2024 Predictions: A Female President? Sentient Sex Dolls?

Utopian and dystopian predications for the year to come. Please add yours.

Let’s put on our fortune-teller hats and make some predictions for 2024. Then we can come back in a year and see what came true and what didn’t. I invite you to join me by writing your predictions in the comment section, or sharing your own prediction post link and tagging me, or emailing me your predictions. Whatever you know about, whatever you sense, feel free to share.

Some of my predictions are silly and some are serious. Some are wishful and some are fearful.

My mom said 2024 will be “messy, crazy, and advanced.”

Author Sharon Duckett said it will be “chaos.”

And my friend Debbie, who also narrated the voice of Maria in my novel, Mushroom Honeymoon, said we will “automate everything.”

All those predictions sound about right to me.

This is also a U.S. Presidential election year, and a big one, ripe for scandal, and I’ve included my predictions for it at the bottom, plus a link to a bonus round of predictions for the Lagoon Viper members.

I didn’t use ChatGPT or any other AI for this list. This is only what’s in my head.

First, let me round up my last year’s predictions, a few of which did come true.

My random 2023 predictions that came true:

• We’d have a new war. (Sadly, yes)

• Taylor Swift would be Time’s Person of the Year. (Don’t ask me how I knew, but I knew.)

• The makers of Ozempic and Wegovy would earn so much money that it would disrupt the food industry. (Yep.)

• We’d see tons of celebrity weight loss stories. (Oprah, hello.)

• Continued decentralization of social media and people leaving social platforms.

My 2023 Predictions that didn’t come true.

• Kanye would apologize and make a comeback.

• Wider adoption of metaverse.

• We’d get a sentient AI and have an AI black swan event. (Maybe this year?)

• We’d have a female U.S. president because Biden would die and Kamala Harris would take over.

• People would reject cancel culture and canceling people as a practice would die out. (Nope.)

That’s all the ones I could find, though I filled out the Astral Codex 10 Prediction survey for 2023 which had many, many questions, so when he releases those results, maybe I will have gotten even more predictions correct.

Now, onto 2024!

2024 Predictions

Recession Era Implications.

• The rise of “CheapDazzle” - like the little charms kids put on Crocs. There will be more little cheap bits of flair to add to old things because we can’t afford new things and because corporations want to sell more accessories. There will be miniature touches like designer push pins, fun buttons, shoulder attachments, fancy dangly things, little characters that stick in your hair, glittery things, jewelry that sticks onto skin, makeup, and nail accouterments that are small objects and patterns.

  

  A random example of “fancy pushpins” I pulled from Etsy:

• Micro Menus: with everyone broke or on Ozempic, restaurants will come up with cheaper, tinier meals that still look fancy and Instagramable. They will call these Amuse-Bouche or some other cute name on the menu. We will see tiny hamburgers and sweet-tart-sized cupcakes.

  

  A tiny steak dinner from Tiny Toast Kitchen

• Mini Snacks. Smaller and cheaper snack packs. Smaller and cheaper subscription home delivery meal platforms. Little adorable drinks. The era of shrinker-size-me.

• Sex Dolls and AI Companions: dating, weddings, and babies are all expensive, but sex dolls are a single upfront cost, or maybe a reasonable subscription, and it’s only a matter of time before someone puts ChatGPT4 inside a talking sex doll connected to the internet that can also order you pizza.

• Subscription Fatigue will cause people to unplug from paid media.

• YouTube and TikTok will benefit most from subscription fatigue.

• The Housing Bubble in hot spots will pop, maybe after a catastrophic climate event, or maybe from Baby boomers giving houses to their kids, but the kids not wanting the houses and trying to sell them all at the same time, so flooding the market and causing supply to overwhelm demand.

The Future is Asian

• A Chinese TV show will become a big hit in the US.

• A Korean beauty store will enter the U.S. market and compete with Sephora and Ulta.

• Increased demand for all things Japanese, especially miniature and cheapdazzle items and unique food experiences.

• More Asian robot restaurants.

• Major US cities will get Asian mega spas like they have in Toronto.

  

  One of the many rooms in Go Place, a Chinese 24/7 mega spa on the outskirts of Toronto.

• TikTok will release blockbuster films and books and open a theme park.

• Temu will threaten Amazon’s reign over the American consumer.

• Increased popularity of anime, manga, webtoons, and light novels for American kids.

• Western pop stars will make hits with K-pop and J-pop chord structures.

• Break away from traditional Western story structure and move towards Asian storytelling structures, which are more episodic and less 3-act.

• Everyone will get obsessed about the Chinese book The Three-Body Problem’s Netflix adaptation and the show will be a mega hit like Game of Thrones. The trailer:

The Future is Friends

• Continuing decline in marriage.

• Development of financial products for co-owning non-family members, like two friends, to buy properties or share health insurance costs.

• Shift towards same-sex friends sharing responsibilities, kids, and finances instead of spouses.

