If you think about the end of a year and the beginning of a new one, as it's only natural to do--it's called 'reflection' -- it can be a little crushing to see the utter sameness, predictability and unoriginality of all those around you, or at least those in what are blithely called your social networks.
It occurred to me, I suppose just before Christian New Year's (which inexplicably has no seasonal or agricultural reason for being) that I could write all of LinkedIn for 2026 pretty much before 2026 has even shifted into low-gear.
First there will be a spate of posts reflecting on the past. Then quickly a spate of posts with portents of tomorrow. There will be a spate of posts about the 4000 (the number Omnicom has fessed up to) jobs being eliminated. There will be a spate of posts about some AI breakthrough, or AI tulip-mania, or AI malfeasance, or AI and its effects (salutary or pernicious) on our industry and lives. There will be spates on account allegedly won and dead holding companies rebounding.
Then, like an old Mussolini train-schedule will come the raft of people posting that they're judging something. Then a tsunami of CES-posts where we'll hear about air fryers and their impact on modern marketing. Then we'll have the cacoc of SXSW postings. Either 'are you gonna be there? Let's meet up' or 'vote for my panel,' or 'I heard (or said) this brilliant thing about air fryers and their impact on modern marketing.'
Next, we'll quickly transition into another flagellatory-congratulatorium on the next awards masturbation-thon, with no one no one no one barking that the last 19 network-of-the-year and agency-of-the-year winners have all gone the way of Sears, or K-Mart, or RCA, or the New York Mets.
Then the Cannes show-off-astranza, with people in pastel linen pants wearing matching pastel espadrilles and drinking matching pastel drinks that cost more than entire holding company's non-c-suite bonus pool. Tra la.
Sprinkled amid all this predictability will be the usual comings and goings. The Brazilian judging scandals, the sudden account loss, the Super Bowl spot that was crowd-sourced and cost eleven cents, next to the Super Bowl spot that was ego-sourced and cost eleven million dollars. Then the pompousticators claiming neither one of them was worth a bucket of warm spit and we'd all be better off just doing SEO, ABC, DEF, HIJ, or whatever collection of runes is currently courant.
The point in all this is simple.
And cosmic.
In our fear-loathing era, we strive for and cherish predictability. We hate chance, leaps of faith and gut.
As AI is essentially a pattern-matching discipline that looks at everything that went before and says "here's what will follow according to what's happened one-hundred trillion times previous," or "this looks different, therefore that will happen," businesses of all sorts have embraced it.
AI could actually stand for not Artificial Intelligence but, more precisely, ASS INDEMNIFICATION. That is, a super-intelligence told me to do it. As our German friends said 75 years ago, "I was only following orders." As we say today, "I was only following algorithms."
Now here's the thing that so simple it makes me (predictably) retch.
All art, all love, all drama, all mystery, all surprise, all emotion, all surprise, all memorability, all pass-along-ness, all breakthrough comes from
the unexpected.
the zag.
the 'I didn't see that coming.'
the gasp.
the shock.
the rug-pull.
But we, as a society, as an industry, as individuals, as 'eco-systems' abjure surprise.
We get it line.
We do what everyone else does.
We straighten our ties.
Or rebel in culturally acceptable ways.
As Dorothy Parker was said to have said about Kate Hepburn's performance in a 1933 Broadway play, 'The Lake,' "She runs the gamut of emotion from A to B."
That's us, our industry, our world today.
Attempting to punch-card creativity.
Hoping boredom is the path ahead.
As predictable as piss.
