I was wrong.

I'd been thinking that as AI proliferates and the rate of content generation explodes, there would be a premium on authenticity. On not pretending to be perfect, but embracing our humanity: the hesitations, the blemishes, the humility. Perhaps, I thought, people would grow tired of the smooth delivery of AI avatars in impeccably edited videos.

But that's not enough. What is being lost in the deluge of information, the algorithmically curated, scrollable feeds is much more significant.

Children no longer build treehouses from scrap wood, craft soapbox cars, or weave friendship bracelets. They now assemble TikTok video collages of Roblox and Minecraft avatars, wearing skins with both the swastika and the hammer and sickle, blissfully—but dangerously—unaware of the meaning of these symbols, the context of these memes.

We all are adrift in a flood of misappropriated symbols: t-shirts with "Fuck Jesus" loudly scrawled over Che Guevara's face, and AI Buddhas making 'finger hearts' under the eye of Horus. Even at this extreme—unthinkably profane only a few short years ago—we simply walk on by, and the symbols and language lose their meaning.