2025 predictions
what to expect in the year to come...
reality privilege ➞ reality preference
When discussing the future potential of the metaverse in 2021, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen defined reality privilege as the following:
A small percent of people live in a real-world environment that is rich, even overflowing, with glorious substance, beautiful settings, plentiful stimulation, and many fascinating people to talk to, and to work with, and to date. ... Everyone else, the vast majority of humanity, lacks Reality Privilege—their online world is, or will be, immeasurably richer and more fulfilling than most of the physical and social environment around them in the quote-unquote real world.
Four years later, the first sentence remains true. As it has always been true for the elite classes of the world. The second seems less true than ever. The metaverse failed, as every attempt at virtual reality has failed. Complaints about internet enshittification remain evergreen. The internet remains a great place to dissociate. As a place to live? Not so much. It has not answered the perennial American question: how to make friends after college?
Enter the clubs. We’ve already seen the rise of elite members clubs, especially in New York. Beyond the Soho House franchise, there is Zero Bond, Casa Cipriani, The Ned, The Aman, Chez Margaux, San Vicente Bungalows and on and on. Their no-camera policies are a clear response to the mutual surveillance we tolerate in public, and an important selling point for celebrity clientele.
At the local level, we see run clubs replacing dating apps and breakfast clubs replacing LinkedIn. There are movie clubs and book clubs and dinner clubs. The gala for the New York Young Republican Club is a Times media item with noted downtown attendance. There are ‘network state’ clubs like Praxis (though they call their members citizens). Old school stalwarts: country clubs, athletic clubs, yacht clubs are doing fine. While the old service clubs, Kiwanis, Rotary, Lion Club are struggling.
There remains a missing middle though: clubs organized into chapters with a national presence. In 2025, we’ll see more attempts at either reviving older national clubs or building new ones. It’s a tradition so old de Tocqueville noted our ubiquitous associations in Democracy in America (1835, 1840). It waned. Now, there is a concerted effort to make it wax again.
The internet created the false impression that all socializing is authentic and improvisational. We’re discovering social lives are planned once again.
americana overload
The Fourth of July 2026 marks the United State’s Semiquincentennial—in layman’s terms the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Beginning Memorial Day 2025, the Trump administration promises a year-long, fifty-state roving celebration culminating in a Great American Fair hosted at the Iowa State Fairgrounds. Like the Bicentennial (which incidentally also coincided with a politically fractious time, the seventies) the American Semiquincentennial will be a cultural focal point. And Trump’s knack for showmanship and social media realism will ensure that the images will be spectacular.
Expect a lot of stars and strips and tricornered hats—the Tea Party with higher production values.
The boom boom aesthetic plays with the muscular patriotism of Americana. It summons the animal spirits: performance and profit. We see this in the growth of the Gundo, the defense tech cluster in the Los Angeles County beach town, El Segundo.
And don’t expect the westernwear trend to go anywhere soon. As Paul Skallas noted, country music is the most popular genre in America. Bela Hadid moved to Dallas to date a cowboy. But this is one of many Americana looks. Westernwear joins white trash chic (Southern), neo-yuppie (Coastal), preppy revival (Northeastern), and elevated workwear (Midwestern) as one regional element among many.
mars mission
Part of the resurgence of muscular patriotism will be an announcement of a Mars mission. Expect something spectacular. Like Trump, Elon Musk is a master of showmanship and social media realism. This announcement will likely involve them both and come in two parts.
The first piece will entail a formal announcement, like JFK's 1961 speech to a join session of Congress: “this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.” As with Kennedy’s statement, some context around international competition and possibly the perilous status of the US-Russia relationship will be given as a rationale.
Second, a media blitz intended to drum up public support will begin. It’s likely the American public will be skeptical about the expense. A majority of the Americans were opposed to the Apollo program at first. With conversations about government waste and inflation dominating political discourse, a Mars mission will have similar pushback. The media blitz will culminate with an event modeled on JFK’s 1962 speech at Rice University. A sound bite that can compete with Kennedy’s iconic statement—“We choose to go to Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard”—is essential.
Like the Semiquincentennial, the Mars Mission will be provide another feel-good diversion from endemic political infighting.
political burnout
It’s become increasingly clear the proper place for politics is the internet. If the heated Christmas debate on X over H1B visas is any indicator, this will be the first of many conflicts between Trump’s digital base and his new Silicon Valley allies. With a renewed reality preference will come new social codes to avoid conflict spilling over into civilian life.
A substantial number of elite social scenes will go back to the old norm of no "politics or religion at the dinner table"—and for people who despise both MAGA and Silicon Valley, social media self-care will find a renewed focus.
We'll see people go dark on all platforms or narrow their focus to a few. 2024 set us up to make this process easier. Posting links dings your reach on X. Instagram has always been a walled garden. Something I have noticed here on Substack especially. Having a Substack or a podcast doesn’t necessitate having a Bluesky or an Instagram or an X account anymore.
Platforms are no longer connectors, but destinations.
post-woke radicalism
The left won't go quietly into the night—there will be protests and organizing in the first part of the year especially. These will be smaller than in the recent past and more leftist in character than liberal.
There will be more similarity with the late Obama years (2012—2016), than the early Trump years (2017—2020).
Leftism will retreat to its stronghold, colleges and universities. Only this time, the argument that campus politics should be taken with a grain of salt won’t be entertained. Expect academia’s ideological bias to be the explicit reason for federal defunding.
Mainstream media will attenuate its leftward drift. (The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times already have.) This will prompt a rebirth of left-leaning outlets: Jacobin and Jezebel for Gen Z. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a decolonized version of Bari Weiss’ The Free Press powered by Substack before the year is out.
Aesthetically, we will see Zoomer nostalgia for early 2010s Tumblr-progressivism, though this will be ironic. (Was a ‘white male tears’ mug ever not ironic?) We already see this happening with the Buzzfeed-tier memetics surrounding Luigi Mangione, the alleged UnitedHealthcare assassin—lots of simping, lots of Super Mario Bros. puns.
With 41% of 18 to 29 year-olds characterizing the shooting as either “Completely acceptable” or “Somewhat acceptable” in a recent study from Emerson College Polling, expect more political violence. In 2024, we had two Trump assassination attempts. Just last week, someone tried to murder right-wing Internet personality Nick Fuentes.
Coincidentally, historian and analyst, Peter Turchin predicted the 2020s would see a rise in political violence eight years ago.
misc
Zoomers make plans to colonize dying small towns
Skinny jeans, leather and fur make a scene cool comeback
A deluge of Millennial parenting content
High-low schism in nightlife fuels the return of the dive bar
This is a riposte to the dominance of the members club
Midtown nightlife continues to surge
Nightlife regains its nihilistic edge
City as luxury product meme is destroyed
Gotham City metaphor dominates: grit, danger, crime
A public conversation about microplastics and adulterants in food
Default belief that UFOs are real
Los Angeles music scene becomes central to indie rock and cloud rap
Young men outpace young women in the return to organized religion
The theological implications of this begin to be felt
Adoption of Ozempic and similar drugs reaches critical mass
We discuss side-effects more serious than Ozempic-face
