Tag Archives: lists

Catalogue of The Lonely 2020s

Similar(ly) to my index of the Squelching 2020s, which recaps some of the worst trends of the decade, I wanted to start a list of …

I don’t know what to call this. It’s just a list of the moments in our era that have made me realize that many, many people are frustrated and depressed. Here are the things that are making us sad:

1. high-beam headlights aggravating other drivers (and contributing to accidents and road-rage)

2. medical administrators outnumbering hands-on medical professionals and nurses

3. nurses burning out and quitting their jobs to do multi-level marketing

4. people oversharing online — and I don’t mean XOJane essays

(I’m talking about people posting embarrassing videos of their kids for clout. Willobeigh doesn’t want you to post a YouTube video of her diaper blowout! Your ex-boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend doesn’t want you to post on Facebook about how her miscarriages gave you an idea for an essay about how to conquer your own jealousy. You don’t have to do this!)

5. posts on nearly every social network about people coming home and not having the energy to do anything besides cook dinner and take a shower — posts that are often written by young people

There are also memes about how “I’m going to spend the whole summer rotting in bed” or “the first thing I do when I get home from work is take off my bra and take a five-hour nap” — and when I see a 22-year-old writing sincere posts like this, I know that times are tough.

6. pressure to keep up with everyone else — without any satisfaction over where you’re at, because you’re always looking to accomplish something even more impressive

People aren’t satisfied with stability, either. They see that their friends are going on a cruise, so they have to go on a cruise. They see that their friend is taking Ozempic, so they have to try it, too. I think people should try new things, set goals, and all of that. But if you’re only doing it because you want to impress someone else, then you’re not doing it because you want to. You’re doing it to fit in and not be excluded. That sucks. ☹️

7. road rage — which seems to have worsened in the wake of the pandemic

8. (some) folks insisting that the pandemic is behind us, when we see the effects of it manifesting every single day

PTSD, Long COVID, isolation, trauma, depression, loneliness — all of these things are brutal, and these things can’t be swept under the rug so easily.

8. teachers burning out and quitting their jobs to stay at home and do multi-level marketing

9. twenty-four/seven news, twenty-four/seven shopping, twenty-four/seven social media — twenty-four/seven consumption

I’ll add more points as more things come to mind!

A Short List of Imaginary People Whose Lives Are Worth Pondering

1. a by-the-Book Protestant who never dances — but needs to learn an entire dance routine after being invited to participate in a Hindi friend’s wedding

2. a British person whose favorite Beyoncé song is “Partition”

3. a vampire who likes to eat at Subway, but the only type of bread they have ready is the Italian Herb loaf

4. a Crip who’s also a beekeeper

5. a Church of Christ member who’s secretly a super talented multi-instrumentalist

Authenticity

I’m making a list — and I’ve already checked it twice. Earlier this month, I mentioned that there are some people obsessed with proving that they’re “authentically country” or “authentically Appalachian” or “authentically Southern.”

If you’re authentically doing your thing, then you probably don’t need to take great pains prove yourself. I don’t feel like I have to flash my credentials, but if you’d like to see them:

  1. My mom’s mom’s mom’s family — the folks on my maternal side — were sharecroppers. They picked tobacco and corn under the blanket of humidity that smothers western Kentucky every spring and every summer.
  2. My mom’s dad was a cattle farmer. He wasn’t a rancher — he was a farmer, with a small-ish farm and a wood lot and a pond for the cows and the snakes.
  3. My mom’s dad’s dad and his family were sorghum farmers.
  4. My dad’s mom’s brother and his family were cattle dairy farmers. They had cattle, but they mostly did dairy operations. They milked cows all the time and all of that. My dad would go over to the farm and bale hay. My dad’s cousin — one of his favorite cousins, a man whom we all remember fondly — would muck the stalls and sing “It’s Such A Pretty World Today” while he was … tidying up.
  5. My dad’s dad had a tobacco patch, but he never planted again after coming up a nickel short on his crop. (He didn’t make a profit. He lost money on that enterprise, is what I’m trying to say — and he never planted another tobacco patch.)
  6. My dad’s dad was a miner. He ran a dragline and did above-ground strip mining in the Western Coal Fields.
  7. My dad’s dad’s dad could sharpen an ax finer than anyone else in the county. (I’d noticed that this was the kind of job you could do while sitting down, which suited him. He was a pretty … casual man. He would always weigh down his bushels of turnips with rocks before going to the market. That’s just … that’s just how he was.)
  8. My dad’s dad mended and tarred his own fishing nets. He loved to go fishing out on the Tennessee River.
  9. My dad’s dad’s dad was a bona fide alcoholic. He would get … a little bit happy and float down the river — mostly for fun, but also because he didn’t have a license or a vehicle.
  10. My dad’s dad was good friends with the local bootlegger.
  11. My dad’s dad’s dad’s uncle was the oldest living Union Army veteran in Kentucky.
  12. My dad’s mom’s brothers played the violin and the mandolin. The mandolin-player put out an album when he moved down to Arkansas. (He was also a long-haul truck driver. He was a cool guy.)
  13. My mom’s dad’s mom played the guitar. She was a tiny little woman — unlike me, a big-built gal — but she was apparently quite the entertainer.
  14. My mom’s mom — my beloved grandmother — was a hairdresser and a laundress and a housecleaner.
  15. My mom’s mom’s mom ran a hamburger stand and worked in a munitions factory and a clothing factory. She was the real deal. She was hard-working and objectively beautiful. I only inherited the first part, but … I’m glad to be like her, in some small way.
  16. My dad’s mom’s brother was a long-distance trucker. I only found this out years and years after he’d retired. (I guess I mentioned this earlier — but it deserves a separate mention!)
  17. My dad used to drive a dump truck, while we’re talking about big trucks.
  18. My dad’s mom’s brother was blinded in a spar mining accident.
  19. My mom’s mom’s mom’s brother’s wife was blinded when she got chemicals in her eyes while sharecropping.
  20. My mom’s mom’s mom’s brother was shot and killed on his own brother-in-law’s front porch.

