Underexplained Predictions For 2025

This is what's going to happen in 2025, according to the Defector staff.

Samer Kalaf

• "Face with bags under eyes" becomes a very popular emoji to use.
• Donald Trump exacerbates the Caitlin Clark culture war around the start of the WNBA season, to the point that it provokes some kind of labor action by the players.
• A Supreme Court justice dies (not sure which one).

Kelsey McKinney

• Shirley Temples (and Dirty Shirley) will make a huge comeback.
• Everyone will be going to Havana for vacation.
• Post-2016 was all about skincare. Post-2024 will be about buying hair care products. 

Ray Ratto

• Wicked 2 will be savaged as the worst movie in a decade. Not even the scene where Galinda shoots the Wizard in the back of the head on the motorboat in Lake Tahoe will save it.
• The Winnipeg Jets will win the Stanley Cup and then threaten to move.
• There will be three more Normal Gossip spinoffs done by other people.

Dan McQuade

• Bean Dad is in the news again for a bean-related incident.
• The New York Times publishes the word “fartknocker.”
• Joe Biden easily breaks out of prison.

Luis Paez-Pumar

• Manchester City will get a points penalty for its financial crimes, but it will be somewhere in the magnitude of only 30 points, leaving everyone angry and disappointed without any real consequences. 
• Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton will crash into each other in the first race of the F1 season, but then will win the Constructors' Championship for Ferrari anyway. 

• The NBA becomes the final Big Four league to announce a team in Las Vegas, but instead of expansion, it will be the Pelicans moving from New Orleans. 

Barry Petchesky

• The viral animal of 2025 will be the armadillo.
• Someone is going to start regularly using the eephus as an out pitch.
• Chain wallets will come back in style.

Giri Nathan

• Guitar “shredding” is back.
• [redacted] attempted again.
• Snakes viewed more positively.

Sabrina Imbler

• The name Olaf.
• Innovations in Teeth (enough said!)
• Stargazy pie will finally make an appearance on the Great British Bake Off, and order will be restored across every nation.

Patrick Redford

• The -maxing, -core, -coded, and -wave suffixes are out, to be replaced by the eternal present participle tense and the "His face when he snap it" caption voice. 
• Donald Trump is credited with "saving" TikTok, leading to further cultural capture of Generations Z and A. The much-predicted Trump-Musk crackup does not happen in 2025.
• The Oklahoma City Thunder will win the NBA championship, and Chet Holmgren will drop so much AAVE in the wake of the win that we finally get a discourse cycle about that blaccent.

Tom Ley

• It will be a big year for blankets.
• WNBA betting scandal.
• Everyone moves to Buffalo.