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Someone Asks What Current Trend Will Be The Most Regrettable 20 Years From Now, And 35 People Don’t Hold Back
Things are changing so quickly that it’s hard to keep up! As the world becomes more and more interconnected, we become aware of all the ways that the rest of the world lives. Trends that might have been fated to stay local a few decades ago now go viral and spread around the globe, powered by social media and the news.
However, much of what we take for granted these days might not stand the test of time. The future might be radically different, and people living years from now might look back at 2022 with a lot of confusion (and probably judgment) about how we did things.
Internet users shared their thoughts about what trends will be the most regrettable in 20 years’ time in an interesting r/AskReddit thread, and we’re bringing you their best insights to get your noggins jogging. From gender reveal parties to denying climate change, some trends are pretty darn bad. As you’re reading, have a think about what fads and ideas you think will go the way of the dodo (i.e. extinct) in the near future, Pandas, and share your thoughts in the comments.
Pop culture and lifestyle expert Mike Sington, from LA, was kind enough to share his thoughts on current trends, what's here to stay, what will (hopefully!) go away, and how the people of the future might react to the fads of 2022. Check out Bored Panda's full interview with him.
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Taking away women’s body autonomy. We will all pay for this.
Bored Panda asked pop culture expert Mike which current trends, in his opinion, probably won't stand the test of time. "Sharing personal photos of yourself, your life, your family, and especially your children will probably seem very peculiar in a couple of decades," he told us.
"People just now are becoming increasingly concerned about privacy on the internet, and it will be odd in the future to look back and see how much of ourselves we used to willingly share," Mike mused that, in the future, privacy will likely be a much greater concern than now.
Electing people to public office who have zero qualifications because they’re famous for some bullshit.
It also doesn't appear to be just about celebrity status. It's how much money you have and can afford to throw at a campaign. So the "average Joe" who actually might make a bloody good leader is unlikely to ever be in the runnings.
In the pop culture expert's opinion, no matter how much time passes, humor is "here to stay."
"Funny thoughts, anecdotes, and memes are popular now, and will have staying power on the internet. People often go online for escapism, and humor has always provided that. I don’t foresee that changing," he said that humor itself is timeless. People will always want (and need!) to have a good laugh.
Meanwhile, we were curious to figure out how to tell if something's a long-term trend or just a passing fad that'll go away in just a few years or even months.
"If something becomes popular quickly and seems to come out of nowhere, it’s more likely to be a passing fad," Mike, Hollywood's Ultimate Insider, shared his thoughts with Bored Panda.
Gender reveal parties and promposals
Good lord it seems they get more ridiculous every week. This s**t needs to go.
I hope: mommy bloggers who post constant pics and details of their children. Robbing children of privacy for likes and money is sickening.
Don’t even get me started on ones with sick kids…
Cruel pranks on strangers for views
It absolutely infuriates me to see these, "its a prank bro". No it isn't, it's harassment.
"Long-term trends with staying power seem to build more slowly, but at a steady pace. Be careful of jumping on the 'bandwagon' yourself, just because something is popular in the moment. That’s the scenario that’s most likely to haunt you in the future," he shared.
"Oh, and gender reveal parties? Get rid of them. Let me break it to you- no one cares what the sex of your child is, except you," Mike said, and we wholeheartedly agree.
Predicting the future is never easy. It can be done, but it’s never going to be close to 100% accurate. Well, not until we develop genuine AIs that can take into account trillions of different factors and how they play off each other and connect into a dynamic, ever-shifting whole, but that probably won’t happen for quite some time yet. (But if it already has, Skynet, we love you, please don’t punish us for liking social media so much!)
Mommy needs a drink and mommy wine culture — I hate this BS of normalizing alcoholism and these 'Poor me, my suburbia life is so rough, I can’t make it without wine o’clock.' Huge eye roll.
Climate change denial.
Global warming is one of those problems that we won't truly recognise until the damage has already been done. We are reaching that point.
In twenty years there will no longer be a façade.
I would argue that we have already reached that point as significant portions of humanity are just stupid to realise what is happening and what needs to be done. We needed action 30 years ago. My son is 14 and what world is he going to experience, his kids, their kids? It deeply saddens me.
Social Media.
It has negatively affected mental health, caused irreparable damage to grammar and the English language as a whole, produced multiple generations of narcissists.
Social media has its place. I use it to keep in touch with friends and family who are all now 5000 miles away since I moved to Spain. I also use it to keep track of goings on and available services in my area here where I moved. What I DON'T use it for is a daily ego boost or "influencer" platform. It's all in how you view social media. For me it's a tool.
