Catching Up: Swollen Heads

21 November 2025

I will admit to having to catch up on Current Trends — periodically, regularly, routinely — since I was about twelve years of age.  It’s not been a Lather-Rinse-Repeat cycle, but it can feel that way a lot of the time.

During the summer of 2017, I encountered a hilarious online ad for Adobe software.  The satirically detailed, reality-focused marketing of the Hovering Art Director was perfect.  The acting was superb, the writing fantastic.  This selling-product was wildly successful, and won industry awards of the type that count for a bottom-line that’s in the red.

The graphic advertisement was so terrific that it convinced me:  Ads Are Back In America.

Because America Was Back.  Business Was Back.  Sanity Was Back.

Okay, I was a little off on that one.

Everything comes in its good time, right?

All things happen for a reason.

There’s a time to every season, and every purpose under heaven.

Okay, I arrived at those statements of serenity only after many FJB moments, uh, minutes.  In reality, Dear Husband can attest to at least one weekly, lengthy verbal rant from his Spousal Unit during the past . . . decade.

But, America is Back!

It was therefore with some level of optimism that I approached watching a hugely popular online-video of The Millennial Interview.  Featuring Amy, who is really a Zoomer, or Gen Z, and Her Device.

This internet sensation originated sometime around 2017/2018, or the date of the Adobe Hovering Art Director Advertisement.  (As I said, I’m catching up!)

This video isn’t an ad.  It’s an extremely well-acted parody that goes nowhere in terms of a profit-purpose, or bottom line, other than to make fun of an extremely well-groomed (the makeup and hair are flawless) girl who, quite possibly, is an actual digital-airhead-addict.

She didn’t freak me out.  The Guy-Interviewer did.

If I saw that guy across the desk, interviewing me, for any job, the entire “interaction” would have been quite different.  Oh, yes, quite different.

Did the Digital Creators have to depict a grizzled, slovenly dressed, old fart to exemplify Authority?

It seems that without a legitimate market force behind any creative endeavour, the impulse gets catty, raunchy, mean-spirited, petty, and shallow — real fast.  And yet, this Amy-Airhead Video has been wildly successful in terms of clicks.

This development in Virtual Inventiveness tells me that the era of online creativity for-free (or dirt cheap) is a loser in terms of a profitable market trend, and what I’ll call “aspirational productivity.”

The commercial-times might be a-changing.  I can only hope.

The subscription model of news/entertainment/culture/arts/sports/hobbies has been bandied about and dangled in front of This Consumer for at least a decade now.

It’s like watching the horrid play, Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett.  As a university student, I saw this “tragi-comedy in two acts” at the Arena Stage, one night, in Washington D.C.  I was “comped” to review the gibberish.  The only thing I got out of sitting and watching the non-theatre was pieds gonflés, or swollen feet.

At least I didn’t get a swollen head from dealing with the snobs, or swollen heads, who promote such socially-significant tripe, pay others to see it, grant it homage, awards, and pompous platitudes.  Those têtes gonflées never go away.

Those swollen heads are the eggheads that brought down aeons-old capitalist enterprises through the shove-down-your-throat PR of Woke.  They’re currently moving on from their previous failures to newer, high-paid consulting jobs that will break the bank for more stupid companies, already going down the drain.

The Suits, or as the inimitable Sean Connery called them, the Foetuses in Three-Piece Suits, are sure to rake in some really big bucks for wreaking havoc in the stinking money-pits they’ll promote — online — as Sure Winners.

Common-sense noggins in capitalist pursuits, they’re what I’m counting on — to break that Lather-Rinse-Repeat cycle of having to catch up on Current Trends that were — dead ends.