The guy who wrote Hillbilly Elegy has nothing on me.

The Squelching ‘20s

“It suxx that I was born in 2047. I wish I’d been a 2020s kid!”

I want to preface this by saying that I’m not a bitter or mean person. Whenever someone says something like that, it generally means that they’re about to say something wildly cruel, ignorant, or insufferable.

I promise that this isn’t the case. (This time, anyhow.)

Let me start back at the beginning — that manufactured quote, about life in the 2020s — and life as it’s going to be perceived by future generations.

I try not to fall back on pessimism, but it’s safe to say that we’re living through some wild times right now. In spite of that, in twenty or thirty years, our kids (or our grandchildren, or perhaps even our great-grandchildren) are going to romanticize life in the ‘20s. 

But these are not the Roaring ‘20s. These are the Gasping ‘20s, the Sobbing ‘20s, the Squelching ‘20s.

Certain things have made life in the 2020s so … disconcerting. There are many lovely things happening right now that are worth celebrating — but there are plenty of trends that are less than swoon-worthy.

The same way that Millennials have cringed over photos of their Spandexed, bemulleted, and acid-washed ancestors? Generations Beta and Gamma will scream-laugh when they see an IG Reel featuring their grandpa’s gas-guzzling, vinyl-wrapped, Carolina-tilted Ford F-250 Super Duty. They will hoot and holler when they see their meemaw’s Shein dresses and Fashion Nova janties.

And I’m not a hater — I swear! After seeing The List — a compilation of the side effects of pregnancy, meticulously logged by a young TikTok user — I felt like I could do something similar. I wanted to start a catalog-slash-index of the worst trends/moments/crises of the 2020s.

And so I did.

Here’s a running list of things that have made the 2020s less than romantic:

  1. anti-intellectualism 
  2. artificial intelligence, misuse of
  3. cryptocurrency
  4. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization
  5. dogs inside restaurants
  6. facial-recognition technology, abuse of
  7. fast fashion 
  8. high-beam headlights
  9. hostile architecture 
  10. housing crises (mortgages, rent, and homelessness)
  11. hydraulic fracturing 
  12. inclement weather, higher frequency
  13. insurance ads, unfunny
  14. insurance companies, greed
  15. janties/jiapers
  16. low-rise jeans, revival of
  17. main character syndrome
  18. Marvel movies, ubiquity of
  19. mass shootings
  20. media illiteracy 
  21. monthly subscription services
  22. multi-level marketing schemes
  23. non-service animals, service vests on 
  24. opioid crisis
  25. over-the-shoe bodysuits
  26. pandemics
  27. pivot-to-video
  28. plastic, single-use 
  29. politicians, authoritarian 
  30. price gouging
  31. public health crises
    1. See pandemics and opioid crisis.
  32. push notifications 
  33. road rage, increasing 
  34. Shein
    1. See fast fashion.
  35. side hustles
  36. spam callers/text messages
  37. streaming services, enshittification of 
  38. SUVs, increasingly large
  39. tip creep, self-service checkouts and
  40. tornadoes and tropical storms, increasing prevalence of
  41. Twitter, downfall of
  42. vaccine denial
  43. vindictive landlords/AirBnB hosts
  44. wage gaps

I believe that the only way we’ll be able to counteract the worst of this stuff is by talking about it, so … let’s not sweep it under the rug. Let’s acknowledge it. Let’s talk about it.

And in the meantime, I’ll keep adding more entries to this list.