No, I’m not talking about Harry Potter books– there won’t be any more of those for a while, at least until J. K. Rowling decides she really needs to buy Bolivia. I’m talking about “Harry Potter” the cultural phenomenon– the inescapable, endlessly hyped mass-culture Event that everybody talks about and obsesses over. The question is this:
What will be the next “Harry Potter” style mass-culture phenomenon?
“That’s ridiculous,” you say, “Nobody saw the Potter thing coming, so how could we possibly predict the next ‘Harry Potter’ scale phenomenon?”
True enough, but think about this:
The Potter books didn’t really explode into a gigantic international Phenomenon until around the publication of Book Three (which was and remains the best of the lot). Which means that there were a couple of years in which the first two Harry Potter books were out there in the underground, as it were, slowly gathering steam. Surely there were some parents out there who looked at what their kids were reading, and said, “You know what? This Potter thing could be huge…”
So the next “Harry Potter” type phenomenon may very well be out there. You may already have read the first book, or listened to the demo tape, or seen a rough cut of the movie. Now, here’s your chance to let the world know, and showcase your Mad Prognosticating Skillz.
What’s in it for you? Fame and glory, obviously, or at least a chance to lord it over your un-hip co-workers a couple of years from now when Antithetical Squid T-shirts and action figures are everywhere. And, hey, if you predict the Next Big Thing correctly, you might be able to parlay that into one of those cushy media pundit jobs, and you’ll never need to do real work again.
So what will it be? Is it a band? A movie? (“A dog?” suggests Emmy, hopefully). What will be the next “Harry Potter” style phenomenon?