Predictions for 2026

Puritan

Journalists will write articles about:

There's a crisis in masculinity we need a new way to be a man. And it’s still women’s fault.

Dopamine. It's too enjoyable and you and your kids shouldn't get ANY.

Society is becoming too feminised, as George Birmingham wrote in 1924. 

Children not learning cursive, and people not writing with Latinate words and complicated syntax. (If only they'd stop.)

Kids today are actually a new species. Their brains have been rewired by [recent technology you don't like but has probably been around for at least 10 years.]

In primary schools 30 years ago, there was nowhere for children to get a drink of cold water. They took to taking water bottles to school. Someone will moan that “kids today” are so soft they can’t be separated from their water bottles. 

Kids today, of course, are soft. We need to make them suffer physically. We should confiscate their water bottles. It’s good for them to be hungry and thirsty. (Since corporal punishment was banned in 2003, adults have to find new ways of torturing children.)

Schools should teach life skills: budget, cook, sew, knit etc.
Schools should teach kids to manage money.

Capitalism forces people to want things they don't need. One of the biggest problems with social media is the way it slices up all of our lives for the consumption of others and leads people to believe they want things they really wouldn't and they don't want things that they would. (@normonics. It used to be “TV ads” that gave us unrealistic expectations, back in the 1960s.)

In 2025, knitting is back thanks to influencer X, see BBC. And crafts are always coming back. 

Animals eat fermenting fruit, haha. (Biologists say these stories are exaggerated or made up, and they are always humiliating for the animals.)

SUVs are becoming more popular in London. Should we curb their use? Every year for the past 40.

Why can’t my intelligent, enthusiastic, attractive 50-year-old friends find partners or husbands? (Every year for the past 50.)

Girls outdo boys in exams! Oh woe, wrings hands, what can we do?????? (Always presented as “boys lag girls in exams”, centring the boys.)

Wild swimming. I was getting worried that The Guardian hadn’t done a wild swimming article for a while but thankfully they’ve started 2024 by rectifying this, I’m sure everyone is v relieved. (@LukeTurnerEsq)

It's a perennial news story: government department commissions bespoke IT system. (These days, couldn't they use something off the shelf?) It is delivered late and over budget. It is out-of-date, slow, clunky and difficult to use, and doesn't do all the tasks required. It is scrapped at huge expense. Backhanders and jobs for the boys somewhere?

Novel-Reading Men, declare yourselves. The NYT is running its regularly-scheduled “male readers don’t exist” piece. (@CoffeewClassics)

The Guardian will write approvingly about polyamory without mentioning the legal and financial aspects.

It’s only January and someone is suggesting bringing back National Service.

Woolworths is coming back to the high street! Sigh, no.

No more stiff upper lip – why we’re now a nation of criers! (Times, Jan 2024. Every year for the past 50.)

They’re talking about ratcatchers being called rodent operatives. (Sunday Politics, Jan 2024.)

These are always “coming back”: rickets, bed bugs, scabies, TB, syphilis.


The following will also happen:

You don't remind your family Mother's Day is coming up. You don't tell them what you'd like them to do on that day. They forget, or do something different. You cry on TikTok. Next year, same thing.

A male part will be taken by a distinguished actress. Shylock, Frankenstein. In a few years they’ll be scraping the bottom of the barrel. A female Poirot! How innovative! Nobody will point to Sarah Bernhardt’s Hamlet.

A severe storm will be predicted by weather men. People will be sarcastic about their bins being blown over. The storm arrives, power goes off, trains are cancelled, trees fall and planes are diverted to Cologne. The year after, the whole thing happens again.

There’ll be a panic about the snow panic in New York and the UK. There’ll be jokes about the country shutting down after a few flakes. Drivers will spend ten hours in their cars in the Pennines. Drivers are advised to take water, food and blankets. (And a good book and a torch.) Next year the same thing will happen again.

On Twitter, people will ask “Are audiobooks reading?” and claim “You’ll find someone when you’re not looking” and "Nobody will love you until you love yourself". 

There will be many noisy, placard-waving protests. It will be suggested that all these actors are in the pay of... Russia, George Soros, the Martians, take your pick.

A child will die tragically, and its parents will then perform some physical feat to raise awareness and money. (Upper middle class parents never do this, still less appear on BBC Breakfast.)

More here, and links to the rest.