More Predictions for 2013

The advent of "hashtag activism" has been greeted with breathless claims about the birth of a new form of technology-based social movement. Wordspy

The year will start with journos writing about how they failed “the” January detox after a few days.

It will end with journos moaning about Christmas starting too early and getting too consumerist while simultaneously whining about the recession, the decline of manufacturing and the decay of the high street.

In any discussion of equal marriage or minority rights, someone will say “Guys! It’s 2013!”

There will be endless discussions about equal marriage, but legal rights will never be mentioned. More information here. And here's the difference between being married and living together.

People will get upset about something utterly trivial, like Comic Sans. And they'll threaten to shoot anyone who confuses "your" and "you're" (not a capital crime even under the Black Act of 1723).

There will be a new exercise craze.
There will be a new superfood.
There will be a new diet fad (bring back grapefruit).

The French will ban some baby names.

Discovery will make a programme about the leaning tower of Pisa.

Archaeologists will find that Neanderthals, not Homo sapiens, invented (dugout canoes, philosophy, cooking, art, jewellery, poetry, writing etc etc etc). Americans will use "Homo sapien" as a singular.

Scientists will find that animals have some attribute previously thought to be unique to humans.
Writers will claim that all kinds of things are the one “that makes us human”.

The following arguments will be had:
Halloween is a ghastly American import – no actually it’s Scottish.

Flanders poppies – newsreaders start wearing them too early - grief inflation – diktat – jingoistic - originally anti-war? All BBC staff forced to wear them!

Flu jabs are useless – out of date – mismanaged - essential.

Journalists will misunderstand average age of death (everyone in the olden days died really young, yeah?).

Journalists will refer to women as a “minority”. (According to the 2011 census women outnumber men in the UK by almost a million.)

Journalists have given up pretending not to understand Twitter, but they will complain about hashtags and outrage.

Young journalists will write articles about the amazing changes the world has seen in the last 10 years, and how dim and unreconstructed we were a decade ago. They will also predict a “revival” of some garment that was fashionable three years ago. They will talk about the 90s as if they were a remote geological era (“back in 96”).

“They” will do something awful to the countryside.

Young people will need to be called to order and taught how to behave in the world of work. The middle classes will run round in circles wailing that the sky is falling because children speak jafakin/write in text speak/copy the Tellytubbies/watch too much telly/don’t watch telly any more/watch telly and text at the same time. They will completely forget last year’s panic about something that is now an unnoticed part of life.

Illiteracy will increase – not like in our young day when we learned the three Rs.

Volume builders will build houses with windows even smaller than last year’s.

Someone will write an article claiming that:
If you don’t wash your hair, after six weeks it cleans itself – our intrepid reporter gave it a try.
Therapy has lost its stigma.
British food has improved in the last ten years.
Women don’t need to get married any more (see links above about marriage rights).
Britons love bizarre sports like bog-snorkelling.
Today’s fashions are more about healthy hair than elaborate “dos”.
Women experience period pains in silence.
Women suffering miscarriages get no sympathy.
Women giving birth are ill-treated.

More predictions for 2013, 2012, 2011.