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My Big 2026 Prediction is...Not Fun

2025-12-19 · letter vlog · Hank · 7:43 · watch on YouTube

Topic: US politics & society (also: Nerdfighteria) · mode: News analysis · tags: civic or action cta, recurring series, community lore

In the brothers' last video of 2025, Hank asks viewers to fill out the 2025 Nerdfighteria Census, shows his 2026 bingo card, and predicts that AI, loved by the billionaire side of Trump's coalition and disliked by its populist base, has a good chance of doing a lot of damage to that coalition in 2026.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Greeting; Hank answers the 'John Green's brother' bit with his LinkedIn job, younger brother at Vlogbrothers

  • ★ Whether or not 'John Green's brother' is his correct honorific, Hank points to his longest-held LinkedIn job, younger brother at Vlogbrothers, and says being a professional brother is great. (playful) — 00:00:00 · John Green, Vlogbrothers

00:00:13 — Last video of the year; the 2025 Nerdfighteria Census and why it matters

  • ★★ Hank is taking next week (week of 22 December 2025) off, so this is the brothers' last video of the year. — 00:00:13 · Vlogbrothers
  • ★★ Hank has just uploaded his analysis of the last Nerdfighteria Census and finds it fascinating because so much has changed in little time. — 00:00:22 · hankschannel
  • ★★★ Hank asks viewers to fill out the 2025 Nerdfighteria Census through the link in the description. — 00:00:30
  • ★★ Hank says the Census helps the brothers understand what to do with the community, what excites and worries people, and how to orient their efforts next year (2026). — 00:00:45 · Nerdfighteria

  • ★★★ Hank credits the brothers' long YouTube careers largely to doing things with people rather than only making things for them, and values the Census as a way to keep a handle on that. — 00:00:59 · Nerdfighteria, YouTube

    “We are not and have never just been making stuff for people. We are doing stuff with people.”

00:01:15 — Hank's 2026 and 2025 bingo cards

  • ★★ Hank shows his 2025 bingo card, on which he did weirdly well, and warns that this seems a fluke he may not repeat in 2026. — 00:01:28
  • ★ Hank says he will probably make a Hank's Channel video reviewing how his 2025 bingo card went. (hedged) — 00:01:28 · hankschannel

00:01:57 — Prediction: AI could break Trump's coalition of populists and billionaires in 2026

  • ★★ Hank says Trump has built a very weird coalition, presenting himself as a populist while being backed by the ultimate elites. — 00:01:57 · Donald Trump
  • ★★ Hank describes the basic MAGA story: a cultural elite in charge, out of touch with real Americans, wants to take America where real Americans do not want it to go. — 00:01:57 · Donald Trump
  • ★★ Hank says Trump hires from both of his worlds: grievance-based attention farmers (RFK Jr., Kash Patel, Dan Bongino, Pete Hegseth) and billionaires (Linda McMahon, David Sacks, Elon Musk, Scott Bessent, Howard Lutnick). — 00:02:27 · Donald Trump, attention economy
  • ★★ Hank says Vice President and potential heir JD Vance embodies the coalition: now from grievance-based attention farming, his rise funded by billionaire Peter Thiel. — 00:02:56
  • ★★ Hank says the coalition is powerful and works: Trump is the linchpin, admitting he is greedy and mean but claiming to be so for the average guy, controlling his greedy friends for him. — 00:02:56 · Donald Trump
  • ★★★ Hank predicts that AI, a big new force one side loves and the other hates, has a good chance of doing a lot of damage to Trump's coalition. (hedged) — 00:03:25 · Donald Trump
  • ★★ Hank calls AI data centers giant boxes that eat jobs, concentrate capital and replace labor with infrastructure, sarcastically adding that they make billionaires richer while raising power bills. (playful) — 00:03:54
  • ★★ Hank says, judging from every earlier technological revolution, that making human labor irrelevant or less valuable is not a populist vibe. — 00:03:54
  • ★★ Hank says 2026 might bring the popping of the AI bubble, taking a substantial part of the economy down with it. (hedged) — 00:03:54
  • ★★ Hank says that if the bubble pops the government should probably intervene, and the oligarchy side of Trump's coalition will want him to stop a crash. (hedged) — 00:04:23 · Donald Trump
  • ★★ Hank says giving taxpayer money to billionaires who bet the whole economy on technological determinism would be hard to do from a populist base. (hedged) — 00:04:23
  • ★★ Hank says the discourse side of the coalition has no reason to like AI: average people dislike a job-eating box that enriches billionaires and raises power bills, even if it supplies fake videos on Instagram Reels. — 00:04:53
  • ★★ Hank feels the discourse has already largely turned on AI, though he sees only one corner of it. — 00:04:53
  • ★★★ Hank says AI is a tool of economic elites designed to concentrate wealth in their hands, and that this is why they are building it. — 00:04:53
  • ★★ Hank's alternative: the bubble doesn't pop because AI really is worth tens of trillions and successfully eats many jobs, a future that would also make the coalition hard to hold together. (hedged) — 00:05:22
  • ★★ Hank allows that it may all happen gently and the coalition may hold regardless of how ridiculous it seems. (hedged) — 00:05:22
  • ★★ Hank says Trump's populism is not labor- or even class-centric but partisan- and status-centric: many people feel disrespected and have picked their guy. — 00:05:51 · Donald Trump
  • ★★ Hank thinks such loyalty holds only until people start to suffer consequences, and that suffering consequences might now be unavoidable. (hedged) — 00:05:51
  • ★★ Hank doubts this change will be good, especially in the near term, and says it is not making America great again: if the AI people are right, it heads to a new America, not an again. — 00:06:20
  • ★★ Hank says this only matters if people feel AI in their lives, and it is possible they won't. (hedged) — 00:06:20
  • ★ Hank says some big forces stay mostly invisible: enterprise software is enormously consequential politically, yet no one thinks of it politically. — 00:06:20
  • ★★ Hank says so much value has been put into AI that if the bubble pops the consequences will be felt. — 00:07:02
  • ★ Hank says any prediction is risky: get it wrong and everyone mocks you, get it right and everyone says it was obvious; he made his anyway. (playful) — 00:07:02
  • ★★ Hank again asks viewers to click the Census link in the description and fill it out. — 00:07:02

00:07:32 — Census reminder and sign-off

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: artificial intelligence · Donald Trump · Nerdfighteria Census · populism

Also: People: Dan Bongino · David Sacks · Elon Musk · Howard Lutnick · JD Vance · Kash Patel · Linda McMahon · Pete Hegseth · Peter Thiel · Robert F. Kennedy Jr. · Scott Bessent

Projects: hankschannel

Organizations: LinkedIn · YouTube

Concepts: attention economy · Economic bubble · oligarchy · Technological unemployment

Products: Instagram Reels

Also centred on artificial intelligence: Google in your Brain · Question Tuesday Except I'm an AI · Asking an AI Image Generator for Pizza Johns · AI tells me if AI will write novels. · Things are Changing Very Fast · After 12 hours in LA I'm a stand-up comic doing ASMR with a side gig as a music promoter

Also centred on Nerdfighteria Census: New Channels, New Songs, and Just Plain News · My Freakish Talent · Nerdfighteria Census 2014 Results! · Corndog Ghost Attack, Book Towers, and Census · The Cold War of Nerdfighteria · Sleep Paralysis, Double-Pregnancy, and The 2016 Census

Also centred on populism: Just Some Election Thoughts… · Populism, Media Revolutions, and Our Terrible Moment

Replies to

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