6 Times Pocket Readers Predicted the Future

Five years before the word “doomscroll” entered the cultural lexicon, the Pocket community anointed this Guardian piece one of the top saved pieces of the year. “The media feeds us small bites of trivial matter, tidbits that don’t really concern our lives and don’t require thinking,” Rolf Dobelli wrote in 2013, years before TikTok was invented to perfect that very model.

Back in 2012, Gizmodo’s Mat Honan detailed the “internet-losing” missteps that Yahoo made after acquiring popular photosharing site Flickr—but it wasn’t just the internet they lost. The corporation, once worth $140 billion, was sold for parts to Verizon in 2017 for only $4.5 billion.

In what we might consider the urtext of Millennial bashing, Tim Urban’s Wait But Why explainer refers to that diamond-killing, avocado toast-loving generation as “Generation Y”, which feels, now, lovably quaint. Same goes for what Urban refers to as “Facebook Image Crafting,” a phenomenon that’s not only worsened, but spread to a host of platforms for Millennials and their Gen Z friends to filter away anything less than perfect.

Just two years after the first “Netflix Original” production—Lilyhammer, followed by House of Cards—The Atlantic investigated the streamer’s highly calculated devotion to algorithmically created genres, with writer Alexis C. Madrigal noting that “Netflix’s data can’t tell them how to make a TV show, but it can tell them what they should be making.” 1,500 Netflix originals later—with competitors like Apple TV+, HBO Max, and Disney+ crowding in—it’s clear this approach has made an impact, not just on Netflix, but the streaming landscape itself.

Five years ago, climate journalist David Wallace-Wells kicked off his New York piece with the unsettling phrase “It is, I promise, worse than you think.” Back then, the I.P.C.C. clocked the earth as warming 0.87 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial average. By 2022, that number went up 25%. Worse than we think, indeed.

Well, if you thought the last one was depressing, please note that this headline was a question many Pocket users considered in 2018. If you have a strong stomach, reread Ed Yong’s startlingly foreboding investigation that quotes Anthony Fauci—back then, hardly the household name he is today—and manages to also mention, we regret to inform you, monkeypox.

Dive into the brilliant advice, timeless long reads, and top stories that the Pocket community has been saving—and coming back to—for the past decade.