What were you wrong and right about - predicting future trends in fashion, music, etc.?

[WildaBeast]

When stainless steel appliances first became the new, trendy thing in interior design in like maybe the mid-aughts, I figured they were just a fad and predicted that by now those stainless steel appliances would be considered outdated. You know, like how all those harvest gold and avocado green appliances everyone bought in the '70s were looking dated by the '80s. But basic white appliances would never go out of style.

Well, it looks like stainless steel is here to stay, white appliances are becoming difficult to find, and at least some people consider while appliances to be outdated.

[sjankis630]

To be honest I don’t remember sales really kicking off for bottled water until Desert Storm. I could be wrong but that is when I noticed it.

[Little_Nemo]

One I was wildly wrong on but it was a political thing rather than fashion or music.

If you had asked me back in the eighties, I would have told you the Soviet Union was stable and would exist for decades into the future. I never would have predicted that the Soviet regime was on the verge of disappearing.

To be fair, this appears to have also caught a number of professionals by surprise.

[Slow_Moving_Vehicle]

@Little_Nemo

One I was wildly wrong on but it was a political thing rather than fashion or music.

If you had asked me back in the eighties, I would have told you the Soviet Union was stable and would exist for decades into the future. I never would have predicted that the Soviet regime was on the verge of disappearing.

To be fair, this appears to have also caught a number of professionals by surprise

Me, too. And also that South Africa would always be an apartheid state. Those who didn’t come of age in the 70’s and 80’s I think don’t realize how world-changing and paradigm-shifting it was to see the Berlin Wall come down.

[Tride]

30 years ago (roughly) I was walking through the resort area of Telluride and some women had a booth offering samples of an “energy drink.” I told them it tasted like weasel piss and would never sell… Of course it was Red Bull. I still maintain it tastes like weasel piss.

[Horatius]

@Moriarty

I recall telling somebody decades ago that television and the web would eventually be combined, and we’d watch television shows through the internet.

Now, much of television viewing is on demand streaming content.

I was the exact opposite. I told a friend that digital movies in actual movie theaters would likely never happen, because I didn’t think the pixel size would ever come close to the grain size in actual films, and so the quality would never be good enough.

Now, of course, most movies are distributed digitally to theaters.

[Tzigone]

@WildaBeast

When stainless steel appliances first became the new, trendy thing in interior design in like maybe the mid-aughts, I figured they were just a fad and predicted that by now those stainless steel appliances would be considered outdated. You know, like how all those harvest gold and avocado green appliances everyone bought in the '70s were looking dated

I recall someone saying something similar just a few years ago - that they expected stainless to the the avocado green of the decade, but then go away.

Interestingly (from the thread I originally linked) people have been predicting fashion at “peak casual” and that things were going to go back more dressed up for some years now. I can sort of see how that’s the case in some respects, but in others not at all.

[Horatius]

@Llama_Llogophile

One thing I was correct about - in imagined the iPad when I was a kid. In my mind it was a newspaper that somehow updated itself to show current news.

That’s similar to one I did get right - I wanted e-books decades ago, and now Kindle and the like are everywhere.

Here’s one I’m hoping I will eventually be right about: adaptive eyeglasses. Glasses that can be adjusted in real time so you never need to update your prescription. They could also morph into distance or reading glasses, sunglasses, etc.

I’ve seen many patents on different technologies for just such things, but so far none seem to have actually made it to mass market.

[Moonrise]

Not a fashion trend but so blatantly wrong that I need to share.

On March 6, 2020, my ex sent me a funny video on how people were freaking out about the new Chinese flu. I texted her back some comment about “the exagerated virus scare” (my words, exactly). 12 days later, the first lockdown started. Oooops.

[zbuzz]

Pete Campbell direct marketing

Pete Campbell has entered the chat.

[mbh]

When I was a youngster, programming in BASIC, Pascal, and FORTRAN. “Syntax Error” was the bane of our existence. One misspelled word, one punctuation mark out of place, and the entire program would crash.

If you had told me that an entire generation of children would grow up, using computers daily, I would have expected them to become the fussiest, most anal-retentive spelling-and-grammar mavens the world had ever seen.

It turned out to be quite the opposite. People rely on autocorrect, and homophones don’t bother them at all. They think you are violating their civil rights if you ask them to use a punctuation mark. If it weren’t for emoticons, they would never use the Shift Key at all.

[Bootb]

@Smapti

When I was in 6th grade in 1994, I had an assignment to write a one-page story about what I thought my life would be like when I was 30. Most of it was some pretty silly stuff about being a cutting-edge super-scientist, but I did predict having a “pocket computer” that would let me remotely connect to my home and office computers and look up information remotely. This was at a point when “car phones” were still in vogue and I’d never seen a phone that could fit into your pocket - by the time I actually was 30, smartphones were already ubiquitous.

You should give yourself a pat on the back – you did better than a lot of people who got their predictions published.

