The Cafe Society (at the time I checked) thread We’re recording the soundtrack for a new film called Happy Feet which Cunctator started on 08-08-2006, 09:25 PM, had a reply this morning even though the majority of the posts were from last year. This is nothing all that unusual nor is this thread aiming at a debate on when a thread is “dead” or “out of date” or (God forbid) a “zombie.”
What struck me is that this movie was still in the works and has since become something of a phenomenon (I have yet to see it, but I can accept that it’s a hit).
What I’m curious about, and what I hope you will be motivated to help find, is whether we have some threads that were prophetic about events that have had a bit more impact than this movie. Perhaps 9/11 or Katrina or the big tsunami or some other event that might otherwise have been difficult to predict in specific terms.
Do you remember such a thread that preceded actual events by some appreciable timespan? Thinking back to some old threads, or even some particular posts, does anything strike you as being a little spooky in how things that were said (and maybe they weren’t as obvious as “I predict” sorts of things) actually came to pass?
I know it’s fairly common knowledge that psychics like to play up their “hits” while downplaying their “misses” and that’s not the main issue here, although I won’t object if you want to make something of that.
I’m just curious if we have some prophets among us.
On September 11th, '01, there was an active GQ thread asking whether it was true that airports didn’t have enough collective space on the ground to accomodate the various fleets, without a substantial amount of planes being in the air.
That question was very quickly taken out of the theoretical.
I predicted more than once (most recently in June) that the last HP book would be out this July, but I think you were looking for something a little more impressive than that.
Not just a whole lot more impressive, though. As noted in the OP, the linked thread was not all that amazingly prophetic in and of itself. It just started me thinking that maybe there were other “predictions” that others could recall where something “came true” in a short enough time to be memorable.
Just an additional spin on the notion that hits me fairly often: wasn’t there a thread on that very subject just x-number of months ago? This happens a lot. And if the topic that was in that older thread had some sort of reference to events that were yet to happen, but when they did happen were quite startling, then the older thread would qualify as this sort of “prophetic.”
Example: months before Katrina a thread talking about the lousy levee system in NOLA, or what damage might accrue from a hurricane hit on the more heavily populated Gulf Coast area.
Whenever the New Madrid fault along the Mississippi sustains a Big One, many people can look back to the various predicitions made on that subject, and there have probably been several per year on the general subject, so that’s a little too “common” to fit the bill for this thread.
Bottom line: something between the completely trivial and mundane and the truly catastrophic is what I was shooting for. But be your own judge. The main idea is to point to those old threads if you remember them.
Can anybody who was around at the time follow up on tomndebb’s “Do a search on username Collounsbury with keyword “Iraq” some time.” suggestion?
Thanks for reminding me: I had intended to reference the Death Pool threads as good examples of the “prophetic” type of thing. However, due to the “count the hits” and “ignore the misses” aspect of those threads, they’re less like what I’m looking for.
And yes, I realize you were funning. Good one, too.
I wager there are any number of unlikely picks in the Death Pool threads. That might make for a separate thread on the very topic. JFK, Jr. comes to mind right away. Did anybody have River Phoenix that year?
I guess you’ve read where Miami is planning a big to-do for Castro’s punching out?
I started a [thread=359546]thread[/thread] about this last year. Sampiro mentioned an Alexander Hamilton reference on SNL, and eight weeks later Dick Cheney went hunting … :eek:
It’s quail season! No, it’s lawyer season! No, it’s quail season! …
Touche’! What would have been really a strange prediction would have been to predict this thread. I confess to not doing a search on the topic before launching this one, but I would be curious if the topic is not older still.
I predict that this thread will not be the last to be started on this topic. Now, if I can just remember that I have said this…
Come to think of it, one of the longest-running “party threads” I ever participated in was something like “Predict the next poster.” No Clue Boy at his finest!
Well, here is one from September, 2002, six months before the invasion.
Note his predictions, not only regarding Iraq, long term, but also the issues of Iran that have already been carried out with their suppression of the moderate wing as the direct result of Bush’s sword rattling.
Here is another one from October, when it began to look very much like Bush and his idiot neo-con cronies were going to make a serious run at an Iraq war.
