The earth’s reserve of wishes will be depleted within a year, according to a recent report published in the Journal of Wishful Sciences ¹
Diminishing Supply
Traditional sources of wishes — well, fountain and coin, genie, and mystical artifacts, have either been dwindling or vanished entirely. And schemes to artificially increase shooting star supplies proved problematic.
Well
Historically an excellent source for nocturnal wish-making, many wells have been lost due to disuse or bungling kids falling in them.
Fountain and coin
While this classic combination has been a worldwide favorite, our increasing adoption of cashless societies has led to fewer coins getting thrown into fountains. Unfortunately, fountains have yet to catch up with the times and aren’t compatible with Apple Pay, Google Wallet, or any other magical e-payment methods.
Shooting stars
Their supply is stable but can’t be artificially increased, as regulators have officially deemed ‘StarCoin’ ICOs to be fraudulent.
Genie
No Robin Williams, no genie. And while we could theoretically outsource this to AI, the last thing we need is GPT hallucinating our wishes.
Miscellaneous Mystical Artifacts
Magic mirrors, ancient talismans, enchanted frog princes — while these individual artifacts provide decent wish output, the global supply chain of these items is still disrupted, and importing amphibians with royal titles is increasingly more difficult.
Drastically Increased Demand
While household wishing for occasions such as birthdays, eyelashes, or wishbone extraction is essentially harmless, overwishing through wishful thinking is destroying our fragile ecosystem.
The rise of overwishing began in earnest in the 20th century with the popularization of mail correspondence, where all the best wishes were used in a single exchange.
However, the most significant drain on the earth’s reserve of wishes is overwishing in the form of globe-wide wishful thinking. The most prominent example is the response to the climate crisis, where political and industry forces have normalized wishful thinking on an unprecedented scale.
What to do
Politicians and corporations peddling wishful thinking, such as wishing for a technological breakthrough to solve the climate crisis, should be called out — ideally as ‘Charlatans!’ with an urgency of seeing your micro apartment on fire.
And for individuals, we should also be more conscientious in our private wish consumption, such as selecting one ‘Best wish’ instead of ‘Best wishes’ in our correspondence.
¹ T., & Dreamer, H. (2023). Depletion of Global Wish Reserves. Journal of Wishful Sciences, 7(2), 123–145.