Now this is definitely out of scope. But if you know me, I love tangents. It's probably annoying. Also entertaining. A real rollercoaster for everyone involved.
Damn, I did it again.
Anyway. Here's my stupid prediction: malls are coming back.
They never went away, but they aren't the same experience.
Wait, Hear Me Out
People are going to stop wanting to buy everything online. Not everyone. But enough people that it matters.
Here's my theory: we're living through peak isolation. Peak algorithmic everything. Peak "the AI thinks you'll love this" while showing you the same dropshipped garbage seventeen times in slightly different lighting.
And I think it's going to ricochet.
People are going to wake up one day, look at their seventh consecutive hour of screen time, and think: "I want to go somewhere. I want to touch a thing before I buy it. I want a teenager at Orange Julius to judge my food choices in person."
The pendulum swings. It always does.
The Authenticity Hunger
Think about what we've lost:
The TikTok Shop experience: An AI-generated voice narrates why you need a $12 gadget that will arrive in 47 business days, smell like a chemistry experiment, and solve a problem you didn't have.
The Facebook Marketplace experience: You message someone about a couch. They ghost you. You message someone else about a different couch. It's already sold. You message a third person. They want to meet in a parking lot at 11pm. You keep your old couch.
The "personalized" ad experience: You mention hiking once, and now every platform thinks you're preparing for Everest. For six months.
People are tired. They want to walk into a store, ask a human being a question, and receive an answer that wasn't optimized for engagement metrics.
They want authenticity. They want the weird guy at the record store who judges your music taste. They want the lady at the department store who's worked there for 30 years and knows exactly which pants will make your legs look less like pool noodles.
What Else Comes Back?
If I'm right about malls (big if, I acknowledge), what other industries see this same swing?
Fast food? Maybe people get tired of ordering through an app and picking up a bag from a shelf like they're at an Amazon locker. Maybe they want someone to hand them a burger and say "have a nice day" without meaning it. The human experience.
Car buying? This one's tricky because nobody actually enjoys dealerships. But there's something to be said for kicking tires and having a salesperson lie to your face in person rather than through a chatbot.
Museums? Absolutely. The "virtual tour" thing was a pandemic necessity, not a preference. People want to stand in front of actual art and pretend to understand it while their feet hurt.
Live entertainment? Already happening. Concerts, comedy shows, sporting events. People are paying premium prices to be in the same room as other humans doing things.
The Winners: Experts in Entertainment
Here's my real prediction underneath the mall prediction: the winners of the next decade will be experts in making human interaction feel worth having.
Not just "we have humans." But "our humans are good at this. They know things. They make you feel something. They're not reading from a script that an AI wrote."
The bar has been lowered so far that basic human competence will feel like a luxury experience.
"This person looked me in the eye and answered my question correctly on the first try" will be a five-star review.
In Conclusion: I Have No Idea
Look, I'm not an economist. I'm not a retail analyst. I'm a person who went on a tangent and is now 500 words deep into predicting the resurgence of food courts.
But I believe the isolation era has an expiration date. People will crave connection, authenticity, and experiences that don't involve algorithms telling them what they want.
Maybe malls. Maybe something else entirely. But the pendulum always swings.
Vinyl records never truly went away, and that is my point.