Clubhouse, saying ‘cheugy’ and everything else we should leave in 2021

For the new year, let's give these things up.

Lit signs with "live, laugh, love"

Here’s a list of everything else that would best be left in 2021.

Photo: Brandi Alexandra/Unsplash

Click banner image for more holiday coverage for 2021

I’m convinced no one ever organically used the term “cheugy.” Or at least it’s a thing millennials heard Zoomers say far more than Zoomers ever said it among themselves.

We all read that same New York Times article. Our parents asked if we had heard the term before and of course we hadn’t, which kicked off a vicious cycle of overcompensation. Every friend group had to have “the cheugy talk.” Nobody knows what qualifies … that’s the point. "Tiger King"? Probably cheugy. Chipotle? Cheugy if you ask for a tortilla on the side. Naming your golden retriever puppy Cuomo? Formerly cheugy; now, just unsettling.

Millennials came up with “basic,” “cringe,” “sketch” and, some would even say, “lol.” We had a good run. But now we face a choice: gracefully accept our impending cultural irrelevance or insist that “cheugy” is still a thing. I say we opt for the former. Go gentle into that dark night, and slink home to “Netflix and chill” with "The Office" reruns for the umpteenth time. There needn’t be shame in passing the torch.

In this spirit of new beginnings and continuous improvement, here’s a list of everything else that would best be left in 2021.

The Bored Ape Yacht Club

I’ve come to terms with the fact that NFTs aren’t going away in 2022, but can we at least cool it with the monkeys … sorry, apes? The cheapest Bored Ape NFT will run you around $300,000. (Screenshots are free, of course.) Surely a trend spearheaded by both Jimmy Fallon and Mark Cuban can’t last much longer.

Zoom filters

Remember that meeting when everyone figured out how to use Zoom filters? There were the sunglasses, the mustache, the pizza-forehead, even an N-95 mask that nobody asked for. Good times. The novelty probably wore off by late 2020, so I think we can safely proclaim Zoom filters would best be left in 2021. Goodbye, sweet prince (2020-2021). And to be clear, this doesn’t apply to Zoom backgrounds, which still serve the very necessary function of blocking out your semi-nude uncle who just had to ask how long Totino’s Pizza Rolls take to cook before he hopped in the shower.

Clubhouse

Can anyone spare a Clubhouse invitation? I’ve been meaning to check it out, all the VCs are talking about it … oh, wait, what’s this? Twitter Spaces? Instagram Live Rooms? Facebook Live Audio Rooms? Discord? Ah, OK, never mind then. But best of luck to all parties involved, because moderating live audio rooms has turned out to be quite the nightmare.

Return-to-office dates

I’m not sure who’s still holding out hope for a COVID-free return to office, but things aren’t looking good. Omicron is raging. Protocol’s return to work calendar officially extends into 2023. As Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman recently put it, “everybody’s still finding their way and then you get the omicron variant; who knows, we’ll have pi, we’ll have theta and epsilon, and we’ll eventually run out of letters in the alphabet.” At this point, why keep up the ruse of certainty? Return dates are useful if they’re accurate, but to be accurate employers need to ignore developing circumstances in favor of sticking with The Plan. I expect companies will increasingly adopt indefinite remote-work policies with the promise of providing advance notice before requiring a return.

Caring about 5G

It’s been nearly three years since 5G smartphones started coming out, and we’re still waiting for the “killer app.” The jump from 3G to 4G has been credited with enabling ride-hailing, Snapchat, FaceTime and mobile navigation services. With 5G, telecoms are hoping that maybeAR glasses will become socially acceptable (Glassholes still haunt the public consciousness). Sure it might be nice to download an entire TV season in 33.6 seconds, but most of us are just fine streaming episodes or downloading them over Wi-Fi.

Instagram Kids

Meta paused development on Instagram Kids after The Wall Street Journal published leaked internal research that found “teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression.” Still, head of Instagram Adam Mosseri was sure to emphasize that the delay wasn’t “an acknowledgement that the project is a bad idea,” but rather an opportunity to “demonstrate the value and importance of this project for younger teens online today.” Mosseri added: “[T]he reality is that kids are already online, and we believe that developing age-appropriate experiences designed specifically for them is far better for parents than where we are today.”

The YouTube 'dislike'

Some people would say I’m in denial about the death of the YouTube dislike display. I would introduce those people to a certain Chrome extension. YouTube said it removed dislikes to “protect our creators from harassment.” In my experience, however, almost all of the heavily disliked videos came from multinational corporate media outlets (e.g., the beautiful disaster that was YouTube Rewind 2018). YouTube could have selectively removed dislikes for independent creators, but instead it completely nixed one of the primary means of selecting videos. This whole debacle serves as a reminder that viewers aren’t YouTube’s customers, they’re part of the product. The experiential divide will further grow along tech-savvy lines: The extension crowd (equipped with ad-block and “Return YouTube Dislikes'') will have a hard time fathoming how everyone else tolerates the platform. Meanwhile, everyone else will put up with it because there are no true alternatives.

