Year-end lists are hazardous to your health
This article critiques the annual media trend of publishing year-end prediction lists. It argues that these lists are a repetitive, self-serving compulsion for analysts and bloggers rather than genuine foresight.
They are a pretty diverse group that spends most of the year frantically differentiating themselves from one another: forecasters, branding and creative agencies, analysts, consultants, bloggers, columnists, and technology gurus. But come December 1st they all share a particular affliction, a kind of creeping trend eschatology. This isn’t your run-of-the-mill foretelling of end-times (sorry, Mayans), but a kind of self-renewing compulsion to offer predictions about what will be in the coming calendar year. You’ve seen them, doubtless read them, and perhaps even felt a twitch to offer one or more up (Quartz certainly has)—the Top 10 Tech Trends for 2013, the Top 7 Toy Trends for 2013, the Top 5 Digital Media Trends for 2013, the Top 3 Eating Trends for 2013, and so the list goes on.
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