themselves sitting in a car they are simply saying, loud and clear: Just. Look. At. Me. Well I have a better idea. How about you just look at the road?

14. Trying To Be Happy

Never have I seen so many young, privileged, people trying so hard to be happy. There are countless articles written about it, blogs named for it, workshops attending to it. Who ever said we’re supposed to be happy all the time, anyway? We’re not. And the pressure to do so might be what’s making us unhappy to begin with. It’s OK if you’re not completely content with your life twenty-four hours a day. Can you imagine what a boring person you’d be if you were? Going through shit storms, feeling uninspired, hating the way you look and having guilt over not accomplishing enough are just some of the things that make you interesting, relatable and human. Not to mention, if you’re reading this, then you have internet access and if you have internet access, it stands to reason that you have a computer, which makes me think you probably have a place to live, with electricity and plenty of food to eat and clean clothes to wear, which are all things that an enormous amount of people living on the planet today do not have. This is not to say that people shouldn’t strive to better their positions in life, however it seems like so many of us are no longer content with a regular amount of happy, yet dead-set on being maniacally jubilant, all of the time. If you really want to be happy, keep off of Facebook where it looks like everyone has more stuff and is always having a better time than you.