Humans are wired to make predictions, and while we originally put this skill to work in order to survive, it’s now something we apply to the trappings of modern life.

Online entertainment trends reflect this reality more clearly by the day, and the culture of prediction surrounding the media we consume has fundamentally altered how audiences engage with it.

So, how did we get to this point? Here’s a roundup of the reasons behind the rise of prediction culture and how its influence is felt.

The Gamification of Everything

First and foremost, gamification is the defining feature of online entertainment and pop culture at large, with tools and techniques used to keep players engaged with video games applied to many other contexts.

For instance, people have become accustomed to accessing sports odds on their phones when they want to check the likelihood of their favorite team winning a big game. Likewise, this desire for accurate predictions plays out in research ranging from who’s likely to have the next number 1 album on the charts to how much a movie will make at the box office when it releases. And when social media apps and services incentivize consumers to make their own predictions, rewarding them with gamified engagement signals and the prospect of exposure, the cultural shift has a clear motivating factor.

An Antidote to Powerlessness

Prediction culture plays on our evolutionary need to gain some sense of control over the world around us. With the web giving us access to endless news and data from every corner of the planet, it’s reasonable to feel powerless, even if you’re only a casual user.

Online entertainment seeks to redress the balance by embracing prediction culture wherever possible, thereby reinstating a sense of having a stake in society at large. If you cannot stop a major event from happening, accurately predicting it gives you a micro-dose of agency (and potentially a payout).

The Fleeting Attention Span

From a business standpoint, online entertainment needs to feed prediction culture because the companies that create content for consumers are competing for an audience with ever-shrinking attention spans. It’s one of the reasons we’ve seen in-play betting enter the sports bookmaking arena, as being able to wager on moment-to-moment events with ever-changing odds keeps viewers glued to a game that might otherwise not be interesting enough to hold their attention for the full duration.

Likewise, streaming platforms are moving towards increased audience interactivity during experiences that would traditionally have been entirely passive. Being able to predict what might happen next in a movie or TV show, and even change the outcome based on which path you pick through a branching narrative production, is both possible and desirable.

The surge in prediction culture feels like a relatively recent phenomenon, but as we’ve hopefully shown, it’s tied to underlying instincts that make us human. It’s too early to tell exactly how online entertainment and audience engagement will change in the long term, but the short-term impacts are there for all to see.