Stop all the TikToks, cut off the iPhone, prevent the vlog from barking with a juicy meme. A lot of us are going to be very distracted for a while, and we don’t want any distractions.
Normal life, you may be aware, is to take a global pause while 2026 serves up the diversion we all so ravenously, ruinously crave. Hours, weeks, maybe centuries of collective time will be lost to an entertainment behemoth.
The Fifa World Cup? No, though it does make a handy benchmark. Enormous global audiences, 39 days of thrills, 104 matches and the lure of football’s easy-access stakeholderhood look unassailable. But, in the longer term, the tournament may prove a gravitational speck compared with the time-bending, galaxy-consuming black hole created by Grand Theft Auto VI.