Aaron Genest, from Siemens Software, explained to Bored Panda that we can get a good idea of what the future might hold, what technologies will be around, by looking ‘upstream’ in the investment space.
"For instance, it takes almost two years to develop and produce a computer chip and get it to market for a phone, and five years to get something into a new kind of car. So if we want to have a sense for what, for instance, the gadgets in our cars will look like in 2026, we just need to look at what the car manufacturers are asking their suppliers to design today,” he explained to Bored Panda earlier.
According to the tech specialist, industries that invest billions of dollars into particular technologies, e.g. 5G or particular chips, will want to recoup their investments. So it’s likely that the things they invested in will, at least in part, play some sort of role in the future of tech.
Eyelashes so fake they look like spiders.
Single use plastics
But.... straws 😢 I know some people won't be happy with this. I don't like excessive use of plastic either and try to avoid it. But paper straws are just gross, there's no other way for me to describe it. I need a better alternative :/
Filming everything you do. I was born in the late 1980s and this is just so weird to me since I grew up in an era of film cameras where every shot counted. It's so bizarre seeing some of my coworkers in their twenties film an average workday at the office like it's some sort of tourist attraction. Why would you do this?
Meanwhile, Ramona Pringle, from the Creative Innovation Studio at Ryerson University revealed to Bored Panda some time ago that while we don’t know for sure what the future will hold, we can count on some trends to keep going strong: “We love stories, and we love to be part of something bigger than ourselves. Be it oral storytelling, books, blogs, movies, or video games, we’ve never lost our love of narrative.”
According to the expert, people will always look for ways to be together, to be connected to one another. We long for communal experiences, whether in concert halls, being entertained in giant arenas, or remotely.
“Immersion and interactivity have long been goals for creators and media makers when it comes to how technology can influence entertainment,” Ramona told us.
Subscription-based everything. You can't own SHIT these days. Everything is a matter of 'You can have access to this thing, but only so long as you give us some money per month.'
"And we have the ability to add or remove it from the collection at our leisure, so hopefully you want it when we do."
The amount of people that drive full size trucks around is ridiculous. At least 90% of them could live just fine with a little 4 door hatchback. It's sad to think about all of the millions of gallons of fuel that has been wasted by those idiots.
Not sure why but I reckon vaping will prove to be a major health problem in a couple decades.
“For the last decade, we’ve leaned into virtual reality because of how it enables both of these. We can step inside a world and have influence over it, and the story or experience that unfolds. I think one of the things we can expect moving forward is, in a sense, the opposite of virtual reality. Instead, more of an enhanced reality or fictional reality, wherein the entertainment isn’t in a headset, but instead, all around us.”
She stressed that a decade ago, people didn’t talk to robots and now many of us do. “Siri and Alexa are some of the more common bots, but we already interface with non-human characters regularly. As technology advances, including augmented reality and mixed reality, I think we can expect that entertainment will be something we can engage with off of the screen, but out in the world, with characters and stories we can engage with throughout the day, or throughout our houses.” So while some fundamental things that people care about will remain the same, the way that we interact with the world—and each other!—can change incredibly rapidly.
Political polarization in America. I see either civil war or an authoritarian government taking over in the next 20 years.
I hate how there are blue vs red states. A friend of mine had to move because her parents wanted to live in a red state. It was a rude awakening. We really aren't United after all.
As someone living on the other side of the world (and a completely different hemisphere) I believe the USA will implode and become a very unsafe, almost third world country. And I lay the blame at the feet of the people who voted for the last president who demonstrated that you can be a bigot, sexual predator and liar, and STILL hold the highest office in the world.
Unfortunately our system is rigged more and more to prevent the majority of voters' voices from being heard. In presidential elections especially, if maps are drawn such that the majority of districts go to one candidate, that candidate will win the state and only votes for him count on the national level. All the other votes are thrown away. They'll go to the popular vote, but the popular vote doesn't count for anything. It makes it really hard to change things by voting. FYI, I'm speaking from a US state that has chosen to use an illegal map rigged for a republican win for our next election. The state and federal courts know about it, declared it illegal, and refused to have it changed before the election. It's not a guarantee that a republican will win of course, but it will be much harder for anyone not in their party.
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I hope for a middle of the road politician to rise up from the left or right to put an end to this us vs them mentality.
The politicians themselves won't let it happen. They're the ones who keep the populace raging at each other in the first place and as long as the populace is raging at each other they will never recognize middle of the road politics and politicians.
