Everything’s Changing and I Don’t Like It

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I really miss the days when we could confidently walk into a store on October 21st, and know for certain there would only be Halloween decorations in the displays. Everyone seemed to understand; there was a sort of unwritten rule about social things such as holidays; to everything, there is a season. This year, however, as early as mid-September, I’d walk into a store and instantly be thrown into a time vortex, where apparently it was Hallow-Thanks-Christ-ween-giving-mas.

I really don’t like walking into the library or a bookstore to browse the new releases, and seeing that they’re all a version of romance — even the epic fantasy, murder mysteries, and historical fiction, and realizing there’s nothing I want to read.

I’m so tired of spending 20 minutes scrolling through streaming services, only to find most of the “original” movies and shows and even documentaries released in the past few months are 90% filler with mediocre effects and scripts very probably written by AI.

There are very few book blogs anymore. If I want similar content, I have to go to YouTube, TikTok (which I don’t use), or Instagram (which has shadowbanned me). And I don’t absorb certain information very well by visuals/audio, so I prefer to read things like book reviews. But it seems nowadays the only option for coherent text reviews is Goodreads — where I no longer have an account.

Most of the hot new music is in categories I didn’t listen to much before, and definitely don’t now that I am officially old. I don’t recognize the pictures of up-and-coming celebrities, who (apparently yesterday) were 16-year-old social media influencers. I’m not familiar with the brand names of cosmetics companies, home decor styles, or the coolest plushies.

I can’t even say it’s because I live under a rock; I don’t. I’m on social media, I read news on current events and pop culture, I watch YouTube, I have a Spotify account that often suggests new bands or podcasts for me. I’m not the happening-ist person (yes, I’m aware no one says that anymore), but I am definitely not the most out-of-touch. It’s simply that everything seems to be changing so fast.

Just a year ago, many tech and entertainment corporations were saying they had a limited use of AI and it was going to stay that way. Now all the trailers, all the ads, all the shorts, all the websites, all the phone calls, seem to be using AI in some capacity. Typos are running rampant and unchecked in subtitles and photo captions; something that sounds almost like a person calls to let us know our dentist appointment has been cancelled, and it mispronounces just enough words to tip me off it’s a computer reading a typed message.

Nobody has an office number anymore. Everybody has a work cell that promptly gets turned off at 4 p.m., which is not useful when I’m not available to talk to service professionals before mid-afternoon. The traditional notion of “office hours” now varies from place to place, and it isn’t even dependent on the industry. I can call a vet 2 miles down the road and be told they’re open Monday through Thursday, 8 to 3; then repeat this process with another vet 5 miles in the opposite direction and get the answer of, it’s Tuesday through Saturday, 9 to 6.

There’s no consistency.

I’m not saying everything needs to be uniformly the same; historically, we know that’s a recipe for disaster. But it should be not too much to ask for a sense of normalcy.

And don’t say I’m describing “the new normal.” Everything feels…fractured. Incoherent. Unconnected. There are pieces of the world moving ahead at a frantic pace, with most people either struggling to keep up, quite unaware of how much these things may soon affect their everyday lives, or even trying to pretend they can still be living in a way that was common 30 years ago.

It’s…weird.

And I’m tired. I don’t know if I can keep up anymore with who’s in, who’s out, who’s cool, who’s not, and why I should even care, since even that appears to change from week to week. My favorite businesses today could be in the doghouse of public opinion tomorrow — then it will switch back in another month, depending on some trend or some comment or some new meme.

And maybe I am showing my age, but I honestly feel I have better ways to spend my time than knowing what’s going to be hot for the next 5 minutes.