02.03.2023 – Future Cringe?


Under the headline I borrowed for today’s post, the New York Times recently ran a (fluff?) piece premised on this explanation: “What are the things we do today that will seem embarrassing or otherwise regrettable to our future selves — the stuff that will make us cringe when we look back on how we lived our lives in the early 2020s? More than 30 people from academia, fashion, media, the arts, and business weighed in.”

The future? Many of us have looked back a few decades with embarrassment or regret for something we did or wore or believed.  It’s harder to look forward and wonder about how we live now might cause future regret or embarrassment.

Among the 33 human and one chatbot responses to the question, were some that gave quick answers, sometimes with tongue in cheek, sometimes not.  A short answer sampler:  crocs, pet strollers, the monarchy, and plastic bottles.

I’d say “amen” to a couple of the more detailed thoughts on future cringe:

  • I strongly believe that selfies on social media will be something we will look back at with embarrassment.
  • There’s this feeling that we are all somehow terminally unique and more important than any other beings, and we’re broadcasting that uniqueness by what we like and eat and listen to and look like and wear. I think that will be super embarrassing. I’m super guilty of it. I know all about food and wine and esoteric music and bands from the 1970s or what have you. And it’s, like, come on, you’re just a middle-aged bro!

One answer takes a stab at technological progress: “I’ll be embarrassed that I didn’t believe in teleportation. Embarrassed that I wasn’t excited about going to the moon.”

Then there are those that reveal the social location of the respondent as much as anything, and whose guesses about a future world are cringe-worthy at best, frightening if true:

  • Gender-reveal parties will become totally obsolete when people realize that you won’t know the baby’s gender until quite some time later.
  • Having your first name decided by your parents will be as unfashionable as having them pick who you marry. Believing the amount you pay in taxes should be private. Eating dead animals. Not being able to have two spouses at once. (emphasis in the original)
  • I think I’ll eventually be embarrassed to admit that I love a juicy steak, cook indoors with gas, fly across the Atlantic multiple times in a year and drive a hybrid that still needs gasoline.

The prediction business is a tough business. From Western Union’s prediction that the telephone would never be considered a serious means of communication and Thomas Watson (president of IBM, 1943) thinking there might be a world market for five computers to Thomas Dewey’s and Hillary Clinton’s predicted presidential election victories, the halls of history are littered with embarrassing predictions.

Jesus predicted tribulation in the world for his followers (but encouraged us to be of good cheer for he had overcome the world).  He told us he would be with us to the end of the age. He’s been proven right. He might have an edge in the prediction business.

What might cause me to cringe as I look back at the early 2020s?  Maybe my guesses about future regret and embarrassment.