[suranyi]

A bad prediction I made in the 80s: A friend told me I should stop buying vinyl LPs, a digital music format was coming out very soon. I scoffed and said I didn’t think such a thing would happen in my lifetime.

CDs came out within the year.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

I had a pair of glasses that darkened automatically when I went outside in the 80s. But I would love distance-adapting glasses.

Way back so long ago that newspapers were dominant I had an idea for an sf novel, maybe set on Mars, in which two newspapers would be the only source of news and they would take opposite sides on every issue, creating two competing realities. Naturally, I never wrote it because creating two opposing, complex, detailed, yet interrelated societies and all the people in them was way past my capabilities. I could imagine such a world because it was the Nixon era and this looked like a future. Even so, the modern version of it keeps surprising me. I keep saying, “this can’t be happening.” I predicted our world and thought it impossible long after it became reality. I don’t like thinking about it.

[JohnT]

I got one for ya… And this one is actually about fashion. Well, it’s about how my ex made a star change her look.

My ex-wife and I were at one of the Gallifrey’s (I think - I’m texting her about this and she thinks it may be a different 2015/2016 convention), a Doctor Who convention held in Los Angeles. Billie Piper was at this one and we, of course, had tickets to get autographs and pictures. (For those of you who don’t know, Billie Piper played one of the leads, and she also had a career singing #1 pop songs. Has done British TV work since then, very successful as far as I know.)

Being a big fan, my ex bought two photographs and an autograph session with Ms. Piper. Also, akin to Billie, my ex is a thin blonde woman who, at this time, liked wearing overalls and, was, in fact, wearing overalls this day.

We made it to the front of the line for our first thing, the autograph session, when Piper, well, piped up:

“I love your dungarees! Where did you find them?”

My ex and Billie talk for a few seconds about overalls/dungarees. She signs the book, I’m sure we blathered something about seeing her for the pictures.

Alone with my ex… and here’s where the prediction comes in… my ex muses “I think she liked the overalls. Do you think she’ll get some?” I agreed, and we went on to another part of the convention, our daughter likely taking the lead.

We then meet Billie for the pictures later that same day. My ex is wearing overalls, Billie is not. As pleasant as a 7 second encounter can be, Billie did say “Hi!” and locked eyes with my ex, so it was apparent Billie recognized her. “Oh, it’s the dungarees lady!”

That night we are at the hotel restaurant, our daughter as awake as ever (she has high energy like her dad). A rumor sweeps through that Billie is at the mall, Abercrombie if I remember correctly, and that was that.

The next day was our second photograph with Billie Piper. AND SHE WAS WEARING OVERALLS! Another photo was made, my ex not wearing dungarees while Billie was wearing them, just funny as all hell.

And apparently they became part of her (Billie’s) wardrobe for quite a while, so much so that within a few months her fashion change was noted:

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/348747564877668893/

Beth

cruel summer song of the century

Newly-single Billie Piper cuts a bright figure in neon pink dungarees

I would love to post the photographs, but my ex doesn’t want me to, so that is that. But that’s how we predicted… and caused… a very, very, minor trend in fashion for one relatively famous person.

Other than that, yeah, I read a lot of sci-fi too.

[Grrr]

Music: I was right about: Alice in Chains, Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, and Offspring.

Was listening to them way before anybody else was and just knew they would be successful.

[enipla]

I the early '70’s I thought it would be very cool to have a small plane that had a camera in it that you could fly remotely. Now they are a dime a dozen.

Also, you can just download a game and ‘fly’ anything from a Piper Cub to a 747.

[Tibby]

1970s fashions were the pinnacle of haute couture, particularly for men. Garish 3-piece leisure suits, platform shoes, ruffled shirts, wide lapels, plunging necklines, mullet hairdos, mutton chop sideburns…I embraced them all with glee and predicted they would never go out of fashion. And, I was right. They never did go out of fashion, at least for me. Unlike fashion-forward me, everybody else started wearing the ugly fashions of the 80s, 90s, 00s, 10s, and 20s. Losers.

I also predicted disco music would last forever. It does in my house, but apparently nowhere else.

[enipla]

I was very wrong about electric cars ever becoming popular.

About 15 years ago I though it stupid that so many people commute when so many of us could just work from home. To the dismay of micro managers everywhere, COVID made short work of that. I started working from home and never looked back. It’s fantastic for me, but understand it’s not for everyone.

Our small IS group had 200 people working from home in 72 hours. Amazing work, really. Still kinda stunned on how easy it was. We should have been doing this for over a decade.

[enipla]

@Exapno_Mapcase

I had a pair of glasses that darkened automatically when I went outside in the 80s. But I would love distance-adapting glasses.

I had cataracts repaired in both eyes. The lenses they put in my eyes work both for reading and distance. It works because your pupils dilate differently at distance or up close. I gave my collection of reading glasses to the local library.

If they could fix my tinnitus, I would be a happy man. They can replace the lens in your eyeball in about 15 minutes, but tinnitus is a no go.