17 ways you were a 2023 cliché

There you were thinking you were being so original with your discovered holiday island, hydration chic and curiosity about the Roman empire. And then you realise you were just one of the crowd, writes Lucy Sweet

Just when you thought you were being original, you discover you were following the crowd all along (Getty/HBO/Universal Pictures/Warner Bros)

Was this last year real, or a simulation created by insane tech billionaires? Well, even though it felt a bit like hell, it turns out it was an actual year of linear time, packed with epic cultural moments, hot takes, micro trends and annoying new words. And some of you were very much of your time. From Barbie to leaving Twitter/X in a huff, here are just some of the ways you were sooo 2023…

1. You were intrigued about Ozempic (until you came to your senses)

What could possibly go wrong with a weight loss injection that you can buy from a woman called Brandi on Facebook? Ozempic – originally intended for people with type 2 diabetes – became the latest go-to method to help Hollywood stars fit into tiny dresses. But then there was a shortage and you never had to find out the truth about side effects, like a pancreas like fois gras and explosive diarrhoea and “Ozempic face”.

2. You wondered about the Roman empire

It only takes one TikTok user to ask “How much time does your man spend thinking about the Roman empire?” to open a can of wormius maximus. This was the year we found out was the real reason men don’t clean the bathroom or turn up to parents’ evening on time – because they’re regularly daydreaming about aqueducts and gladiatorial combat. I’m not sure where we go from here now. A new series of Up Pompeii!?

3. You committed to Barbenheimer

Do you still find yourself saying “My job is just beach” whenever anyone asks you to do anything at work? If you saw Barbie and Oppenheimer on the day they came out, then asked a 12-year-old to take photos of you posing in that pink box in the foyer at Cineworld, then shared them on Instagram stories until your friends begged you to stop, you are a 2023 cliche of nuclear proportions.

You bought a motivational water bottle. Oh yes you did (Fidus)

4. You made hydration an extreme sport

How big was your water bottle? If you cycled into work holding a giant vat of H2O that could serve a South American mountain village for a month, you were 2023 through and through. Bonus points if you bought a Stanley cup – a gargantuan pastel monstrosity that can double up as an umbrella stand and makes you need a pee on sight.

5. You lived through the Swiftian era

Taylor Swift isn’t so much a pop star as a unit of geological time. Her prolific output of albums about cardigans and bad boyfriends will one day form a new land mass where we will all live in harmony, and resistance is futile. So even if you don’t rate her music (this year’s secret shame), in 2023 it was impossible not to marvel at the prices for Eras tour tickets, bitch about Matt Healy or wonder how on earth she got a cat around her neck for that (most overused word of 2023) iconic photoshoot.

6. You swapped the ‘platty jubes’ for the ‘corry nash’

The need to amusingly abbreviate everything – due to the fact that our lives are terrifyingly out of our control – continued apace his year. So although we are still in the grip of the “cozzy livs” and the “panny d”, and every day we’re having a “menty b”, you probably went along with the cute nickname for King Charles’ coronation (but failed to watch it due to being the cliche of the person not realising it was on so early).

7. You found a Greek treasure

How you laughed when your mate on Instagram bragged about bagging the last villa on Mykonos. Because who needs Mykonos when you can go to Sifnos – the lesser Greek island that only you knew about? Well you, and Scarlett Johansson. Oh and Tom Hanks and Kylie Minogue. And maybe Dua Lipa and, okay, quite a few others. But, you know. Early adopter.

8. You moaned about X

There was widespread panic when Elon Musk rebranded Twitter to X and dismantled anything that was good about it. So if you were a long-term Twitterer you either deactivated your account (while making sure everybody knew about it) or defected to alternative platforms that sounded like team names from The Apprentice. However, it made zero difference to anything, and now you’re on Bluesky/Mastadon trying to tweet about the Bake Off to nobody.

