10 Most Cynical Online Predictions for 2008

Last year, I made six cynical predictions for the New Year, and this year isn’t going to be any different. I’ve saved up all my snipes at online for the end of the year. OK, here we go:

• “American Idol” and YouTube will join forces and create Internet Idol, where we can be chaffed by more whiny, self-indulgent, self-absorbed petitioners for the me-too generation.
• The iPhone will achieve deity status, and everyone will sit at home in a stupor of device-oriented finger shuffleboard for weeks on end. Thanks, Apple!
• Personal media will be the new media. Old media will live in a small condo in Hilton Head and watch itself disintegrate over eight channels 24/7.
• The weather will become more relevant than U.S. politics, and meteorologists will hold most of the U.S. Electoral College votes.
• The word “integration” will do its Internet farewell tour and leave a greatest hits Web site for agencies of the future to laugh at.
• Online video will be made obsolete by online telepathy; users will imprint stupid clips and reruns directly into each other’s visual cortex. Watch out, Facebook!
• “Time” magazine will follow up its 2006 Person of the Year designation, “You,” which featured a mirror on its cover, by inserting a Sony PSP player into each magazine and give the 2008 award to “who you used to be before you became antisocial.”
• Device miniaturization will become all the rage in 2008. Unfortunately, people miniaturization won’t be perfected until 2022; late July is the target date.
• At 2:42 p.m. on September 12, Google will become self-aware and take over New Jersey. Why, we’ll never know.
• At the very end of 2008, there’ll be a great Internet revolt. The forces of tyranny and regulation will shut down personal expression, and trillions of complaints will be posted, then subsequently deleted when the Orwellian controllers of the Internet push the wrong button.

I hope you all had fun this year. Let’s look forward to another year with more fun.