By Jacob Sargent
Think back to the autumn of 2013.
Snapchat is taking off, “Take Me to Church” is all over the airwaves, and Angela Merkel has just won her second chancellorship of Germany. Hindsight may be 20/20, but it’s not surprising at all that Snapchat would continue to explode for several years, Hozier’s booming voice would keep him on the charts, and Angela Merkel had eight more years of power ahead of her. Maybe this is outcome bias, but I think even eighth-grade me knew basically where the world was heading.
But not everything was so cut and dried. In the fall of 2013, Grand Theft Auto V became the first entertainment product — not just video game — to gross $1 billion in sales. Billion with a “B.” Would you have predicted that in the fall of 2025, Grand Theft Auto VI would remain unreleased?
Around Halloween in 2013, the word spoopy entered the lexicon. Would you have guessed at the time that it would become such a dated term so quickly, and become forever designated a “time-capsule word”?
My point is that some predictions have been easy to make, but others were total surprises. Now compare that to what’s going on in 2025. How sure are you about the future?
