Predictions for the Substack year: 2024
Wherein the Month, Day of the Month, are set down, the Persons named, and the great Actions and Events of the next Year particularly related as they come to pass
Announcement: Awol’s Army, I’m going profesh! I’ll write a newsletter tomorrow on what that entails, but the long and short of it is that I want to start Substacking a lot more regularly, and the only way to do that is with a sufficiently large battalion of paid subscriptions. I’m not desperate for money or anything—I tutor on the side, student finance, etc.—but I am a lowly university student, and so to avoid getting a side-gig that’s too time gobbling, I’ll need to build a family of paid subscribers, which will, in turn, incentivise me to publish more. My current pricings are, following a 7-day free trial: $6 per month, $60 dollars per year, or—if you want my undying love, a handwritten thank you letter, an hour long Zoom call on basically whatever you want, and undue, corrupting influence on the topics I choose to write about—you can become a founding member, with a one-time payment of $150 dollars or more! Now, on with the show…
In “Predictions for the Year 1708”, Jonathan Swift pseudonymously lamented the “gross Abuse of Astrology”—a “noble Art” whose name has been besmirched by a handful of “illiterate traders”, whose habit it was to flood the market with a “yearly Stock of Nonsense, Lies, Folly, and Impertinence”, masquerading as the genuine article:
This Month a certain great Person will be threatened with Death, or Sickness. This the News-Paper will tell them; for there we find at the End of the Year, that no month passes without the Death of some Person of Note; and it would be hard if it should be otherwise, when there are at least two Thousand Persons of Note in this Kingdom, many of them old; and the Almanack-maker has the Liberty of chusing the sickliest Season of the Year where he may fix his Prediction.
In response to these charlatans, and to vindicate true astrology, Swift made his own series of hyper-specific predictions, ones he could only be wrong or right about. On the 1st of June, for example, a French General would be “killed by a random Shot of a Cannon-Ball”, and on September 11th, the Pope would pass away.
Given that, for many of us, Substack has replaced the daily news cycle, I’ve consulted the stars on your behalf, and arrived on a set of predictions. They span 2024, and begin at the end of this month.
JUNE. The last 10 days of June will be dull. Two events will give it some flavour.
On June 24th, Bentham’s Bulldog will drop a counter-intuitive defence of the thesis that Donald Trump is a Messianic prophet, offering at least six Bayesian arguments to that effect. It will garner 27 likes; the comments will be mostly bemused.
On June 29th, Walt Bismark will outline a new agenda for the ‘Dissident Right’. Twenty-something, neck-bearded Rightists in Bio-Tech are to begin research, right away, into delaying puberty in young boys. This will both allow and incentivise them to ‘mentor’ these boys in close, Socratic fashion. Once this begins, Wokism will have three more years.
JULY. On July 4th, Heather Cox Richardson will write about independence day. It will get at least three likes, and at least two shares.
On July 18th, Mary L. Trump will shock everyone by coming out against her uncle.
On July 25th, the CEO of Substack, Chris Best, will become only the second best.
On July 26th, this will be corrected.
AUGUST. On August 3rd, Scott Alexander will mention off-handedly that he’s injecting himself with an unapproved drug called “It Says Gullible On the Ceiling-butamol”. Three hours later, Richard Hanania will follow suit, and encourage his readers to do the same.
On August 4th, Alexander will announce that he was obviously kidding, and pen a beautiful, 10,000 word deep-dive on the role of humour in the face of nihilism.
On August 5th, Hanania—still coughing up blood in a hospital bed, vomiting, and roiling with hives—will write a short, typo-ridden essay explaining that he, too, was obviously kidding, and that if Scott Alexander told him to jump off a cliff he wouldn’t actually jump off a cliff. A medical Go Fund Me will display at the bottom.
On August 11th, Heather Cox Richardson will announce that she’s leaving Substack. In response, Chris Best will offer to give her entire mailing list to whoever can write the best essay titled, “Why I Left the Right to Right the Left: or, How Wokeness Sent my Dog to the Intensive Burns Unit”.
On August 22nd, Noam Chomsky will pass away, and the New York Times will release his obituary.
On August 23rd, he’ll announce that he was just joshing around again, and launch a Substack called “Manufacturing Content”.
SEPTEMBER. On September 2nd, Chomsky’s new-kid-on-the-block status will be upended as the Vatican Press Office announces that Pope Francis will soon make his Substack debut.
On September 7th, the official papal newsletter, “Fighting Frociaggine”, will launch.
On September 11th, a day in history will be remembered.
On September 16th, Stephen Kershnar—a philosopher noted for his defences of adult-child sex, Asian romantic preferences, discrimination against women in hiring—will make his debut on Substack. His first piece will be a spirited defence of vanity plates.
On September 23rd, Slavoj Žižek will increase his paragraph lengths by 60%, “simply **sniffs** to provoke”.
On September 29th, Bryan Caplan will announce his latest collection of essays, GPT Shall Not Replace Me: Why LLMs Will Never Pass My Midterm, Let Alone… Oh… Fuck… No No No No This Can’t Be Happening, STOP IT STOP IT MAKE IT—NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
OCTOBER. On October 7th, Sam Harris will write his long awaited third essay, a brooding, commemorative piece concerning a matter of foreign policy.
On October 15th, Elon Musk will launch a philosophy Substack titled, “Musk’s Musings”, triggering the biggest mass exodus on the platform since its inception.
NOVEMBER. On November 6th, Noahpinion will express a view which—to most impartial observers—looks to be an opinion.
On November 12th, Bryan Caplan will bet Michael Huemer $6,000 that reincarnation doesn’t occur, a bet he ironically made four-and-a-half million lives ago.
On November 19th—now on the edge of a coma—Richard Hanania will write a thought-provoking essay on social dynamics, encouraging people to make it clearer when they’re joking and when they’re being serious, since not everyone can tell all the time.
DECEMBER. On December 1st, Jordan Peterson will launch his Substack, “The Genesis of Revelation: Monsters, Mythos, Mayhem, and Madness”.
His first post, on December 8th, will be so confusing and full of holes that he'll gain 80,000 new followers overnight.
On December 25th, some users will be on Substack Notes instead of spending quality time with their family.
On December 31st, all these things will have come to pass.
I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so many times while reading a Substack post before.
12:46 10/12/24
"Y'know, it's not a coincidence, I don't think at least, if I had, let's say, an hour for each of the followers I gained - it's not bloody obvious, how much good I could do. Now that's a question..."
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