In the New Roaring Twenties, the U.S. government will pass a sweeping prohibition on company-mandated virtual happy hours. Violators will be arrested and impounded on a Zoom with an improv troupe.
The New Roaring Twenties will be a golden age of music—specifically for the genre The Few Bands That Were Somehow Able to Survive on Three Stimulus Checks.
Following a year of isolation, revellers will flock to crowded underground dress-easies, where they can take in an intoxicating array of athleisure and feel the illicit sensation of strangers safely breathing on them.
In the New Roaring Twenties, sexual freedom and safe sex will peacefully coexist. Prior to sexual congress, people will ask, “What kind of protection do you have—Pfizer, Moderna, or Johnson & Johnson?”
Not wearing makeup will become socially acceptable, but men will continue to ask their barefaced co-workers if they’re sick.
In the New Roaring Twenties, the ultimate form of self-love will be starting a Substack.
The opulent cocktail parties of the New Roaring Twenties will consist of awkward and stilted conversations, owing to years of social atrophy. Alcohol sales will jump eighty thousand per cent.
In the New Roaring Twenties, America’s health-care system will still be broken, but at least people will have access to Paramount+.
Cockroaches will collectively grow disillusioned with big-city living and move out to a place in the country where they can spread their six legs. Many will share think pieces about it on TikTok.
Certain brazen, unapologetic women will never return to wearing bras. They will call themselves “flappers” (before anyone else can).
In the New Roaring Twenties, our old clothes will become sentient and feel bad that they no longer fit us.
Real-estate prices will drop to record lows, landlords will no longer have the upper hand, and nervous supers will begin to fix things that aren’t even broken yet.
In the New Roaring Twenties, all A.I. smart assistants will be named after millennial white men. And no one will feel weird about bossing around Amazon Andy.
Longtime residents of pastorally enchanting towns will be priced out of their homes by gentrifying cockroaches and have no choice but to move to Florida.
In the New Roaring Twenties, essential workers will get V.I.P. treatment at night clubs, the D.M.V., and Pinkberry. But they will still be tragically underpaid.
Costume-party themes will expand beyond “disco fever” and “Hawaiian luau” to include “superspreader Havana nights,” for which patrons will dress up as Republican senators.
In the New Roaring Twenties, A.O.C. will be President, Amy Adams will finally win an Oscar, and Lin-Manuel Miranda will write a musical version of “The Great Gatsby” with an all-BIPOC cast. It’ll earn him his nineteenth Pulitzer and first Teen Choice Award.
Institutions built on gatekeeping and performative élitism—from McKinsey to Sweetgreen—will cease to be shiny bastions of capitalism, and everyone will just, like, vibe.
In the New Roaring Twenties, Gen Z influencers will ironically perform Gal Gadot’s “Imagine” at parties to pay homage to that tone-deaf debacle. The song will be followed by a moment of silence, and then a vaccine-certified orgy. It’ll be disgusting but cathartic as hell.
Everyone will move back to New York, eventually.
