It’s time for a big old moan. Next week’s newsletter will be a roundup of our favourite culture of the year, a bit of an annual Guide tradition by now, and something that’s great fun to put together.

But do you know what’s even more fun? Complaining about things. So, this week’s Guide is devoted to cultural gripes, big and small, of 2025. Here’s what had us seething this year.

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The utter horror of buying tickets in 2025

Great news! Your favourite band, who last played live more than a decade ago, have just announced a UK tour. Now there’s just the small matter of getting a ticket.

You’ve already missed out on the presale due to not being on the right mobile phone network, so you’re stuck in the 10am general sale bunfight with the rest of the humps. A mad scramble to get a seat – any seat – ensues, as whole blocks switch from a welcoming blue to a forbidding gun-metal grey. You do manage to add a ticket to your basket, but you could only get one as part of the platinum superfan VIP package (yes, it costs as much as a flight to Timbuktu, but there is a limited edition tote bag thrown in). As you dither over whether to go hundreds of pounds over the budget you set yourself, the blood red timer in the top right hand corner ticks down to zero, and by the time you’re back in the main room it’s too late: SOLD OUT.

You’ll either have to brave the secondary market (which might require you getting a second job), or miss out entirely. Although, wait, they are rumoured to be playing Glastonbury in 2027 … fancy another ticket battle royale next November?

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‘Did he kill the au pair’ dramas

The streaming era seemed to promise so much for television: even more of those great sprawling dramas that came out of the “golden age” that preceded it. Hmm yeah, not so much. Instead of the next Mad Men, the streamers seem to pump out an unceasing slurry of what you might call “did he kill the au pair” TV: glossy, small-screen versions of the sort of mid-budget movie thrillers that people complain don’t get made any more.

The only difference? Here they’re stretched to breaking point over 8-10 episodes, with key details of the plot restated for the benefit of those half-watching, and some sort of unsatisfying fudge of a cliffhanger tacked on at the end in case it’s successful enough for a series two. The Guest, The Girlfriend, Little Disasters, The Better Sister, The Stolen Girl ... the list goes on and on, interminably. Enough, please!

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AI (inevitably)

This was the year that AI slop burst past whatever minimal barriers had been erected to protect against it: head to your social media feed of choice and it won’t be long before you’re greeted with a video of something weird, wonderful and entirely fabricated (in my case Stephen Hawking fighting Einstein in a “hell in the cell” wrestling match).

Artificially generated alt-country bands, or down-on-their-luck talent show contestants, stalk the digital corridors of Spotify and YouTube, while A-listers, or at least people pretending to be them, are lying in wait, ready to separate you from your money. Actual Hollywood stars are looking over their shoulders too – while the tweely named AI actor Tilly Norwood was thankfully greeted with ridicule, better, more believable versions of her are surely on the way. And screenwriters will be less than thrilled by the deals being signed between studios and AI companies to train the latter’s models. Lovely dystopia we’ve built for ourselves, isn’t it!

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Stealth podcast ads

When it comes to podcast advertising, there’s a sort of eternal shadowboxing bout going on between producers and listeners: they insert cheery McDonald’s spots at the beginning of a show to fund the (largely) free media they’re providing; we whiz right past them in order to get to the good stuff. Understandably that won’t do though, so adverts now seem to be slotted in at points when the listener least expects, and thus is least ready to skip past them. So right as a conversation about the new Paul Thomas Anderson film or the history of theme park rides is about to get going, a loud and jarring advert comes smash-cutting in, often seemingly in the middle of a sentence.

Podcast-makers: if we agree to start listening to the ads at the top of the pod, will you promise to stop bombarding us with these randomly delivered stealth adverts?

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Merger mania

“Gripe” seems to be a trivialising word for the looming existential dread about the full-on death of the cinema, but Netflix’s proposed purchase of Warner Bros Discovery does seem to augur just that. Though it’s far from a sure thing: perhaps the hostile bid from the more-Trump friendly Paramount Skydance (itself two companies merged together only a few months ago) might best it.

Either way, there’s something truly enervating about these endless mergers: as well as the obvious monopolistic dangers brought by these companies continually folding into each other, on a more basic level it just makes things damned confusing for us consumers. That series you were halfway through binging on platform x is now streaming on platform y due to the merging of companies, d, e, f and g. Sorry about that!

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Erratic band punctuation

This one goes out on behalf of music magazine subeditors everywhere. Please, please can bands and artists stop messing about with the caps lock button. Song titles in all caps might have looked striking and cool a decade or so ago when everyone started doing it, but now it’s just hackneyed and hard to read, even more so when you start inser ting sp aces in the middle of words at random, and – worst of all – swITcHIng BeTweEn upper and lower case on a whim. Oh, and stop putting your moniker in all lower case – bell hooks was allowed to do it, you aren’t!

Get involved – special end of year edition!

As ever we want to hear from you about your favourite culture of the year, across TV, film, music, books and podcasts for a special instalment of the newsletter (here’s last year’s to give you a flavour). It can be anything from the biggest blockbuster to the most overlooked of indie albums.

You have until 16 December to send over your picks by contacting me on gwilym.mumford@theguardian.com.

If you want to read the complete version of this newsletter please subscribe to receive The Guide in your inbox every Friday