Andrew / December 21, 2009 12:08 AM

Worst fad: Snuggies. Seriously, when you can buy a Snuggie for your dog, it's over.

JP / December 21, 2009 12:57 PM

layoffs

Guy Smiley / December 21, 2009 1:29 PM

Worst: "Tea parties". Bacon. Cupcakes. Skinny jeans. Chefs trying to elevate "street food". Athletes "tweeting" everything. The overabundance of camp. City assets being sold.

Best: Everybody being broke at the same time. We're all a little closer for it.

Kit10 / December 21, 2009 2:11 PM

Worst:
* Apps (Am I the only one who misses the days when phones were just phones?).
* Uggs (This wouldn't be so bad if not for the fact that 9 of 10 girls are wearing them daily, even if it is 60 degrees outside).
* Giving everything and everyone consolidated, Newspeak-style nicknames (Ex. Brangelina, Barachelle, Cockapoo)
* Celebrities giving their babies dumb names (Ex. Blakesley, Atlas, Ikhyd, etc)

As previously mentioned, bacon, skinny jeans and Snuggies need to go too.

Guy Smiley / December 21, 2009 2:19 PM

BTW, I realize that not all of those things I mentioned are exclusive to 2009 but they became more or less insufferable to me this year.

Rich / December 21, 2009 2:27 PM

Best Fad: Snuggies. I love mine! Use it every night. Love it!

Worst Fad: People hating on Snuggies.

CVAL / December 21, 2009 2:42 PM

Worst fad: Horrible reality shows that reduce the human condition to reprehensible conduct, i.e: "Tool Academy", "Jersey Shore", "For the Love of Ray-J"; for the love of God please stop!!!!

Best fad (though short lived): Hope that things will eventually get better with the Obama administration :(

kelly / December 21, 2009 3:54 PM

vampires.

W C / December 21, 2009 4:14 PM

The Kurdi gypsy pants. Seriously, ladies? Seriously?

Milosz / December 21, 2009 6:38 PM

Worst:
(1) Twitter
(2) Kindles
(3) 3d computer animation
(4) super low rise trousers for men
(5) Pugs and other rat sized in-bred freaks of controlled breeding that might once have been dogs
(6) Over sized sun glasses that make girls look like fruit flys

Best:
(1) Utility Bicycles
(2) the return of the Fiat 500 to North America
(3) Public Libraries
(4) Pork Products (except as desert)
(5) Perry Mason-mania
(6) Robots

Guy Smiley / December 22, 2009 9:27 AM

Forgot some:
Zombies. Car drivers who hate on bikers. Bikers who hate on cars. Those single-gear, no brake bikes ridden by people who don't know how to ride them. Yelp fighting. The overuse of the word "hipster". People who say the word hipster should die because they claim such people don't exist (they do). Cable "news" stations relying on Twitter and Facebook for tips and video (do your own damn work). People and entities who ask others to "follow us on Twitter/Facebook" (do I really need to follow Tom Skilling on Twitter? Do I really need to be Empire Carpets' Facebook friend?)

I'll probably think of more later.

annie / December 22, 2009 10:37 AM

Grown women in little girl rain boots. I don't know what those are called but I hope I don't see any this spring.

I second zombies.

And putting poached eggs on everything.

TRA / December 22, 2009 10:40 AM

Wait - bacon is a fad?

Guy Smiley / December 22, 2009 10:53 AM

TRA

I should have specified. BACON is not the fad, sticking it in everything under the sun is.

Carlotta / December 22, 2009 12:02 PM

The continued proliferation of high-end hamburger joints. How many ground meat emporia do we need, for cryin' out loud!

Cheryl / December 22, 2009 3:12 PM

Facebook. There's reasons I don't talk to many people I used to know.

Greg / December 22, 2009 7:37 PM

Twitter
hot vampires
twitting (and yeah, it's "twitting") about hot vampires
hot vampires twitting

spence / December 23, 2009 7:49 AM

Bad: -Proliferation of HDR in photography. -Overuse of hyper-digitized voice manipulation in music.

