Nonsense I saw this month that reminded me that the Holidays are still Like That

Echo chambers are good sometimes, but being largely surrounded by queer leftists in person and online makes me forget what the world is still like outside of that. This month has really solidified that divide, and made me feel particularly pessimistic when it comes to my view of the “general populace” - thought I’m making sure to try and focus on things that contradict that negativity and not let it dominate my thoughts.

To think through this divide, here is a list of nonsense I’ve seen this month that remind me that the holidays (and mainstream society as a whole) are still Like This:

• The AI generated Coca Cola ad that came up OUT OF NOWHERE while watching YouTube on my TV
• YouTube releasing a new “YouTube Shopping” feature, and having creators make sponsored videos promoting use of it for holiday shopping

• CVS ad I got (YouTube on the TV again) that promotes going to CVS to shop for “gifts for all your loved ones, all under $20” - what is the point of just buying a bunch of random cheap crap that the recipient won’t want? Things are really just being created to be bought at this point, to end up in people’s junk piles and unused.
• Not explicitly holiday related, but EVERYTHING IS A SUBSCRIPTION
• A Very Merry Muppet Christmas not being on Disney Plus. This is a crime, shoutout to whoever uploaded it to YouTube.

• Tourists downtown, hauling around dozens of shopping bags; they support our economy or whatever, but I can easily identify tourists by whoever is hauling around a big bag or two from the huge shoe store downtown (which I have NEVER heard any locals talk about going to)
• One of my students telling me how good Red One was. Yes I know they’re a child and I liked horrible movies too, but my corner of the internet was exclusively centered around shitting on it, so it was very funny to hear it praised as a family movie to see over the weekend

• The Wicked doll porn recall - I just need people to know about this.
• This video, that explains how Honey works as a business model: holy shit this is not shocking at all but so messed up. I stopped using Honey after a short amount of time just because it didn’t seem worth it, that they really weren’t doing what they were supposed to be doing, but I never investigated further and connected the dots - this all makes so much sense.
• This list of Target's "trending searches":

• Finding out how popular UGGs continue to be among The Kids. I just will never understand the appeal, let alone understand how they’re still trending after more than a decade. (I didn’t realize they were a big thing even before I was in middle school, apparently they were on Oprah’s Favorite Things list in 2003?!)
• Captcha using AI generated images: they’re not even trying to be subtle anymore about using people’s captcha input data to train AI…

• The Travis Kelce x Taylor Swift Christmas movie, which I have only seen via commentary videos reacting to it and refuse to see past that.
• Seeing how many packages have been arriving at my building for my neighbors in the past couple weeks, beginning after Black Friday
• The new Simpsons Christmas special. I’ve been revisiting a lot of classic Simpsons episodes, and suddenly I got an ad for the new special. What stood out the most was the animation: not that it looked “newer” or higher quality, but it felt like it moved so fast, so blurry, and it strained my eyes. From what I can tell, it’s because of the tweening, or how the frames in between key frames are generated. Some animators have started using AI or automated computer programs to do this, so the images are not based on the actual movements and expressions in the animation, but just creating an image that serves as a transition between the two images, so they are sometimes just a blur of movement.

I feel like such a boomer talking like that: “things back in the old days were different and now they’re worse!” I’m just really fed up with the reliance on AI for art these days and how it feels like every website/service online is trying to roll out features using generative AI. Homie, I don’t want it! And I just remember during holidays and events like this that even though things are changing, it’s not happening as fast as it is in my mind.