What are we in for?
Some predictions for 2025
I was on The Digression Sessions with
and the other day to discuss 2024 and our predictions for 2025, and I wanted to expand on some of the predictions I mentioned, add to some of theirs, and include a few more that I thought of after the fact.
First, my biggest and most confident prediction was that there will be more ideological violence1 in the coming years. With “ideological,” I'm including such acts as merc'ing CEOs; in fact, I'm talking mostly about merc’ing CEOs, but I'm calling it ideological because it covers just about all of the motives that I think pretty clearly precede these acts. In the podcast, I originally called it “political violence” and Ape called it “class-based violence”; I agree that class tends to be the foundation of this kind of violence. This is both good and bad.
I know, we don't want to say that any kind of violence is good, and I'm not, exactly. What violence definitely is, though, at least sometimes, is a catalyst for change. And that’s exciting. That’s why people are acting the way they are about Luigi, not necessarily because they think it’s great that Thompson is dead. Well, some are definitely happy about that, but I don’t think it’s anywhere close to the majority of people’s true feelings on the matter.
Anyway.
Besides ideological violence, I also predict we'll see more vigilantes, which I think is related. People who feel like they can’t trust their institutions subsequently feel that they must be prepared to take things into their own hands in order to protect themselves, their families, maybe even their communities. Juries acquitted both Kyle Rittenhouse and, just recently, Daniel Penny. The two circumstances were very different (check the links if you aren’t familiar), but the undercurrent of wanting to enact justice or even protect others in the men in question was similar.
There's been a “RETVRN” moment simmering since around Covid when all the city folk, trapped in their tiny urban apartments with no storage space for all the toilet paper they suddenly needed to hoard, decided they needed at least 5 acres and some laying hens.
Trust in all the institutions was cracking under pressure on both sides, and the ranks of the “politically homeless,” most of whom had traditionally liberal social and economic values but decreasing trust and much disillusionment for the federal government's increasingly obvious incompetence over the years, rapidly multiplied and many moved ideologically right.
Alongside this shift along a subsection of the left into reddish waters, certain isles of nontraditional conservatives and moderate Republicans, many of whom were already living the several-acres-and-a-hobby-farm life, began to test the waters of economic populism, finally beginning to notice the corruption and blatant greed of the corporations they previously argued were superior to government in terms of providing services. They saw billions in effectively free money pumped into businesses and couldn't square it with their own measly $1200 and $600 checks while they were stuck inside and often not able to work. This culminated in a moment I think is significant in terms of our ongoing ideological shift: JD Vance, current vice president elect, stating matter-of-factly during the VP debates that we would have to spend money to help families with rising childcare costs. It seems we’re moving from a Left vs. Right fight to an Elite vs. Regular Person fight. Finally.
Speaking of Vance and returning to tradition, how about all that Catholicism lately? Seems like a lot of folks are super into it all of the sudden who weren’t before. While a rise in Catholic conversion is actually not all that unusual during times of social and cultural uncertainty (witchcraft, too!), this time just seems to have a different flavor. A royal one. What I'm saying is that there are a lot of openly anti-democratic monarchists around these days, too.
I'm low-key a little obsessed with this ongoing development. I've been seeing and hearing lamentations against democracy since Occupy, but they came from radical anarchists and other leftists who wanted to replace it with something consensus-based or otherwise fairer than democracy.
This latest upsurge in democracy-hating is coming from the right, though, and the “grey tribe,” the latter being known for their more libertarian beliefs but being generally ideologically culturally malleable. Their proposed alternative is nothing like that of the radical left and they instead wish to institute a stricter, more authoritarian governmental system run by monarchs. Some want the freedom that they imagine comes with needing to make fewer decisions, and others don't think most of us actually deserve to be decision-makers regardless of what we want. Curtis Yarvin wants a corporate monarchy. They have a lot of ideas.
Along these same “return to tradition” lines, PJ predicted a return to the Bush-era patriotism of the 2000s, and Ape talked about how country music (one of my favorite topics) has been making a major comeback in recent years, with artists usually outside the genre like Post Malone and Beyoncé releasing albums with more of a country sound or collaborating with established country artists like Morgan Wallen and Dolly Parton. Patriotism and country music are, indeed, so related that the connection is constantly mocked in popular culture for being corny and contrived. But, still, country music is uniquely American, and after a decade of over-production and cookie-cutter, Instagram-faced influencers, people are craving authenticity, so now we have artists like Zach Bryan — just a normal enough guy with a guitar and a decent enough voice who sings with raw emotion about his life — actually competing with behemoths like Taylor Swift.
Staying on the “tradition” beat, I think we’re collectively about 2 more bad Netflix originals away from being completely done with streaming. Calling it right now. Streaming services are going to die and people are going to start collecting physical media and using their libraries again. Because no one trusts The Institutions anymore, a lot of us are growing increasingly wary of things like e-books that we suspect might be altered or snatched away at any time by Amazon. (I’m 100% talking about me right now.)
Sex, though! 2024 had a lot of hand-wringing about whether or not kids these days were having enough sex, which is definitely a lot different than the way we have historically discussed teenagers and sex. We noted that everyone is getting laid less often and movements against porn — including both women and men — have maintained a presence online and off and are growing, with the toll excessive porn use can have on mental health and sexual performance and desire coming to the forefront of the discourse on the issue. Zoomer dudes apparently have to take boner pills now. Bleak.
