To the graduating class of 2026,

I’m sorry.

I know it’s not recommended to open an oratory with an apology, but a) I am Canadian and b) I have very little positive to share with you today. If this gathering were taking place on a deserted island upon which we were all stranded, my contribution to the communal resource pool would be a bag of bitter tasting fortune cookies of low nutritional value, that somehow said the work “fuck” when you opened one, with the same fortune in each cookie, written on a mysteriously non-flammable slip of paper incapable of being used as kindling for a signal fire. The fortune inside each cookie? “We’re all going to die.”

My customary optimism aside, I don’t want you to think that you don’t have a future. You do! It’s just that your future won’t be significantly different from the previous future, which is our current present.

For instance, you will occasionally have a job. You will swing from job to job like George of the Jungle, intermittently face-planting into the trunk of a downsizing tree. Some of you, in what is a well-established human tradition, will lose your job to a machine. This is not a new thing. One of your ancestors once made a living giving piggyback rides from one cave to another cave. It was the earliest version of Lyft. They held this job until some neolithic tech bro invented the wheel.

Losing your job to a machine isn’t ironic anymore. It’s just Tuesday.

Some of you will find a partner and start a family, which right now means adopting a cat or a dog. We used to say “settle down and start a family” but I can tell you, next to none of you will ever get to “settle down.” You and your partner won’t just have side hustles, you’ll have back hustles, a top hustle, an oblique hustle, a foot hustle–which we now call OnlyFans–and, just maybe, a gastrointestinal hustle.

In your future, technology will still be very disappointing. No holodeck. No lightsabers. Virtual reality will still be some over-glorified version of having a small television strapped to your face.

Healthcare in the future? No tricorders. Doctors will still test you by sticking hard objects in your various holes. Dentists will still shove a steel hook in your mouth, like your annual checkup is yet another remake of “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” They will still use a mirror stuck onto the end of a stick to look in your mouth, like a World War II infantryman trying to locate a sniper while behind cover.

In the future, the test for prostate or colon cancer will still consist of a smartphone wormed up your pooper, which has been inflated with air like a wheelbarrow tire. The camera resolution will be better than ever, but there will still be a lab tech sitting there telling you to just relax before you get to experience what it’s like to be an iPhone case.

How will you consume media in the future? Like we do now, except it will cost more. Streaming services will become even more convoluted and fragmented. Want to watch the latest Marvel movie, “Avengers: Who’s Left?” You’ll have to subscribe to the channel “Disney M”. Looking forward to the reboot of Stranger Things, “Working For Vecna, the Middle Manager”? Better add Netflix St-Sz to your credit card.

In the future you’ll still get to binge all of the shows you want, because you will never need to leave your home to buy anything ever again. Food, clothing, medicine, artificial limbs, you name it, someone will bring it to your door. Want to buy a new car? It will drive itself over and go sit in your parking space.

Need to have surgery done? Just take off your clothes and go sit in your new car; it will operate on you while the new season of your favourite show is playing. If you need an organ transplant, DoorDash MD will bring it straight to your car. Here’s that liver you ordered, no onions.

I encourage all of you to become shut-in consumers. Stop going out to shop. Support the growing delivery economy. That way, it will be there for you when your education devalues to zero and your car starts supporting you by driving itself to take-out places for the ultra-rich.

Because honestly, when it comes to food, I believe the most futuristic thing your generation will get to experience firsthand is the dietary transition to insect protein.

You think I’m kidding? Today, as you sit here in your matching graduation cult robes, there are pet food companies that have started using insect protein in their products. And, as we are all aware, animal testing is always followed by human trials.

Dystopic stories predicted that we would end up eating each other. Eat human beings? Are you nuts? The human body is full of valuable organs and tissues and chemicals that the billionaires will buy so they can live until they’re 150 years old. Why do you think Elon Musk is encouraging people to have more kids?

No. No. In the dinner hour of the future, you will tear open your monthly government stipend 50-pound bag of insect kibble, and pour out a bowl for you and a bowl for your pet/child. And, as you pour in a half-cup of rationed drinking water to activate the beetle gravy, you and your pet/child will look each other in the eyes, and you will think to yourself: at least I was able to get our food delivered.

Or maybe not. Predicting the future is hard, and we aren’t very good at it. We can’t even predict the weather two weeks from now with any dependable accuracy. You think you’ve got next month’s long weekend weather nailed down; somewhere a butterfly flaps its wings, next thing you know your country is sliding into a dictator’s back pocket.

Maybe in the near future, maybe even later today when you’re in the emergency room being treated for a cut from a flying mortarboard, somewhere there’s a butterfly that is about to flap its wings, causing a chain of events that will heal our world and give future generations a chance to live ideal lives.

And I hope, I truly hope, that butterfly gets to flap its wings before it ends up in a bag of pet food.

Good luck to the Class of ’26. I thank you for your attention.