A popular Twitter account shared a clip Tuesday of children speaking to the BBC in the 1960s about their expectations of the year 2000, and the whole thing is too creepy.
“I think it’ll be… people will be regarded more as statistics than as actual people,” the first young man said in the clip, which has accrued more than 280,000 views at the time of publication. Of course, his prediction is eerily spot on. It could totally be argued that people today are considered more by the statistics they represent than themselves as individuals.
“I don’t think it’s going to be so nice, sort of all machines everywhere. Everyone doing everything for you. You know, you’ll get all bored and I don’t think it’ll be so nice,” the second child, a young girl who is clearly wise beyond her years, said.
What’s most surprising and saddening about the clip is how much smarter young children seemed to be in the 1960s. None of the kids in the clips can be more than 10 or 11-years-old, and yet they’re more articulate than many adults in today’s world.
1960s children imagine life in the year 2000 pic.twitter.com/RLFRSWRRVF
— I Love History (@ILoveH1story) July 26, 2022
Some experts have posited that the “distressing emotional state” of boredom is a “modern phenomenon, driven by technology and a constant overload of meaningless stimulation,” the Washington Post reported. How creepy is that? This little girl literally predicted the exact future of Western mental health.
“First of all, computers are taking over now. Computers and automation. And in the year 2000, there just won’t be enough jobs to go round. And the only job there will be will be for people with [high IQ] who can work computers and such things, and other people are just not going to have jobs. There just aren’t going to be jobs for them to have,” the final youngster in the clip responded.
Okay, so maybe that wasn’t quite as accurate as the other two, but still pretty damn creepy. (RELATED: ‘I Am Legend’ Set A Prediction For Gas Prices In The Apocalypse. Prices In Beverly Hills Just Surpassed It)
In 2021, a report found that many small businesses are struggling to hire new employees as people simply don’t want to work. So, I guess there are plenty of jobs for people to take, but people don’t want to do it. Some companies like McDonalds and Chewy even reportedly offered incentives to get people to start applying for position.
Overall, this clip freaked me out. Have we really devolved this quickly? What we consider “modern life” has been around for less than 100 years, and this is where we’re at? Also, how come children could foresee this miserably embarrassing existence, but seemingly no one stepped in and stopped it?
Ask your children tonight where they think the world will be in 40 years. I think that we’ll either all be speaking Mandarin, those of us who survive at least, or you’ll be my apocalypse food.