I don’t really think it’s going to last, though. I think sexuality, sex appeal, and a generally more sexually open micro-era is coming that will highlight the previously taboo or under-discussed facets of human sexuality. Sure, the sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s and its ongoing effects have opened us up a lot, but let’s be real, Americans are still prudes overall. I think that sex, especially passionate and unself-conscious sex, is going to have a cultural moment that will maybe shake us free of some cobwebs.
I haven’t seen these movies yet, but Baby Girl and Nosferafu are both movies currently in theaters centered on female desire, to put it very generally. Baby Girl includes a 50-something woman with a guy in his 20s, flipping the script on the usual age gap we all expect, and apparently a fair amount of the theme is about what women really want, sexually, and the lengths they’re willing to go to get it. Do we have Fifty Shades of Grey to blame for this? If so, then I guess we’d have to blame Twilight, too. Contrapoints recently released one of her epic YouTube videos to talk about exactly this and what it means for human, especially women’s, desire. She talks about it for a really, really long time. Worth the watch if you’ve got a few hours to spare.
I’ve been seeing a lot more essays on the topic of sexuality in a way that is not feminist- or TRP-coded like they usually are, but just human and often at least tangentially contains themes of dominance and submission, but in the more traditional direction. Women are horny right now, if you haven’t noticed. I don’t think the half-assed American 4B movement is going to last long. Even men are less afraid to be open about the more brutally detailed things they like in some spaces. Maybe all that lack of sex is catching up with people, eh? Turns out toys and porn just aren’t cutting it anymore. I think we’ll probably see even more Mormon sex parties in our near future, and ethical nonmonogamy will continue its gradual ascent into the mainstream. Sex in real life is going to be a big hit once again while the kind you have with yourself and your computer is going to be lame-coded. No one’s gonna stop masturbating, but imaginations will probably make a comeback, too, as people’s attitudes toward porn evolve with that of the rest of online life.
All this sex is contrasted with the whole tradwifery trend where chaste and innocent women who waited until marriage seemed to be regaining popularity for a minute. The tradwife movement seems to be waning in popularity, though, with cracks appearing in the façade and no one interested in watching fake shit anymore. I don’t know if it will completely replace the trad wife phenomenon, but it might coincide with a tradwife rebrand, so to speak. With everyone basically turning on influencers and celebrity in general, no one is going to want to look like the kind of overly-perfect character that currently makes up the tradwife content we see (and increasingly resent) today; they’re going to play up their authenticity instead. Probably too hard at first. We’ll probably see some confessional-style content from some of them, showing how messy their kitchen is or how they really look without makeup on or something, but for the most part, those who keep creating “content” might switch to creating more substantial art, or they may use their platforms to show more sincere “day in the life” videos and diary-style blog posts. Apparently calling oneself a writer is becoming much more common since the rise of Substack. Also, the return to non-pornified sex being more visible in culture will be in step with the general vibe shift of returning to our roots, back to nature, homesteading, tradition, etc. What’s more literally traditional than crazy passionate animalistic sex, anyway?
Speaking of sex and stuff, people are going to keep wanting to look hotter and younger and more fit. While I can’t say whether I think the gains of the body positivity movement will be completely erased, I do think we’re in for a decently long phase of fitness promotion, and I swear I’m not just saying that because my career depends on it. This time I don’t think it’ll just be aspirational heroin chic, but rather, borrowing from the body positivity movement, a wide variety of visibly healthy body types with visible muscle and a healthy amount of body fat, but decidedly not obese or outside the range of what the average consumer finds attractive or assumes is healthy. There will be an emphasis on realness like there will be with the influencers that survive the Great Purge, probably to counteract all the butt injections and whatever else has been going on in the plastic surgery world in the past few years. Fillers, meanwhile, have been maligned so widely that maybe people will start opting for less obvious, or more high-quality, ways to reverse or suspend the signs of aging, because I don’t think that desire is going anywhere as long as men continue reminding us of their evolutionary preferences for women who aren’t old enough to go to the bar with them. I think we’ll start to see a little more grace and a little less desperation about it, though.
For my last prediction, I am going to say that Substack is going to get pretty huge. With the aforementioned lack of institutional trust extending to legacy media and even traditional social media as the bots engage in their planned coup, Substack has already emerged as a place to find countless high-quality sources of news and information, as well as indulging in the kind of confessional oversharing I enjoy and pointless little half-assed lists of predictions from the new year like you’re reading right now. In addition to the writing and other media that takes place here, there are an abundance of writers and creators hosting their own salons, both online and off, which just warms my entire heart, as the old-fashioned notion of salons has always been something I regretted being born too late for. Turns out I just needed to wait a few decades.
In sum, I think that real life is about to come back, hard. And maybe wet.
Happy 2025!
well, would you look at that.
Great read. Consistent with your predictions I think you'll see more of the "hottest" actors and actresses in roles that show them as more normal looking, Nicole Kidman notwithstanding. Keira Knightly in Black Doves is one example. Consistent with the paparazzi shots of Sydney Sweeney looking like a "normal" attractive woman in her bikini. I hope authenticity makes a comeback because it's much more alluring.
About the fitness thing. I belong to a yoga studio and I can no longer guess how old the women there are (I’m a guy). For the longest time I underestimated the age of one woman by at least a decade (maybe two). I learned about her real age when I found out she was the mother of one of the teachers who is age 30. I overheard another member (who looks much younger) recount how some young guy was hitting on her in a store (my 30+ age kids were in school with hers, we’re that old).