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If it happens, it will be without precedent because the boundaries are not geographical as much as rural Vs. Urban, and we all live next door to people with opposite political beliefs. What really worries me is the absolute disregard for democratic norms and the legalized corruption of US politicians.
Nope. Political polarization is a sneaky ploy to keep the masses distracted while the ruling class do whatever the eff they want to become richer and more powerful.
Yes, and every once in a while, those divides erupt in hugely destructive conflict.
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The USA is like watching the most talented athlete on the team die of a drug overdose
Nah it's been like watching a toddler have a major tantrum in a store, like tearing up shelves, throwing things and running around screaming like a banshee, and the parent shouting at everyone "STOP JUDGING US. HE'S GOT AUTISM. HE CAN'T HELP IT." It really is.
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News and Social Media are such a huge driver of this. So many people I know lean one way or another but can listen to the other sides ideas or at least have an understanding of why people feel a certain way. But so many news stories just amplify the worst elements on Twitter, or just have a clickbait title and then ten tweets from random people who agree with the title. I don't care what side you're on, our news is a bunch of click whores looking to sell ads for the next pharmaceutical garbage drug to come out
I started seeing this about 8ish years ago and was hoping that I'd be near death or dead (at first I was pinning it to about 50 years) by the time it got this bad. Unfortunately the mindset of the American public shifted in such a negative way in the last few years that I'm now worried that it will happen in 20 years or less.
The US was founded with a fundamental flaw that took four score and seven years and hundreds of thousands of lives to rectify (and it's still not really rectified). And those cracks have ever been present in our nation and they open up from time to time, without true resolution.
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My hope is that cooler heads will prevail, will pull us back from that precipice, and make the pendulum swing away from stupid and back toward reason.
The US needs proportional representation. Badly. It's one of only 4 democracies that uses 'winner take all' elections, which leaves many areas grossly under represented. It's possible to get only 10% of votes but 100% of the representation in an area (since there's only 1 winner). No wonder people are pissed.
Wait'll the MAGA goons find out the hard way that "libs" own guns too.
If Trump is able to run and if he loses I am absolutely sure there will be a full on Civil War in the US. I'd be VERY surprised if the current administration isn't planning for this and that organisations like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys are now organising themselves for that too. Unfortunately in the US getting weapons of war is easy and the Oath Keepers are trained professionals. I think the police force might be part of this war and that parts of the army will side with them..
80K+ IRS agents is an army. Wonder who they will go after? Perhaps 80K border patrol agents would be money better well spent?
Civil war.... Trump planted the seed for that and it's quickly coming to bloom... Thing is that so many people were brainwashed by his talk, it was like giving candy to a baby, so easy. T knew exactly what a group of people wanted to hear and gave the words to them. Whenever things went sideways, he shifted the blame to anybody but himself, fired who wouldn't comply and hired the ones that would. It's hard to stop the brainwash he still has over people... Now it's becoming a political fight that is almost inevitably leading to total chaos that can possibly lead to a civil war, so so very sad for all the ones involved :(
One of the funny things that I've assessed is that America has been "scared" of terrorists cells like ISIS since at least the 90's. However, what most people fail to realize is that there is an extremely present and growing domestic threat (the far-right) that has grown almost unphased in the US, and that is a MUCH greater problem than ISIS ever was or will be (plus when was the last time we heard from ISIS??). Authoritarian rules are already weaving themselves aplenty in the states (just look at all the new laws against abortion and women's autonomy they've been passing). It's only a matter of time before the USA is full on fascist.
For once I'm quite pleased that I won't be around to see it. I do feel anxious for my grandkids however.
I'm hoping the west coast will, peacefully, secede from the Union. We (West Coast) will be happy and, certainly, Mid-West will be happy to not deal with us. Civil War will be extremely stupid. Nothing will be solved by any such violence.
As long as citizens still have the right to bear arms no authoritative government will take over. The founding fathers knew even then government should work FOR the people and if it doesn't having the right to bear arms gives the citizens what is needed to create militias, revolt and overthrow the government.
Speaking about the US (sorry should have added that first)
Load More Replies... The country is on economic collapse and Republicans did nothing and the democrats made it worse. Good ol' merica.
Please make it civil war. The fewer idiot Americans with guns the better.
“I hope the people in this country kill each other, because I’m a raging xenophobe”
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Too much plastic surgery, fillers and Botox on young people.
And on people who are already lovely (does smh mean shaking my head, if so, smh)
Not taking COVID seriously. I think the number of long-term health issues that will result from COVID is going to be huge.