9. You had an irrational reaction to voice notes

Did you send 3,000 incoherent voice notes to friends and colleagues that were drowned out by the sound of the Number 12 bus? Did you get on the number 12 bus and play the replies back without headphones? Or did you, like me, pointedly reply to every dashed-off voice note with a long and extremely elaborate text written in ancient Cyrillic script on a stone tablet? Either way, 2023 was the VNs moment to shine/irritate everyone on public transport.

‘Spare’ didn’t turn into the ‘Endgame’ for the monarchy – no matter how hard Harry tried (AP)

10. You went ‘Spare’ for Harry

Chances are you bought Prince Harry’s eye-watering tell-all memoir Spare – the book kickstarted a few months of hot royal tea that got increasingly more lukewarm. By the time we got to episode two of Harry and Meghan’s deeply boring Netflix documentary, it was stone cold. Now, Harry’s book is no doubt in the charity shop, next to The World According to Clarkson and an air fryer cookbook.

11. Because… you also air fried everything that moved

Even if you didn’t try making cakes, 24-hour fondant potatoes or hasselback sausages in it, you were definitely air fryer-curious in 2023. However, deep down we all know that air fryer ownership is probably one of the flimsiest status symbols since the hostess trolley. Also, what air fryer owners don’t tell you is that they only use them for drunkenly heating up mozzarella sticks at 2am – at the end of 2023 it lives in the cupboard with the unused Nutribullet and the Hotel Chocolat velvitiser.

12. You worried about ChatGPT – and then didn’t

Remember when white-collar LinkedIn was riddled with concerned posts about how ChatGPT was going to take our jobs and our women and try to tarmac our driveway without asking? After that initial freak out, concern was quickly replaced with curiosity, and now you’re using it to write all your presentations and emails, with prompts like “tell Margaret from recruitment to sod off in a nice way.”

13. You bought that bag

2023 was the year of the crossbody bag, and there wasn’t a single person who didn’t have a pouch strapped under their tits like a kangaroo. I have to admit to being the owner of two Uniqlo half-moon bags, because you can literally fit the contents of a two-bedroom flat in them. The only drawback is that if you have a larger bosom, they make you look like you have a third breast, but that’s a small price to pay.

Girl dinner became the TikTok trend of the year. See also ‘picky tea’ (@alanalavv / @liviemaher / TikTok)

14. You had girl dinner

If you weren’t on TikTok this year, it was a bit like being a visitor from a distant galaxy, trying to use your onboard computer to decode phrases like “rat snacks” and “girl dinner”. Girl dinner was what a woman eats when the male gaze is not upon her – which is basically any old manky crap in the fridge. So if you were one of the 8 billion people who posted an unappetising picture of three crackers, a grape and a piece of cheese, you were a 2023 cliche (and probably still quite hungry afterwards).

15. You had an obsession with Succession

If you started wearing boring yet expensive hoodies, telling people to eff off in meetings and pretending the lift was your own private helicopter, you were under the influence of the final season of Succession. You’re probably still itching to discuss your theories about Tom Wambsgans, or showcase the fact that you know all the words to “L to the OG”, but it’s over now. Time to move on, Ken Doll.

16. You went back to the year 1997

Early noughties nostalgia reached its peak this year. So if you started dressing like a member of The Horrors, bought some ballet flats again and dusted off that old anecdote about how you once stood next to the drummer from The Strokes, you were very 2023. However, Russell Brand’s long-anticipated downfall brought back bad memories of sexually predatory men with backcombed mullets, and we remembered that actually, it wasn’t all golden – more like drinking warm Hooch with a minor member of Kasabian.

17. You tried to insert ‘rizz’ into a sentence

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “rizz” was the word of 2023, despite being exclusively used by teenage girls discussing Timothee Chalamet. To “have rizz” means you possess a certain sexual attractiveness and devil-may-care charisma – which people over the age of 15 will never have if they attempt to say it. If you tried though, be assured that somewhere, a group of young people smoking raspberry-ripple Elf bars will be laughing at you until 2025.