About

You'll Own Nothing and Be Happy (originally You'll Own Nothing and You'll Be Happy) is a catchphrase originating from a 2016 essay by Danish MP Ida Auken which was included in the video "8 Predictions for the World in 2030" by the World Economic Forum. While the prediction was originally explained as "all products will become services," in has since been increasingly regarded as a harbinger of dystopian times when the human right to property would be abolished for the benefit of the few. Online, the catchphrase and image macros based on it have been used to comment on sociopolitical and economic issues and developments.

Origin

On November 10th, 2016, Danish MP Ida Auken published^[1][4] an essay "Welcome To 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better," for World Economic Forum. In the essay, Auken makes a prediction for year 2030, writing that in 2030 one doesn't own a house, a car, appliances or clothes, instead renting everything. The essay also predicts mass surveillance and a society split in two. As of 2022, the essay is no longer available on the World Economic Forum's website.

The essay was summarized in the "8 Prediction for the World in 2030" article by the World Economic Forum,^[2] published on November 16th, 2016 (extract shown below).

“I don't own anything. I don't own a car. I don't own a house. I don't own any appliances or any clothes,” writes Danish MP Ida Auken. Shopping is a distant memory in the city of 2030, whose inhabitants have cracked clean energy and borrow what they need on demand. It sounds utopian, until she mentions that her every move is tracked and outside the city live swathes of discontents, the ultimate vision of a society split in two.

Together with the article, World Economic Forum posted a video "8 Predictions for the World in 2030" to its website,^[2] Facebook^[3] and Twitter^[5] (tweet no longer available). The first prediction in the video, based on Auken's essay, states "You'll own nothing and you'll be happy. Whatever you want you'll rent and it'll be delivered by a drone." The video (shown below) accumulated over 9,900 reactions and 766,000 views on Facebook in five years.

Spread

The phrase did not see any notable spread online until October 2020, when a series of threads dedicated to the Great Reset, an umbrella term for a series of economic and sociopolitical policies proposed by the World Economic Forum in June 2020, were created on 4chan's /pol/ board. On October 21st, 2020, an anonymous user created the first such thread,^[6] linking an archived copy of the 2016 essay by Ida Auken among the list of materials (post shown below, left). On October 20th, 2020, a user started a follow-up thread,^[7] this time linking a now-deleted tweet^[5] by WEF linking the "8 Prediction for the World in 2030" video (shown below, left). In the thread, a user posted^[8] a cropped frame of the prediction (shown below, right).

On October 25th, the third Great Reset thread was created on /pol/^[9] (shown below, left). In the following months, the catchphrase received viral spread on 4chan's /pol/, with WEF's deleted tweet and the frame from the video being posted in various threads. For example, on January 14th, 2021, an anonymous user posted^[10] a Reddit[ soyjak, quoting the phrase along several other phrases associated with Great Reset and COVID-19 pandemic (shown below, right).

The phrase achieved spread outside of 4chan after in January and February 2021 comedian Russell Brand and economic YouTuber Mark Moss posted videos about the phrase, Moss interpreting the phrase as a policy rather than a prediction. Russell Brand's video gained over 1.8 million views on Facebook^[11] and 2.9 million views on YouTube^[12] in one year (shown below, left), with Mark Moss' video gaining over 41,000 views on Facebook^[13] and further spread through reposts (shown below, right). On February 25th, 2021, Reuters^[14] posted a fact check article calling out Moss' video as "misinformation."

In the following year, the phrase achieved wide public recognition, being used on Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms to comment on sociopolitical and economic issues and developments.

Related Memes

I Will Not Eat the Bugs

I Will Not Eat the Bugs is a catchphrase often used in Schizoposting under the belief that there is a growing global initiative to push the world into eating bugs instead of meat due to environmental concerns of livestock. This catchphrase originated in 2019 and rose to prominence with the supply shortages and increased regulation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and is used in a variety of memes, such as image macros and copypastas.

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