5. Our current age of irony will spawn a post-irony movement, in which the adherents will wear clothes they actually like, stop watching the most mind-numbingly retarded internet videos and immediately making ironic spoofs of them (think of all the covers for that "Friday" song), stop using internet memes offline, stop buying stupid products as jokes or joke gifts (think Snuggie), and just plane stop liking things that are stupid because it's funny (I have to believe this is the cause of bronies or I'll spiral into an existential crisis from which there is no return). The post-irony movement will have a backlash in the form of neo-irony in which people ironically act like post-ironies (I'm coining that term now) which will cause the post-ironies to be ironic in an attempt to not look ironic. An ironic war will start in which both sides "shoot" each other (the first casualty will declare "first" with his dying breath) until killing becomes passe, at which point new awesome ways of killing will be utilized (shooting newborns and calling it a spawn kill) with clever and ironic dying words from their victims. However, the post-neo-post-ironies will continue the war ironically, especially when the meme of posting a .gif of of Vin Diesel getting shot in "Saving Private Ryan" on the Facebook of the deceased becomes big. The last vestiges of television media will pick this meme up two years after everyone stopped using it which will give it a small surge in popularity again when peoples parents start doing it. The ironic war will eventually come to a crashing halt as suburban preteens begin joining en mass screaming vulgar, racist, homophobic slurs with grammar so bad it can barely be recognized as human speech.
This is beautiful.
As with most social pendulum games, the only way to win is to not play. Of course, if you 'don't play' in order to win, you also lose.
And not playing, even in an attempt to be 'real' and 'honest' and 'straightforward' without any implications or irony, is no doubt just another reactionary move of an even larger game. The only way to really win is to have no knowledge of the game at all.
Hang on...
Though I don't think that's quite the way The Game came about.
I predict that human nature won't be biologically manipulated in the next 50 years. As such, near-future trends in behaviour and society will be easily extrapolated from history. We'll have incredibly cool things, cooler than now, and no one will realise how cool it is because we'll be jaded and bored as usual, and looking for the next shiny thing.
I predict that immortality is not within the grasp of anyone on this board, and that most predicted advancements won't happen nearly as fast as they're supposed to, while parallel and tangential advancements that no one gives a shit about now will rise to dominance.
I think brain enhancement technology will change our experience of music. Composers will experiment with longer and longer musical phrases, currently inaccessible to our brains (at least without being familiar with the piece) because of limitations on working memory. Eventually we will be at least capable of listening to and immediately understanding more complex music (in that its patterns only become apparent after a while), whether or not we prefer it.
Also, jetpacks.
