I have historically been an extremely opinionated person, but, unexpectedly, aging and maturing have allowed me to loosen my grip on what I believe to be true and right and correct—not in a moral way, although those feelings are also changing as I get older, but mostly just opinions on things I like and dislike—and as a result I’ve gained the ability to be more understanding of other people’s opinions. That being said, I still have opinions, a lot of them, and I’ll be damned if I don’t share them online sometimes. My current, top-of-my-mind ins and outs of this exact moment of my life are as follows (and are subject to change depending on my mood at any moment):
In:
Charli xcx, obviously
finstas (but in a cool, not-sharing-everything-publicly-online way, not an I-was-in-college-in-2015 way)
telling people how you feel about them (this one is aspirational)
Desperate Housewives
artists releasing albums in full (without singles ahead of time)
saying “this is my favorite [thing]” about several things, which are all simultaneously my favorite thing
wired headphones
sending a friend something that made you think of them
spelling things correctly
Silence of the Lambs (1991)
taking photos of your friends when you think they look cute
low-effort hangouts (sitting in the same room in silence, watching a movie, etc)
Out:
AI, except on the extremely rare occasion that I need to use Photoshop’s generative fill tool, which is not often but man it does a pretty good job and it hurts me on a spiritual level
small talk about the weather
Twitter/X/whatever they’re calling it now, especially since they took away the ability to see what people liked, that was the literal only reason I got on that app I swear to god
those atrociously ugly Cybertrucks
keeping some things to yourself
singer-songwriters (this does not apply to my friends who fall into this category)
billionaires (sorry Taylor Swift, I still love you, can you Venmo me $8,000)
name-dropping
taking things personally
MJ Lenderman
caring about whether or not someone is a nepo baby
pretending to like something so someone thinks you’re cool
I don’t think any of these are offensive, but if you’re offended, maybe consider not being offended instead. Nothing matters, and I mean that in the least nihilistic way possible.
*In/out lists are not new or unique, but my extremely opinionated friend Jordan did one on his Substack that made me want to revisit the trend earlier than my usual yearly list.
I’m personally offended by MJ