History is full of predictions which were eventually to be proven enormously, ridiculously wrong.
Whether it's the 'unsinkable' Titanic, that the internet would just be a 'fad', or Einstein himself saying nuclear power was impossible, history is a cornucopia of big swings and misses.
And the latest among them has come from far-right commentator Ben Shapiro in his analysis of the new Barbie movie starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling.
Shapiro made the rather bold prediction that the movie would be a box office flop, with no repeat business after its opening weekend.
Advert
He said: “My prediction: [Barbie] is just absolutely going to fall off a cliff after [week one]. The repeat business on this movie is going to be nonexistent.”
Wishful thinking perhaps?
Instead, Barbie has taken its anti-patriarchy message of showing the impossible social standards placed on women and being a role model for positive masculinity very far indeed.
The movie has just hit the $1 billion dollar mark at the box office.
Advert
Go woke, make a billion dollars I guess.
The run up to the movie saw a huge amount on-line attention as a viral marketing campaign saw random objects being painted pink, and the internet soon went Barbie mad.
In a twist of irony, one part of the online furore was Shapiro himself.
Advert
After being 'dragged' to see the film by his producers, he posted a video onto his YouTube channel entitled 'Ben Shapiro DESTROYS The Barbie Movie For 43 Minutes'.
Since being posted, the video has been viewed more than 2.5 million times on YouTube alone, as well as making a huge impression on Instagram and TikTok as people interacted with the video to also express their thoughts.
I'm no PR expert, but that looks like an awful lot of free advertising.
Now that Barbie has become the first movie with a solo female director to make $1 billion at the box office, the internet has been unable to resist dredging up Shapiro's prediction.
One person remarked that the prediction had 'aged like milk'.
Advert
Another tweeted: "It was clear from the first weekend that barbie was going to be huge. People were dressing up! It swamped Tom Cruise! You didn't have to be especially perspicacious to know it was going to do numbers."
While a third simply said: "Ouch."
Shapiro has since released a response, tweeting: "Totally true. I radically overestimated the taste of the American public. Guilty."
He added: "Serves me right for forgetting my Mencken - 'No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public'."
Advert
Someone fetch a potato because that take is SALTY.
UNILAD has reached out to representatives of Ben Shapiro for further comment.
Topics: News, US News, YouTube, Barbie, Film and TV
