The Morning News links to a Newsweek article about some bad recent predictions. See if you can predict which of your favourite ones are on it.
Coming in at number 6 is the death of irony. Which wasn't a prediction and was wrong the moment it was said anyway. Ironically it was uttered by an American a nation whose sense of irony tends toward the suspect (not that they can't do it or understand it but there seem to be any number of literalists over there with too much access to the public).
The end of irony was, of course, a reaction to 9/11. That the Guardian had Chris Morris lampooning the media reaction to 9/11 mere days afterwards was obviously just a death spasm. Irony didn't even ironically survive, it just kept going in the face of any number of people wanting to be all po-faced about it. How could people laugh at time like that? Well, some people are sick but quite a few more use humour, dry sarcastic humour as much as any other, as a catharsis and that wasn't going to go away, just like history didn't end in the '90s.
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