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Up-and-coming prophet Ricky Sharpton has taken the country by storm with his radically hip prophecies, delighting his ardent followers and angering the more traditional and boring factions within the prophet community.
“How we all doing tonight?” Sharpton asked a cheering crowd of 40,000 devotees inside Madison Square Garden. “Here’s a prophecy: we’ve got an amazing show for you. And here’s another one: faster chainsaws within five years, a supervolcano eruption by 2016, and robot butlers in every home. Boom.”
Sharpton then launched into his standard routine, bringing various audience members onstage and prophesying the invariably awesome circumstances of their deaths.
Sharpton began prophesying in 2003, and soon found himself opening for established oracles and soothsayers across the Northeast. He quickly developed a reputation for making prophesying relevant to a younger, more tech-savvy audience. He made headlines dismissing legendary prophets like Nostradamus and Moses as “stale,” and skyrocketed to fame and fortune with his successful prediction of two new GoGurt flavors and half a dozen celebrity nip slips.
“Maybe our parents were into crop yields and plagues,” said conference attendee Ashley Ruck in an interview after the show. “But we’re not here to be bored to death by some geezer in a robe. We’re here to be entertained.”
Added Ruck, “And it’s so cool that he prophesizes without a shirt.”
More traditional prophets have resisted Sharpton’s unorthodox methods.
“I’ve been prophesying for 56 years,” said noted oracle Herb Johnson, who specializes in shifts in the balance of power between the states. “I’ve been predicting changing socioeconomic fundamentals since before this kid was a gleam in his mother’s eye. And I will be damned if I’m going to start in on rocket-powered cyborgs just to titillate some kids.”
“Indiana will experience a resurgence thanks to economic protectionism,” added Johnson to his audience of seven dozing senior citizens.
As of press time, Sharpton had acknowledged that his prophecy that Herb Johnson was lame, old and hopelessly wedded to philosophical norms with no relevance to modern audiences was more of an opinion than a prophecy.