• More unique living experiences and housing compounds with smaller units, but more and fancier shared amenities that will attract mostly single people.

• More emphasis on friend events like “friendship weddings,” friend anniversary parties, Galentines Day, Friendsmas, Friendsgiving.

  

  Best friends built a compound of tiny houses together.

Books

• Influencer publishing stupidity like Bindery won’t take off.

• More and more authors will self-publish, including well-known authors.

• Brandon Sanderson’s books will be made into a Netflix series or blockbuster film.

• Books will further decentralize and we will see even more niched-down subgenres. This will cause further polarization in the book industry, where there will be a couple of standout, big books that go viral, but mostly people will read in micro-niches.

• Ai will allow well-branded authors to scale up production and a new hit fandom on par with Harry Potter will emerge in 2024.

• A backlash to AI and rapid release will spawn slow books or handwritten books, or designer editions of books set at higher prices and produced 100% by humans.

• Rise of the book object and the direct sales book experience. See Caroline Calloway’s book Scammer and her book launch. More authors will focus on unique packaging with books or experiences tied to book launches to make their work stand out in a very crowded marketplace. They will also add cheapdazzle to books.

  

  A fan’s pic of Caroline Calloway’s luxury edition of Scammer.

• There will be a major AI scandal in the publishing industry related to an author using AI and lying about it or related to publishers making fake AI authors and releasing AI series directly so they don’t have to pay authors.

• Preference for shorter books or super long books over average length books.

• Spotify will threaten Audible in the audiobook arena to the point that Audible will have to pivot or merge its subscription with KU.

Movies, TV, and Music

• Cable TV will continue to die and a big player in the alt media will buy a major network.

• The ease of producing animations and animated films will increase and we will see solo-produced animations and comic book adaptations go viral.

  (Animation below made Michael Relth Art using Procreate Dreams, a new software which helps artists make animated movies more easily.)

• Big Netflix TV shows will get theater runs for the first two episodes before the shows come out on streaming.

• Proliferation of custom, AI-generated tv shows and news.

• AI music generation tools will let small-scale creators score original movies and shows more easily.

• The alt Olympics will rise and people will prefer watching sports where athletes are allowed to do whatever they want to gain an advantage, use steroids, prosthetics, performance-enhancing drugs, etc.

Social Media

• YouTube will continue to overtake all other social media platforms.

• Continued decentralization and growth of micro-channels and micro-influencers.

• Shift to more private social media like Mighty and Discord.

• Shift to subscription-over-ads for those with money.

• Podcasting will become more like social media and everyone will have an audio feed where they share short audio messages.

• Many people will leave social media entirely, except for YouTube.

• Another big company will buy Canva or Canva will buy another big company.

• Vtubing will get a production innovation and become more mainstream, including AI-run Vtubers.

• People will quietly return to X/twitter because they can’t resist the election drama.

• More legal, financial, and healthcare services targeting customers working in the creator economy.

Gaming and VR

• Video game production will get a major innovation so that more people can self-publish video games.

• Apple Vision will be a hot gift item and more people will work from home using Apple Vision.

  

  2024 will be big for Apple Vision. Photo from Apple.

• Apple Vision will do a big partnership with a music artist or artists to launch Apple Vision with some kind of live concert experience. Something on par with U2’s Vegas Sphere launch.

• Continued effort by Facebook to push metaverse and to launch influencer and celebrity AI clones in metaverse like what was previewed with Lex Fridman and Mark Zuckerberg, but bringing that to users so you can hang out with AI clones of your favorite celebrities.

• Apple Vision will partner with Peloton to popularize VR fitness experiences.

• Big ticket/celebrity MMA fights in Metaverse or on Apple Vision

Politics

• We will finally get a female U.S. president

• We will finally get a GenX U.S. president

• There will be a surprise celebrity candidate on the ballot

• More debate between humanists vs. speciesists

• More debate between decals vs. e/acc

• The economy, AI ethics, and climate change will be the biggest issues in the U.S. election.

• Support for Israel will be the most divisive issue in the U.S. presidential election

• A Republican will be elected president.

• Joe Rogan and Spotify will be accused of election interference.

• X and Elon Musk will be accused of election interference.

• There will be continued attempts to ban TikTok.

• Major cyber attack.

• Iran’s current regime will be overthrown and Iran will get their version of an Arab Spring revolution.

• Electrical grid attack that will take out a major city and cause panic.

• Major state surveillance scandal involving animals.

  

  One of the CIA’s surveillance insects from the 70s.

Bonus 2024 Predictions

I’ve made extra predictions for my Viper Lagoon members. These include predictions for pop culture, technology, healthcare, wellness, beauty, psychedelics, celebrity scandals, and Sponge Bob babies. Plus P. Diddy, air-sculpting, smart shoes, and more.

Read the juicy bonus round of 2024 predictions here.

Now You

What do you see happening in 2024?

What do you think I’m right or wrong about?

Any sports predictions? That’s one area I know very little about.

Please share all your predictions! Let’s see what comes true.