Infinite Jest: 30 Years of Prophetic Predictions

Published Sep 26, 2026, 9:27 AM EDT

Abby Shewmaker is a journalist covering books, art, entertainment, and culture. She studied Communications and History at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and is a Contributing Writer at FLAUNT Magazine. 

Few novels are regarded with as much admiration or disdain as David Foster Wallace's 1996, nearly 1100-page speculative fiction behemoth, Infinite Jest. Released 30 years ago and set in the not-so-distant future, Wallace's vision for the United States, Canada, and Mexico—or in the world of Infinite Jest, the Organization of North American Nations (O.N.A.N)—has proven quite prophetic since its publication. Infinite Jest predicted not only several of the most popular technological developments of the 21st century, but a greater shift in how entertainment and technology influence our day-to-day lives.

The world of Infinite Jest does not follow a recognizable timeline or calendar—rather, within Wallace's novel, the government has opted to subsidize time, that is, selling calendar years to different corporations. Without any true reference to the Gregorian Calendar most of the Western world uses today, Wallace's work cannot be taken as a list of conspiracies predicted for the 30 years ahead. However, many of the novel's plot points and themes draw stirring comparisons to the world today, decades after Infinite Jest's publication.

Video Calls And Beauty Filters Took Over—Though Not Exactly In The Way Wallace Predicted

In the world of Infinite Jest, "videophony"—or video calls—experience a brief, intense phase of popularity, followed by a sharp decline and return to audio-only calling. Wallace frames their rise as a natural technological advance—as a desire for more information and features than a typical phone call. With Skype coming onto the scene and bringing video calls to the masses in 2003, and apps like FaceTime and Zoom arriving later in 2010 and 2011, video calling has been a normalized part of society.

In Wallace's world, however, video calling is a short-lived experiment. After 16 months, usage drops significantly as a result of two phenomena: vanity and shortened attention spans. Users are fatigued after having to perform attentiveness for extended periods of time while on the phone, they could previously divide their attention covertly while on an audio-only call. In the meantime, staring at a live feed of one's reflection also incites mass insecurity and vanity in users, prompting many to dress up for video calls, or use High-Definition Masking, a hyper-flattering representation of someone's video, similar to the beautifying filters available on Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok today.

Although video calling remains a key part of online social communication these days, Wallace's writing also predicted that these High-Definition Masks, comparable to today's beauty filters, would make people afraid to meet one another in person—effectively predicting the rise of "catfishing," the practice of deceiving a person online about one's physical appearance or traits, and a term that didn't reach the public until 2010, with the release of the eponymous documentary film. Teens today are much more likely to exhibit poor body image and self-image due to the ubiquitousness of beauty filters and digitally altered images online, according to a report by The Guardian, which prompted Meta to ban these filters for users under 18 years old, Allure reported.

At the crux of Infinite Jest is “The Entertainment,” a film so pleasurable that no one can look away. Everyone who encounters James Incandenza’s final work, starring Joelle van Dyne, becomes addicted to watching it, neglecting every physical and emotional need until they die. No film has had that effect in the 30 years since the novel’s publication, but Wallace’s larger idea feels familiar: entertainment can become difficult to resist. Adults worldwide now spend an average of 6 hours and 37 minutes per day looking at screens, according to a report from Health, while according to PEW Research Center, about half of Americans say they spend too much time on their smartphones.

Today, there is no single “Entertainment.” Instead, there is an endless supply of it. Features on streaming services and social media apps like autoplay, infinite scroll and recommendation algorithms enable people to mindlessly scroll through their days. Wallace imagined a singular, perfect piece of media capable of overpowering human attention. Modern platforms achieve something similar by offering a constant stream of personalized entertainment designed to keep users engaged.

Environmental Disaster and the Great Concavity/Convexity

Wallace’s future is also shaped by environmental disaster. In Infinite Jest, the United States turns a vast stretch of the Northeast into the Great Concavity, a toxic waste zone so contaminated that the government effectively dumps the territory onto Canada, where it becomes the Great Convexity. Rather than reducing its waste, America simply moves the consequences elsewhere.

Wallace was not predicting climate change itself, which scientists had already been warning about before the novel’s 1996 publication. But his satire anticipated a problem that feels increasingly familiar: the environmental costs of consumption do not disappear just because consumers stop seeing them. Pollution, waste and emissions can be outsourced, displaced or hidden while their effects continue accumulating elsewhere. The Great Concavity turns that logic into absurdist geography, making environmental damage both a political problem and a consequence of unchecked consumption.

30 years later, Infinite Jest still feels unsettlingly current. Wallace’s future is exaggerated, messy, and often absurd, but its central anxieties about technology, entertainment, consumption, and attention are now part of everyday life. The details may have changed, but the world he imagined feels much closer than it did in 1996.