In 2002 a teacher made my whole class read Click, by Faith Popcorn, and I wrote down the first four trends so I wouldn’t forget them. The book came out in 1996 with sixteen trends in it, and reading my notes again now, it’s funny how many of them came true, just not the way I pictured them back then.
So here they are again, what I wrote in 2002 and what actually happened.
Cocooning
Then: “Some jobs already ask you to have a computer at home so you can work from there.”
Now: In 2020 the whole planet was sent home, and cocooning stopped being a trend and became the rule. Work, school, doctors and birthday parties all went through the same screen, and food started arriving at the door with one tap. Daaangg, she nailed this one. The part about home getting so comfy that we stop going out at all? Also true, a lot of people never really came back.
Clans
Then: “Our class already has its own website and an IRC channel, so I guess we’re a clan now.”
Now: Today everybody is in a dozen clans at the same time, WhatsApp groups (in Brazil, more like forty), Telegram channels, Discord servers and a subreddit for every possible obsession. Faith said being around people who think like you feels safe. What she didn’t say is that it also feels safe for the algorithm, which is very happy to keep you there forever.
The adventure of fantasy
Then: “So people go looking for adventure with a seatbelt on.”
Now: Escape rooms, zip lines, VR headsets and “experiences” you book on an app, all adventure with a safety net. I’m guilty here too, I ended up building a game where strangers on the internet steer a hot air balloon across the world together, which is about as adventurous as you can get from the couch.
The revenge of pleasure
Then: “People are tired of rules and want their reward now.”
Now: One click buying, food delivery at midnight, a cart full of stuff from the other side of the world and “just one more episode” at 2 am. The reward is always one tap away now, and the stress it’s supposed to pay back is coming from the same phone.
And a few I skipped in 2002
Mancipation, men allowed to care about things that used to be “for women”. Back then it sounded strange. Today men’s skincare has a whole aisle, and dads pushing strollers on a Tuesday morning don’t get a second look.
99 Lives, too many roles and too little time. I’m writing this with way too many tabs open, two calendars, a side project and a password manager that knows more about my life than I do.
Cashing Out, quitting the rat race for a simpler life. The pandemic did this to a whole generation, and I did my own version of it, I spent years hunting unicorns abroad and ended up back on the family farm, sharing the grass with a pony named Camila.
Faith got most of it right, she just forgot to mention that we’d be doing all sixteen trends from the same phone… Anyway, I still have nine trends to check. Maybe in another 23 years.