Late last year I was invited by a friend to his ‘Ins & Outs’ party for 2026. The basic premise was that everybody would bring a list or powerpoint of what they believed was going to be “In” (trending or worth doing) in 2026, and what, conversely, would be out.

Mostly the party was a fun opportunity to gather, make some cheeky jokes at the expense of ourselves and our friends, and lament on the trends we feared would be in…

Here’s my list of trends. Some are personal, some are a little bit of a reflection on society.

OUT: Cellphones in the bedroom

Doomscrolling, distractions – some form of these showed up on many peoples’ lists at the party. My practical version: stop bringing cellphones into the bedroom. Remove the possibility for late night scrolling keeping you up too late, or starting your day with the dread of the state of modern politics.

Practically, this has meant plugging our phones in overnight right outside our bedroom door. We get up, we silence the alarms, and we crawl back into bed for a short snooze. But eventually I do get out of bed earlier than I have been, and my phone isn’t always the first thing I gravitate to anymore, once I am up (but, again, it’s only been a week. Hopefully habits won’t die too hard).

IN: Buying flowers for no reason

You don’t need a reason to tell someone you love them; you love them, and that’s enough of a reason in and of itself. Surely, then, we don’t need a reason to express that love in a physical and tangible way that delights and brightens one’s day and space.

In that regard, I would propose that buying flowers for your partners, your dates, your friends, is IN for 2026. You don’t need a reason, you don’t need a corporate holiday marred by overpriced flowers, you just need love in your heart, and a desire to express it.

As a couple, we buy flowers with some regularity, and this more just a reminder to continue doing that, and to perhaps inspire friends to as well.

OUT: GitHub

2025 saw a lot of tumultuous activity in the United States, for immigrants, minorities, and the under-privileged, at the behest of the latest administration. Spearheading much of the fearmongering and violence is Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). GitHub, acquired by Microsoft in 2018, have had their fair share of controversy alongside their parent company, including partnering with weapons manufacturers. But with the recent role of ICE in the state of affairs in the US, GitHub’s contract with ICE, and the pludering of GPL code for Copilot, it’s time for a change.

This past fall I made the move to sourcehut, migrating all of my projects, deleting the code from GitHub, and leaving directions for visitors to my larger projects. Drew DeVault, the founder of sourcehut, has his quirks, but he’s firm on privacy, and the value of free and open-source software.

Sourcehut may not be the right move for you, but I promise you there’s a tool that suits your needs out there:

• The Zig programming language moved to the non-profit Codeberg
• Tangled offers decentralized git hosting and collaboration
• Fossil is a weird one, focused on simplicity and self-hosting

IN: Women’s Sports

Women’s sports in North America are seeing a boom. The Professional Women’s Hockey League had their inaugural season in 2023-2024, and has since expanded from 6 teams to 8, including the Vancouver Goldeneyes. If hockey’s not your sport, the Northern Super League also kicked off this year, a professional women’s soccer league recognized by the Canadian Soccer Association.

The gameplay is elite, the women are pros, and as the two leagues get their footing, tickets are significantly cheaper than any mens’ leagues in the city.

• This winter check out the Vancouver Goldeneyes at the Pacific Coliseum on the PNE Fairgrounds.
• When the NSL picks back up in April, find the Vancouver Rise in Burnaby at Swangard Stadium

IN: Personal Blogging

Everybody should have a blog. Not a tumblr, not an premium X account with a 10,000 character limit. The Internet has as much breadth as it has depth, and I implore you to share your own

Publish a blog and let me hear your thoughts. Writing pushes you to understand topics better, and has numerous other benefits. Talk about what you love, what you fear. Show me your poetry or impress me with your personal progress.

Here are a couple blogs I follow diligently, and some recent posts from them I found interesting. Download an RSS Reader and follow your favourites:

• [the writer’s room] shares her writing and thoughts on her daily life. Check out her recent queer cosmic horror short story
• Jenn is a mystery to me, but she writes endearingly about all sorts of things, including tech, culture, and her dead, deadbeat gay dad
• Dead Moms Book Club writes about her life, her grief, her aspirations. Another Mother’s Day presents a vulnerability I felt in my core.

OUT: The Algorithm

Jenny Odell, in How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy writes about her Twitter feed:

Scrolling through the feed, I can’t help but wonder: What am I supposed to think of all this? How am I supposed to think of all this? I imagine different parts of my brain lighting up in a pattern that doesn’t make sense, that forecloses any possible understanding. Many things in there seem important, but the sum total is nonsense, and it produces not understanding but a dull and stupefying dread.

The Algorithm is everywhere, and it’s designed to capture your attention to commoditize it and sell it to the highest bidder. It’s an unfortunate symptom of much of the free Internet, that driving engagement drives ad sales and boosts revenue, and revenue is king.

In 2026, we are casting out the Algorithm and instead embracing RSS and mailing lists. RSS allows you to follow all the interesting people, blogs, news, etc. without needing to be exposed regularly to the whims of The Algorithm.

I have a feed of bloggers, indie devs, and friends that I have curated and can check in on once a day to see if there’s anything new or of note to me posted by them recently. RSS allows me to aggregate these sources and peruse them simply, at my leisure, without needing to traverse bookmarks or keep a hundred tabs open.

My RSS reader of choice is IconFactory’s Tapestry for iOS, which also presents me a chronological feed of my Mastodon timeline.

Find creators, writers, comedians, intellectuals elsewhere. I guarantee you they’re posting somewhere outside the walled gardens of social media, where you can follow them on your own terms.

Joan Westenberg writes a little bit more about ditching big tech in favour of the open web, and how the algorithm has transformed how we form opinions.

To a better year

Every year is an opportunity to invite self-reflection, and consider what’s important to us. 2026, for me, is going to be about dedicating time to the things I love that bring me joy, and pulling myself away from the platforms and media that don’t.