Hot cool trending trends trending for 2022
From a top influencer influencing the influencers
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Jeffrey Denny
The Trump Pandemic and drag on real life is not over yet.
But even with Omicron, we’re starting to see green shoots of normalcy.
Should normalcy become actual normal again, or even become The New Normal, or even the New New Normal — Normal Squared® — it’s time to start making 2022 the best year since BTP (Before Trump Pandemic).
So before the trendy kids brand you cheugy (Google it, boring stupid Boomers), hop aboard these five hottest pre-post pandemic trends the whole internet is climaxing over thanks to trending trend influencers like me:
1. Restyling
It’s long past time to refresh your wardrobe and dig through that towering mound you bought online while on back-to-back video work calls. Also, the return policy expired 20 minutes after Amazon delivered your garments two months late and before porch pirates pirated them.
Yes, some of the hot, like, cool outfits you bought two months ago that look, like, amazeballs on the photoshopped website models who also exercise and keto to near death still haven’t arrived. (Thank you, Biden supply chain! Why can’t Biden command the heavens like Trump can?)
From the new fashions that Joe “Stalin” Biden’s Socialist central command and control government did allow to arrive and are guilting you from the closet where you stuffed them, start your restyling with bold new office wear if you have to hybrid work.
(Sidebar: This is only if you’re a poor sap who fails to follow our Wiser Youth and join the Great Resignation because you need income for food and shelter. You should be building and monetizing your 2.3 squillion TikTok followers into vast riches without working, like anyone with a brain or parents who are venture capitalizing them.)
In the two years since we last went to work dressed uncomfortably in business attire, corporate styles have evolved radically. Office wear is more Jimmy Buffet chillaxed, Lululemon AWY (Athleisure Without Yoga), or Brooks Brothers® Preppy Slouch® featuring their trademark Casual Insouciance®.
(An awareness: Seeing you off screen in person, bosses and colleagues will once again witness what you’re wearing below the beltline. “Eyes up here, guys,” you want to say, but that would make everyone uncomfortable. Also, as HuffPo teaches, cis women colleagues hate being called “guys.”)
For the sharp cis gent, the old new Italian-style slim-cut skinny business pants don’t work anymore due to the Covid-25 lbs. Actually, skinny pants never worked on men unless you’re a teen Italian model or you like seeing stars when you sit down or colleagues seeing the outline of what they never should see.
Instead, go with something like the Lululemon men’s trousers with the four-way stretch, wrinkle-resistant performance fabric so your Covid thighs look like giant bratwursts.
No matter your size or gender identity, performance fabric office wear is guaranteed to result in top performance evaluations, even without threatening to sue your employer for giving you an honest bad evaluation.
Bonus: You’ll irritate HR because they can’t mark you for reorg rightsizing headcount (i.e., body count) reductions.
2. Flasking
Don’t let pre-pandemic office rules about not tippling on the job, like you did working remotely, stop you from doing your best work.
Hemingway boozed his best work; why can’t you?
Flasking lets us take the nip we all need all day to relieve existential dread. Especially when we need it most, like during a branding ideation session, annual performance review, or having our access disabled and being walked out by security.
3. New Neighboring
Most neighbors will be trudge-commuting back to the office to keep their jobs, pay the bills, and fund their pandemic divorce alimony and child support. Many are also determined to achieve their lifelong dream of someday becoming Vice President of Incomprehensible Functions.
But some neighbors may never recover from the pandemic delights of working from home (see below). They’ll refuse to hybrid work and will be targeted for HR reorg rightsizing headcount (i.e., body count) reductions, and as a result, at home all the time.
New Neighboring means avoiding these neighbors like the Covid, for they will suck your last breath like the Covid. Options include:
1. Pretending you don’t see him;
2. Waving a quick distant hello like you’re in a hurry;
3. Looking too busy to chat about how Steve Bannon was framed but will triumph, or how their wife left them for nobody;
4. Tell the truth; e.g., “Look — no offense but … actually, yes offense: I don’t like you. Just because we live close doesn’t mean we are close. I’d rather gouge out my eyes with a garden tool than listen to you drone.”
Warning: This is not guaranteed your neighbor will never bother you again.
4. ‘Croning®
According to my internet research, roughly 97% of Americans who were fortunate enough to survive and swing the Covid quarantine life are going to miss it dearly.
‘Croners® will look back wistfully on staying home all the time, having cooked meals and dry goods delivered on command, avoiding deadly commutes and colleagues, declining social activities and chances to meet up with irritating people, and many other benefits of Covid quarantining and also assisted living and agoraphobia.
Omicron was a lifeline, but soon will pass. ‘Croners will keep the Covid party going by embracing any or all of the next variants named after the Greek alphabet, from Picron to Rhocron, Sigmacron, Taucron, Upsiloncron, Phicron, Chicron, Psicron and Omegacron.
5. New Loving
Mae West was wrong: Too much of a good thing isn’t always wonderful.
The pandemic quarantining has tested many expressions of undying love, from wedding vows to pledges to improve personal hygiene.
Many couples learned it’s not true that animals breed in captivity, or are even interested. Many survived being together 24–7–365 for almost two years, but time will tell. A few will split amicably or otherwise; the best will stay “friends” without benefits for the kids to keep the kids out of lifelong therapy.
Trending: After taking the Covid MasterClass in each other, lucky couples will love each other more, or at least manage their chronic IBS with each other to stay together.
Tested under extreme heat by the Trump Pandemic, like iron becomes more tensile steel, New Loving may be stronger and more flexible than ever — more patient, kind and not boastful, prideful, dishonoring, self-seeking, easily angered, or recording of wrongs, but protects, trusts, perseveres and rejoices in the truth.
What’s trendier than that?
Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer.
