Predictions for 2016

Someone will do something blatantly sexist, and everyone will go "Hey, guys! It's 2016!"

Journalists will ask:
Why does nobody ever think about the men who pay for sex?
Why does society denigrate women who decide not to have children? (While telling single people they are better off on their own, they shouldn’t look for a partner, and there’s no pressure on women to get married now they can have jobs – as the writers don't say.)

Journalists will state:
Craft is back!
The fuller figure is back!
At last! Sexy bras for large sizes.
Class is much more “nuanced” now, and based on socio-economic groups.
Zeppelins are back! (or perhaps the Hyperloop)
Email is dead.

Social media is dead.
Social media makes no money.
One in five prisoners have reading difficulties.
Tinder has changed relationships.
Bullying isn’t just in the playground.
Menopausal women no longer need to suffer in silence.

Living together doesn't give you legal rights - gosh!
Me and my partner aren't getting married because we're just too special.
We eat less meat now because [insert peg here].
We're driving less because [insert peg here]. (Some of "us" never learned.)
Masculinity is in crisis. ("Many modern men complain of feeling redundant in an increasingly feminised world where advances in reproductive science might render them unnecessary even for sperm production." Times. I think they mean "women are filtering into higher-paid jobs".)

The Met Office and the BBC will predict bad weather. People will be scathing about the “panic”. Bad weather will arrive.

Twitter users will denigrate Facebook (inspirational uplift, baby pictures, right-wing politics). Intelligent people with degrees will be quite astounded to learn that you can turn all these off.

Twitter users will ask "Why isn't there a Men's Day?" (it's 19 November) and "When's White History Month?". (When they're not telling atheists that evolution is a religion.)

Proponents of “whole language” reading methods (look and say) will continue fighting a bitter rearguard action for control of schools and the lucrative reading materials and training market in the teeth of overwhelming evidence that their method doesn’t work and teaching phonics does.

A dictionary will add a few items of modern slang. We will be very surprised, even though it happens every year. (“Why are we putting them in the dictionary, all these words?” BBC Breakfast on “manspreading”.)

People will complain about the news media (all opinion, left-wing bias, not what I call news).
They will also whinge that children aren't being taught grammar, and we're importing too many Americanisms.

Two women a week will be killed by their partners or ex-partners. Meninists will disbelieve the statistics.

The French will stop parents calling a child Nutella.
Parents in NZ will name their child Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

Tenements will be recommended to solve the housing crisis. Apprenticeships ditto, to solve the unemployment crisis.

Hollywood remakes of classics, and Christie/Austen stories by other hands, will be dire.

Something rather trivial will be identified either as “a symptom of what our society has become” or proof of “the end of civilisation as we know it”. (For example, children are arriving at school unable to use a knife and fork. Of course they can't use a knife and fork. They're four.) Next year it will be something different.

A smug middle-class family will “do without” something for a year (throwing out ANY rubbish, processed food, electronic devices...).

The mystery of Agatha Christie’s disappearance will be “solved at last”.

Every few years or so a spate of newspaper stories proclaim, as the Los Angeles Times did last year, that “rabbit appears to be going through a renaissance of sorts”. (straightdope.com They mean "on the menu".)

Why does the "pop stars today aren't political" whingepiece still get commissioned and written, over and over again, WHY? (@alex_macphers)

The Masterchef pauses will get... even longer.

Someone will propose a giant skyscraper with forests every few floors.

Architects will whinge about “noddy boxes”, and praise a development of “quirky” houses that are too close together, and have too few, tiny windows but sport some interesting detail like steeply pitched roofs. The energy saved by the arrow-slit windows will be used up by aircon and lighting.

TV programmes will start with trailers for themselves, using all their best moments and giving away the plot. They will do this before and after the ad break, and will keep repeating the “highlights”. Participants will be forced to read bland, scripted pieces to camera. These will be chopped up and sprinkled throughout. There won’t actually be a programme at all.

It’s the 80s/90s/00s/10s/teens – why don’t you ask HIM out?

Predictions for 2015