Minimalist everything. Every house, closet, and restaurant looks the same now. In 20 years, it’s all going to change because we’ll all be bored.
I have so many stupid little trinkets around my house. Sometimes my inner minimalist wants to trash them to make cleaning easier, but then the room looks so naked.
Facebook has explicitly encouraged its users to break down privacy barriers between different aspects of their life, e.g. work, school, and family. This is not a theoretical effect but an intentional one; Zuck has explicitly said that in his view, people who maintain boundaries between different parts of their life "lack integrity" and that it's Facebook's goal to promote "integrity" in this specific sense.
This is deeply dysfunctional.
It's *normal* to have different social contexts in which you present yourself differently. That's how humans have always been, ever since we invented huts and can go inside a hut and be private with someone.
Boundaries between different parts of your life are healthy. You get to decide who's allowed in your hut. Tearing down someone else's boundaries is a hostile act, not a friendly one. (LGBT+ people know this regarding "outing" someone without their consent.)
It should be up to *you* to decide when you feel safe to bring down certain boundaries, e.g. to come out to your family as gay, to tell your coworker about your religious beliefs, or the like.
Facebook is an institution that sees its purpose as including tearing down people's boundaries. That's a problem.
It was so nice back in the days when your friends and family couldn't follow you to work and visa versa
The scaremongering about trans people
Ugh, yes. Can't we just let others be? If they're happy and they're not hurting anyone, why do people have to take offense?
Veneers. People are LITERALLY sawing down their teeth for pictures and likes.
…or maybe to help their own self esteem or confidence? Not everyone is social media obsessed. My husband has two because he was really uncomfortable with issues he’s had since youth. And yet, he he doesn’t have an account on a single social media site, go figure. 🙄
Letting companies freely track our online behaviors
(edit: moved this from a reply to a comment) @Anna Banana, my wife works in IT security and I work at a place that studies this stuff. It is a bigger deal than you are articulating. It is telling when the professionals who work in network security keep as much of their life offline as possible. 15 years ago, when a company contact balked at including his work email in a registration because of what he knew from his time in the NSA, I thought he was just overreacting. Now, I understand.
posting about almost every aspect of your life on social media. I posted some pretty cringe s**t as a kid that is still floating around somewhere, and that was before social media became big. I can't imagine what it's going to be like now
When I was a kid, I’m 60 now, I yearned for a life where I could be someone else. Now, with the internet, I can see how dangerous that would have been. I feel so sorry for people who’s persona is created entirely by what they can cultivate, manipulate, and then present to the world as who they are.
A lot of parenting and schooling trends will change. Just look at now vs 20 years ago.
Gentle parenting is big right now. The idea is fine but it leads to permissive parenting in most of the cases I worked with in daycare and as a nanny.
Not telling children “no” like ever. Not letting them fail. It’s going to lead to a lot of anxiety and stress in future children when things don’t go great.
Although it’s been getting better I still think the amount of homework some kids get is ridiculous. Specially younger children. I nanny a 4 year old. She’s still in pull ups and learning how to wipe. She doesn’t need homework from preschool.
I believe that homework is just a failure of the educational system. Kids already spend 40h in school. They should have minimal homework or none. Imagine if most adult people needed to work 40h plus every evening and part of the weekends for free. Unpaid overtime is a problem in adults but nobody realises that thats what the schools are forcing on children as well
The destruction of public education (squeezing and outright sabotage of public schools, prohibitive costs for secondary education). The normalization of being undereducated either through apathy or because of forces outside your control. The idea that opinion is equal to fact and that sticking to your original viewpoint is heroic. "Yeah, your studies may say that, but this is how I FEEL about it" and similar arguments.
The reason we are no longer a minor species of omnivorous hunter-gatherers is our ability to pass along knowledge to others. Each generation building on the achievements of prior generations is the path to progress in health, quality of life, equality, production and so much more.
Worse yet, technology now is at a level where if the masses are uneducated, they are also powerless. Small groups of people with specific knowledge have become outrageously powerful and this gap in individual power will only get worse with advances in fields like AI and robotics. If we allow whole generations to grow up undereducated, it will be very difficult for them to understand and affect their world. I feel the exponential growth of wealth gaps across the world is a symptom of this deliberate enforced ignorance.
I think people are just starting to regret naming their kids Danerys and Sansa.
In the future, all of the trans hate laws that are passing right now are going to be viewed the way people of today view Jim Crow laws.
Letting people under the age of 18 use social media.
