Enough already with the endless stream of new year’s predictions for the New Year. My proposal: since there’s hella more joy in absence of tsuris and shpilkes than there is in the actuality, why don’t we focus on what won’t happen, for once.

Best of all, this playbook has already been written. As every financial pundit worth his, her, or vz’s salt knows, “this could happen, that could happen, maybe none of it happens,” is pretty much saying everything is possible, but nothing likely. Excellent idea for a year where the best news would be the recession that never came to pass.

So in the spirit of pure contrarianism, here’s a few things The Reductionist is damned sure won’t happen next year:

Top of the list—we won’t  have a presidential election in the next 12 months, and I cannot tell you how good that makes me feel. Sure, there will be busloads of the overly ambitious out there shamelessly hawking their wares, but at least there won’t be gut wrenching, stomach clenching, bile-raising neurosis that attends our nation’s quadrennial self-flagellation.

Nobody you want to go away, will—from the ex-presidential guy to the cable news talking heads you love to hate, to the Jewish space laser lady, to the legions of endlessly self-promoting Kardashians, they are just going to hang around, stinking up the joint.

Neither will COVID. If you don’t get that by now, you never will (which, by the way, is another thing that won’t happen for millions of our theoretically intelligent neighbors). 

Superbowl advertising won’t be better or worse that it always is. And it never will be.

Come to think of it, advertising, as an industry won’t discover it has anything in common with any of the characters in the Wizard of Oz (except maybe the Wizard). Hearts, courage, and conscience will remain on too many dusty agency supply room shelves, unasked-for.

AI won’t be the flip of the switch that instantly transforms everything creative. At least not in 2023. Experience future years at your own risk.

Twitter won’t vanish in a puff of smoke. The metaverse won’t be all that it’s cracked up to be. NFTs and crypto still won’t make any sense. Billionaire craziness won’t diminish in the slightest.

The mystery of how people survive in Times Square on New Year’s Eve for 20 hours with no port-a-potties will not be solved. And I, for one, won’t try to solve it.

With that, from all of us to all of you, here’s to you and yours for the coming 365. And that nothing happens (except the things you really want).