Passing fads will always be a mainstay of the youth. Remember Tamagotchis, hypercolor and delicious Tide pods? They were here and then they were gone, blazing a bright trail through our collective consciousness, like a shooting star. Every year, there’s a slough of crazy new fashions that make us cringe to see in photographs, years after we’ve outgrown them (remember Joey’s chick-magnet rat tail?). Musical one hit wonders, questionable culinary choices and briefly popular gadgets wind up in the discount bin within months. This year, Exotic’s crack team of scientists invented a time machine that they only used once, before re-purposing it into a bong and a fancy trash compactor. We sent one lone man (thanks to Roger, for risking his life with our untested technology) a year into the future and back, to report on what we can expect from the next season’s big fads for the young.
We were really surprised by this one. We all thought fidget spinners were a thing of the past already, but it appears that PsyKid Toys will be releasing a fidget spinner that hypnotizes anyone who watches it for more than a brief glance. This will take off in schools—where kids will sometimes hypnotize each other, but mostly adults, when they realize that they can just tell the teacher they turned in their homework (and, it was flawless). Easy As for all…that is, until they start causing severe seizures and the low levels of radiation they emit cause the users begin to lose their hair and fingernails. Lawsuits and a recall will largely end this trend, but not before PsyKid rakes in billions.
With the steep incline of homelessness in big cities everywhere, jaded kids with an entrepreneurial spirit and gymnastic abandon will begin to use the virtual minefield that are homeless camps and squat houses as settings for ill-advised parkour runs. Avoid those heaps of used needles! Is that a pile of blankets or a person? You won’t know ’til you land on it. Can you scale that ramshackle hut made of stolen fence slats and metal sheeting, without collapsing it? Is that man going to stab you with a pen knife, as you gracefully twirl over his trashcan fire? The best part is, even if you fail, you’ll still get views.
A new school year, a new designer drug. This fall will be no exception, when an enterprising chemist named "One Tooth Terry" will come up with Minecrank. This drug will become hugely popular with kids, as it makes you see everything in big, pixelated hunks, giving you the strength to punch down trees with your bare hands and making you capable of building (and disassembling) a house in matter of minutes. This hallucinatory chemical stimulant will gain infamy, when a number of kids who believe they’re fighting the "Ender Dragon" will, in fact, be stabbing friends and lunch ladies with forks and sharpened sticks. Roger came back addicted to this stuff, and let us tell you, the withdrawals are not pretty.
It seems like pants can’t get any lower. As you watch a grown man toddle around with his slacks around his ankles, you wonder how this can possibly get any more outlandish. Well, this year, sagging fashion will get a new lease on life, with the introduction of "reverse suspenders." This innovative invention will fasten around the waist, with adjustable straps extending downwards, which clip onto the waistband of your XXXXXL jeans and keep them from showing any more crack than you mean to.
These will be marketed as a fun romp with Nerf guns, night vision goggles and team-building exercises. Parents everywhere will rejoice about how their kids are actually going outside and getting some fucking exercise, for once…that is, until it’s revealed that the whole thing is funded by the U.S. Army, as a creative recruiting tool for teaching children paramilitary skills, desensitization to violence, militant nationalism and unquestioning loyalty (along with a healthy bloodlust). Therapists are going to come out on top of this one.
Those of us who lived through the ’80s and ’90s all share a common complaint: every year, rap lyrics seem to get dumbed down just a little more. The literate street slam poetry that it once was has been worn down to an unrecognizable nub of its former glory—think Kanye West’s recent offerings or the truly moronic lyrical abuses of Tekashi69. We wonder where the bottom is and the answer is, "you’ll see it soon enough." Caverap will just be lustful, angry grunting, over heavy beats and bass. Performers will chest thump, snort, growl and bark, but won’t actually have to write any lyrics, at all. Roger brought us back a thumb drive with a few tracks on it and we’ll admit that "Hungh, Ugh Ugh Gar!" has been stuck in our head for a week.
Yes, reaction videos will still be a thing. But, in a world of outdoing one another and one-upsmanship, reaction videos will reach peak-weird when a popular YouTube channel has its wacky teen protagonists react in their usual hyperbolic fashion to snuff videos and hardcore scat porn, among other things. The beautiful part is, they’ll just blur out the seriously graphic stuff for the viewers, while the content creators WILL really be forced to sit through beheadings and piss drinking, in their full glory. Way to circumvent the rules, guys! The clickbait cover stills will still feature the video makers looking shocked and laughing—giving big thumbs ups and cheesy grins, but to a pixelated mass of entrails and human waste. Turns out, it’s still possible to traumatize kids who think they’ve seen it all. A rash of suicides will put the kibosh on this fun little niche. Well, that’s all that Roger felt like telling us—we’re sure he knows more, but he won’t tell us what and the haunted look on his face (and retreat into the broom closet) tells us this next year is going to be an adventure, at least.