That's never going to change nor is it going to be a "regrettable" trend because it's been a thing for as long as social media has been around. 20 years ago we were chatting on message boards, 15 years ago we were all on facebook, 10 years ago everyone was on twitter...all that's going to change is who dominates what platform.
Nearly all NFTs. Cash grab riding the hype of the 'underlying technology.'
Cryptocurrency will be known as a 21st century gold rush
Vaping at a young age. Studies are already coming out on the dangers of vaping in the short term. I can't imagine what will be shown with long term studies.
House/furniture/thrift items being flipped for a profit.
1. The amount of failed flips I see online is ridiculous. Cut corners, trendy designs, and sub par work done by people who sometimes have no previous background. In 20 years flipped houses will be the new "why did they cover the wood floor in vynil, and why did they carpet the bathroom," just on a much bigger scale.
2. Furniture and clothes from thrift stores or places like FB Marketplace are becoming ridiculously overpriced. Everyone assumes that you're a reseller and you wanna take their $30 coffee table and slap some black paint on it and try to resell it for $300. Walking into a thrift store and trying to find some affordable cute clothes? Nice try, we know you're just gonna sell it online so what used to be a $3 shirt is now $15!
Its ridiculous. It's not sustainable when used or flipped items cost almost as much as new ones.
However I you can upgrade a worthless product and put it back on the marked in a state where it is actually useful for someone, I think it is a great idea. That is a much better solution, than constantly producing more and more stuff. So if you put in the effort of sanding down and painting an old item, why shouldn't you be allowed to sell it at a profit? You put in work, and I think that is worth paying for.
The men's broccoli top haircut. I've heard it referred to as the "f**k boy" cut.
Note: this post originally had 40 images. It’s been shortened to the top 35 images based on user votes.
I get that these are all very important topics, but when I saw the word "trend" I hoped this was a fun post about obnoxiously large eyebrows, wealthy TV idiots, and tiktoks.
- the cult-like worship of a certain orange real estate developer and former president..... also - the obsessive attention paid to any Hollywood celebrity
WHY HAS NO-ONE MENTIONED MASSIVE ASSES?! Oh how I'm gonna laugh when all those kardashian wannabes go back to surgery to get it all sucked back out again hahaha
#41: Bored Panda arbitrarily truncating threads with 50 or fewer entries
I have a feeling magazines and printed newspapers are going to be a thing of the past. I'm surprised so many still exist today.
People still like to hold it physically in their hands.
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I do get nicotine cravings. Should quit cold turkey. But I've found one inhale on an ecig lasts the same vs one full cigarette is a great trade off.
E-cigs and vapes are healthier than cigarettes. The problem seems to be that people took that to mean "E-cigs are healthy" which is not true. They are fantastic alternatives for people wanting to ditch or reduce a smoking habit, but it's not a habit a non-smoker should be taking up.
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#20: Social media has blurred the lines between personal and professional. Here's a ridiculous thing I run into: I work as a journalist. The trolls have told me that it's inappropriate for me to share my personal opinions because journalists are supposed to be neutral. In every aspect of my life? I think not. I'm not talking to you in my capacity as a journalist 24/7.
I get that these are all very important topics, but when I saw the word "trend" I hoped this was a fun post about obnoxiously large eyebrows, wealthy TV idiots, and tiktoks.
- the cult-like worship of a certain orange real estate developer and former president..... also - the obsessive attention paid to any Hollywood celebrity
WHY HAS NO-ONE MENTIONED MASSIVE ASSES?! Oh how I'm gonna laugh when all those kardashian wannabes go back to surgery to get it all sucked back out again hahaha
#41: Bored Panda arbitrarily truncating threads with 50 or fewer entries
I have a feeling magazines and printed newspapers are going to be a thing of the past. I'm surprised so many still exist today.
People still like to hold it physically in their hands.
Load More Replies... I do get nicotine cravings. Should quit cold turkey. But I've found one inhale on an ecig lasts the same vs one full cigarette is a great trade off.
E-cigs and vapes are healthier than cigarettes. The problem seems to be that people took that to mean "E-cigs are healthy" which is not true. They are fantastic alternatives for people wanting to ditch or reduce a smoking habit, but it's not a habit a non-smoker should be taking up.
Load More Replies... #20: Social media has blurred the lines between personal and professional. Here's a ridiculous thing I run into: I work as a journalist. The trolls have told me that it's inappropriate for me to share my personal opinions because journalists are supposed to be neutral. In every aspect of my life? I think not. I'm not talking to you in my capacity as a journalist 24/7.
