2024 Predictions Revisited
Uncertainty, AI, and Ozempic Looks
Every year I make some predictions on what the year will hold and see how they play out. Some are serious and some are frothy and fun. You can read my original 2024 predictions here, and see how I did.
Managing uncertainty as a top coping mechanism ✅
Oooh boy. More uncertainty than you can throw a stick at.
When I first predicted that managing through uncertainty would be the most important skill of 2024, I didn’t know that we would have a mid-election switch out of Presidential candidates, or that masculinity would be back with a vengeance, or that Elon Musk would jump head-first into MAGALand.
One of my agency’s brilliant strategists, Christine Leonard, coined this the perma-swirl, and it fits like a glove. At least in the US, we lived through the glory days of relative political and economic stability, and now it seems like that will be in the past.
Thin is in ✅
I predicted that with the rise of Ozempic, thin would become very in, and the body positivity movement would have a blow.
According to Vogue Business, plus and mid-sized models made up less than 5% of the Autumn/WinterFashion Week catwalks, with the biggest fashion names sticking to straight sized models. According to The Guardian, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons has seen a surge of requests for the ‘ballet body,’ known for being incredibly thin and toned. And Lizzo, ever the advocate for body positivity, lost weight (she claims it’s not the big O), but embraced the discourse with an Ozempic Halloween costume.
In the meanwhile the inaccessibility and unfathomable costs of Ozempic, Wegovy, and other patented drugs has led to the rise of off-brand compounded semaglutides from brands like hims and hers. Although still several hundred dollars a month, this has provided access to the GLP-1 thinness to anyone who can afford it. So thin will continue to have a very long moment.
Boy polish in the mainstream ✅
I’ve seen more boys and adult men rocking nail polish and manicures. Male-oriented nail salons like Hammer and Nails and Toolbox use masculinity in their names and offer more manly interiors, while providing polish and other grooming services. The Alpha Kids offers nail polish for all kids.
But all of these are based in my beautiful state of California, where the stars have been sporting colorful nails for a decade. Two years ago, this conversation was happening in Buffalo NY to help normalize boys wearing nail polish; here’s to hoping that the fun self-expression of nail polish continues to be something everyone can do.
Gen AI all grown up ✅
As I wrote in my CES wrap-up, AI is in everything now. Sure, it was powering a ton of things prior, but now it’s a marketing ploy as much as a technology. AI is in everything from cars to washing machines.
But when it comes to generative AI, it’s still in its nascent days. It’s absorbing loads of money, energy, and resources, and while more people have adopted it than ever it hasn’t quite cracked the code on how to be a business. Agentic AI promises to shape the future of generative AI use, as people go from being in awe of AI capabilities to experimenting with it to relying on it.
The end of Twitter killers ✖️
As Elon Musk’s X moves from being the home of up-to-the-minute information to being a mouthpiece for right wing billionaires and a hub of mis- and disinformation, BlueSky has been growing.
However, in moments of emergency like Los Angeles fires, X has remained the place that official institutions use to blast out fast information. It’s a real problem because in the midst of official tweets about evacuation zones and where to find help is intermingled with the worst kinds of misinformation, including AI-generated images of fires near downtown, accusations of arson, and justifications of this as an act of god for everything from being Democrats to supporting Israel.
As Meta has declared it’s suspending many of its content management practices and relying on the community to fact-check information “like X,” there will be more people seeking spaces where they can connect versus fight information wars. Whether it’s BlueSky, private Slacks and Discords, or even Substack with its new social-lite features, alternatives to Twitter thrived in 2024. And although none of them were able to fell the blue bird, Twitter continued to ebb users in 2024.
I already looked at a few vibe shifts coming out of the election, and I’ll dial in some more 2025 trends in a couple weeks.