Good:
-People remembering what's important in life. A return to moderation, if you will. I hope it's not a fad.

Helen / December 23, 2009 8:15 AM

Someone bought me a Snuggie as a joke when I had surgery, because they knew I hated Snuggie. Turns out the dang thing is very soft and pleasant. I don't wear it as a robe, but I do drape it over my feet, and sometimes over my pillow, which makes it very snuggly. Strange but true. Can't hate on the Snuggie, just the commercials.

Helen / December 23, 2009 8:21 AM

Worst: I would like to enter a cave and not come out until HDR photography goes away. Honestly people, clicking a couple of Filters in Photoshop does not make you a good photographer. Yuck.

Cliff / December 23, 2009 9:05 AM

Fuckin' Ed Hardy's crappy tattoo flash and signature on every goddamned thing.

Cliff / December 23, 2009 9:08 AM

Okay. That may have been me railing on Ed Hardy too much, when it's really Christian "I'm hip to the street" Audigier ripping him off as much as he ripped of Von Dutch a couple of years ago.

Fuckin' vulture.

mike / December 23, 2009 2:30 PM

Tight pants on dudes.

Seriously guys, enough, it's just weird and I don't see how you get any circulation going.

Guy Smiley / December 23, 2009 4:24 PM

Wow, it seems more people are attuned to bad fads than good ones. So I'll add a couple more.

Birthers. Threadless wannabes. People walking down the street and texting when their heads down. People driving down the street and texting with their heads down. The Bears sucking.

Carrie / December 23, 2009 11:46 PM

Bad:
for guys-- too much hair gel
for everyone-- Ed Hardy... Christian blah blah. Really, you're going to wear a coat with his name plastered on it AND your pants will have his name on the butt?? You know you're just paying to advertise for him, right? (sorry, just saw this outfit about 2 days ago)

And the snuggie, oh snuggie. I can't hate... it was my company gift this year and I'm loving it. No free book reading light with it, but I'm still loving it.

Tracie / December 24, 2009 12:57 PM

@Guy Smiley:
I second the people walking with their heads bowed while texting. We've become a generation of people looking like they're constantly in prayer. Someone's going to get creamed by a fast moving truck some day.

Good fad: a president who likes to explain how we got where we are, whether we want to listen or not.

Andrew / December 25, 2009 11:20 AM

I'm not a.fan of the "bacon everything" fad either, but of it gets people cooking, that's at least a positive outcome.

David / December 25, 2009 12:28 PM

Worst:
* Unnatural looking HDR: Oh, please, make it stop!
* Skinny jeans
* Autotune

I'm not sure I can think of any good fads, although I find Snuggie fairly inoffensive as a fad.

Brandy / December 26, 2009 8:43 AM

I'm with spence.

I'm apprecaiting moderation being AOK. And that most of us are budgeting and it's okay to be cost conscious and you don't look like a cheap ass if you don't want to spend $20+ on a meal.

Also, I'm tired that nearly every conversation this year involved a non-Facebook-er or non-Twitter-er screwing up their face and scowling b/c they just don't get it. And they refuse to try it.

paul / December 26, 2009 5:10 PM

Facebook doesn't bother me so much - it's the fact that most people don't use it for communication anymore. It's the inane games and quizzes that steal time, money (virtual or otherwise) and personal information that need to go away.

I can easily avoid people in snuggies and 'reality' shows, but can't avoid the hordes of zombie twitterer/texter pedestrians, bikers and drivers. I can only hope they'll die of starvation or exhaustion when their obsession makes them forget to eat or sleep.

I second the anti-autotune sentiment. Seriously, nobody can sing without it anymore?

Bacon-flavored-everything is a fad I hope will proliferate into a full-on craze.

kelly / December 27, 2009 11:26 PM

Also- I forgot the worst- H1N1 coverage on the news. I don't need to know how many people got the flu today.