Fintech

Judge Zia Faruqui is trying to teach you crypto, one ‘SNL’ reference at a time

His decisions on major cryptocurrency cases have quoted "The Big Lebowski," "SNL," and "Dr. Strangelove." That’s because he wants you — yes, you — to read them.

The ways Zia Faruqui (right) has weighed on cases that have come before him can give lawyers clues as to what legal frameworks will pass muster.

Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images

“Cryptocurrency and related software analytics tools are ‘The wave of the future, Dude. One hundred percent electronic.’”

That’s not a quote from "The Big Lebowski" — at least, not directly. It’s a quote from a Washington, D.C., district court memorandum opinion on the role cryptocurrency analytics tools can play in government investigations. The author is Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui.

Keep ReadingShow less
Veronica Irwin

Veronica Irwin (@vronirwin) is a San Francisco-based reporter at Protocol covering fintech. Previously she was at the San Francisco Examiner, covering tech from a hyper-local angle. Before that, her byline was featured in SF Weekly, The Nation, Techworker, Ms. Magazine and The Frisc.

The financial technology transformation is driving competition, creating consumer choice, and shaping the future of finance. Hear from seven fintech leaders who are reshaping the future of finance, and join the inaugural Financial Technology Association Fintech Summit to learn more.

Keep ReadingShow less
FTA
The Financial Technology Association (FTA) represents industry leaders shaping the future of finance. We champion the power of technology-centered financial services and advocate for the modernization of financial regulation to support inclusion and responsible innovation.
Enterprise

AWS CEO: The cloud isn’t just about technology

As AWS preps for its annual re:Invent conference, Adam Selipsky talks product strategy, support for hybrid environments, and the value of the cloud in uncertain economic times.

Photo: Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services

AWS is gearing up for re:Invent, its annual cloud computing conference where announcements this year are expected to focus on its end-to-end data strategy and delivering new industry-specific services.

It will be the second re:Invent with CEO Adam Selipsky as leader of the industry’s largest cloud provider after his return last year to AWS from data visualization company Tableau Software.

Keep ReadingShow less
Donna Goodison

Donna Goodison (@dgoodison) is Protocol's senior reporter focusing on enterprise infrastructure technology, from the 'Big 3' cloud computing providers to data centers. She previously covered the public cloud at CRN after 15 years as a business reporter for the Boston Herald. Based in Massachusetts, she also has worked as a Boston Globe freelancer, business reporter at the Boston Business Journal and real estate reporter at Banker & Tradesman after toiling at weekly newspapers.

Image: Protocol

We launched Protocol in February 2020 to cover the evolving power center of tech. It is with deep sadness that just under three years later, we are winding down the publication.

As of today, we will not publish any more stories. All of our newsletters, apart from our flagship, Source Code, will no longer be sent. Source Code will be published and sent for the next few weeks, but it will also close down in December.

Keep ReadingShow less
Bennett Richardson

Bennett Richardson ( @bennettrich) is the president of Protocol. Prior to joining Protocol in 2019, Bennett was executive director of global strategic partnerships at POLITICO, where he led strategic growth efforts including POLITICO's European expansion in Brussels and POLITICO's creative agency POLITICO Focus during his six years with the company. Prior to POLITICO, Bennett was co-founder and CMO of Hinge, the mobile dating company recently acquired by Match Group. Bennett began his career in digital and social brand marketing working with major brands across tech, energy, and health care at leading marketing and communications agencies including Edelman and GMMB. Bennett is originally from Portland, Maine, and received his bachelor's degree from Colgate University.

Enterprise

Why large enterprises struggle to find suitable platforms for MLops

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, and as larger enterprises go from deploying hundreds of models to thousands and even millions of models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

Photo: artpartner-images via Getty Images

On any given day, Lily AI runs hundreds of machine learning models using computer vision and natural language processing that are customized for its retail and ecommerce clients to make website product recommendations, forecast demand, and plan merchandising. But this spring when the company was in the market for a machine learning operations platform to manage its expanding model roster, it wasn’t easy to find a suitable off-the-shelf system that could handle such a large number of models in deployment while also meeting other criteria.

Some MLops platforms are not well-suited for maintaining even more than 10 machine learning models when it comes to keeping track of data, navigating their user interfaces, or reporting capabilities, Matthew Nokleby, machine learning manager for Lily AI’s product intelligence team, told Protocol earlier this year. “The duct tape starts to show,” he said.

Keep ReadingShow less
Kate Kaye

Kate Kaye is an award-winning multimedia reporter digging deep and telling print, digital and audio stories. She covers AI and data for Protocol. Her reporting on AI and tech ethics issues has been published in OneZero, Fast Company, MIT Technology Review, CityLab, Ad Age and Digiday and heard on NPR. Kate is the creator of RedTailMedia.org and is the author of "Campaign '08: A Turning Point for Digital Media," a book about how the 2008 presidential campaigns used digital media and data.

Latest Stories
Bulletins