The essay was originally published by Rachel Haywire on her blog
A Complete and Total Shift to Pop-Ups
The retail landscape is undergoing a massive shift, and pop-up shops have taken center stage. We can expect that 95% of shops will become pop-up shops by 2026. This shift is driven by the impermanence that we now face as a social landscape. Pop-ups will enable businesses to build hype around product launches as they foster a sense of urgency. Fomo is the name of the game. We’ll see themed installations and interactive showcases as pop-ups become hotspots for retail innovation and customer engagement. Much like indoor malls were replaced by outdoor shopping centers, outdoor shopping centers will be replaced by pop-ups. Think brick-and-mortar stores morphing into farmers markets on a massive scale.
Due to escalating expenses and regulatory constraints associated with property acquisition and business operations, the prospect of making long-term investments in physical locations will become less viable and rewarding. With the disembodied worlds of digital media and artificial intelligence, consumers will now crave a feminine sense of connection and authenticity. Their desire to get up close and personal with the brands and influencers they follow on Threads will provide an opportunity for corporations to create pop-ups by the dozen, aiming to produce intimate experiences in order to build meaningful connections with their target audiences.
Death of the Town Square – A Million Speakeasies Bloom
In an era marked by increasing surveillance and scrutiny, an alternate emerges. The speakeasy revival will begin gaining momentum in 2025. As privacy assumes a paramount role in our lives, individuals seek exclusive havens and hidden sanctuaries for socializing. These clandestine establishments, reminiscent of the prohibition era, will become enclaves where like-minded people can revel in a sense of community and self-expression. Amidst the death of the town square, these intimate spots will become the norm. Public life as we knew it is finished, and it’s not coming back for at least a decade. As people return to a more traditional way of life, they will find themselves engaged in a fully private mode of existence.
The increasing wealth gap will drive a series of restrictions that will make gathering in public an inconvenience. Public spaces will become crime-ridden dystopias, boring as hell, or crime-ridden dystopias which are also boring as hell. Additionally, nobody will want to become a main character who isn’t sponsored and funded to do so. We live in private. You won’t see your friends at coffee shops anymore, but you’ll be able to create speakeasies to unite them. Creating a speakeasy will be like starting a nightclub. It will entail a lot of labor and a lot of decadence, while also acting as a catalyst for genuine innovation.
Silicon Valley Drives Centralization of Groupchats
Social media is currently having some growing pains, but everyone is missing the point. This isn’t Twitter against Threads against Mastadon against Bluesky. It’s hundreds and thousands of Blueskys. Social media is fracturing into endless nodes. There is no center. It’s just one group chat after another, which creates a cynical opportunity. In 2024, a FAANG company will create a centralized groupchat app that is basically a streamlined Discord. This app will simplify the process of initiating group chats, replacing the fragmented landscape of chaos and multiple servers with a more user-friendly experience. It will provide seamless communication, powerful moderation tools, and the ability to create specialized channels.
This app will bill itself as providing end-to-end encryption, advanced privacy settings, and the option for self-destructing messages. “It’s like WhatsApp but for influencers.” It will be a big data wolf in sheep’s clothing. Welcome to the fediverse: you’ve got mail. They’ll have all of your information and know what you think about before you go to sleep, but who cares when you’re running 20 group chats and #positivitymaxing? The app will be called something obnoxious and ironic, like Fed or Lore. Meta will try to integrate a copy of this app into Threads, but ultimately fail to reconcile the thrill of running multiple private group chats with a massive billboard. Fed or Lore or Prive will be where influencers can speak to one another without millions of annoying fans.
Social Media turns Physical with Augmented Reality
The lack of a cohesive social media platform will create an opportunity for a new type of engagement. You can expect social media platforms to transform into curated live experiences by 2027, much like Meow Wolf or the Van Gogh Exhibit. People will have the ability to socialize at immersive art installations. Social media will revert back to being physical, yet this time it will include Augmented Reality. This is where all of the real fun begins, with the speakeasy founders becoming experience-producers as they organize their club members into talent. They will provoke a Sleep No More element that blurs the line between actor and user.
This will create a new monoculture, but that type of occurrence is inevitable at this juncture in history. Besides, people who find these AR social media experiences to be childish and lacking in vitality will be able to use the same technology to create darker and more extreme versions of these in-person platforms at their pop-ups and speakeasies. As more and more people are unable to maintain their digital media followings (or realize that their digital media followings are on irrelevant platforms) they will migrate to physical spaces in order to get the dopamine rush they no longer feel online. Around 85% of the population will completely leave digital social media. The physical realm will be augmented and ready to take in the refugees.
Celebrities Ignite Policy Shifts in Substance Regulations
Draconian laws on controlled substances are treating pain patients and people with mental illness as casualties. Consequently, doctors prescribing necessary medications have been facing legal repercussions including jail time, leading to a rise in rehab cases among our population with well-documented conditions. A popular celebrity will be unable to obtain their prescription medication, which will lead to their suicide. In 2025, this will become a political event. This will not be a celebrity with any type of drug addiction, but a well-respected celebrity who is a casualty of the same laws that non-famous pain and mental health patients are facing today.
The struggle of the beloved celebrity and their suicide will become a spectacle of mass proportion, highlighting the issue of accessibility for patients in need of comprehensive pain and mental healthcare. It will be a viral phenomenon that sheds light on the challenges of these regulatory barriers. Calls for reform will become all the rage, urging policymakers and healthcare stakeholders to strike a balance between preventing abuse of controlled substances and ensuring safe and accessible options for patients needing pain relief and mental healthcare. As the suicide of the celebrity becomes a viral sensation, this clamor for reform will gain momentum and create a policy shift that rolls back previous restrictions.
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None of the above predictions are meant to be negative or positive. I’m a professional futurist and consultant who is always going to call it like I see it. Thank you for reading, and do join as a member of my blog if you’d like to read more predictions of mine. I am now offering free trial memberships as a drive to increase engagement, so click here to become a member of The Cultural Futurist.