Neoannophobia: why you should have it if you don’t already
For most people, the impending New Year is an occasion to take stock of setbacks and achievements over the last year while looking forward with optimism at what opportunities could present themselves in the next twelve months. For some others, it’s a source of considerable anxiety and existential dread.
Those people, the second, smaller group, have it right.
Neoannophobia which is literally translated as a fear of New Year, is a very real condition and there are lots of good reasons to have it, especially as we head into 2024. Here are just five of them.
You are getting older – The number on the calendar goes up every year, never down. It’s not hard to figure out what that means. Tick-tick, tick-tock MFers.
AI is getting smarter – Think technology will never render you obsolete? That’s what the boys at the buggy whip factory used to think. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is here to stay and it’s only going to become more prevalent and proficient at what it does. It’s already getting very difficult to tell the difference between content it generates and what humans create and more institutions and individual users are starting to rely more heavily on it every single day. As it gets better at making more attractive and effective versions of us, the less necessary our existence becomes.
Your food IS trying to kill you – Recently, Panera Bread began offering a strain of lemonade that can be fatal in large enough doses. The evil here isn’t that it instantly invalidates any claims of unlimited refills, it’s that Panera Bread is the most benign restaurant chain on earth… and their lemonade is toxic. Everything about Panera, from the food on the menu to the dining room decor, is a kind of relentlessly raging ecru, which is like a shade of less-aggressive beige on your all-Caucasian color wheel. Frankly, this is a Taco Bell, Checkers or maybe Arby’s move. Panera turning on us is like Lassie becoming Cujo.
Drag queens will eventually become sentient – As certain factions continue to try to demonize Drag Queens, it’s only a matter of time before at least one of them begins to understand how much power they already wield, living rent-free in those people’s heads. From there comes an X-Men-like (HA! Get it?) transformation (Ha ha! Oh wow, I’m on fire!!) into a truly malevolent entity with an army of fabulously like-minded minions who want to make me have sex with them and forcing me to pretend I don’t want that.
The Ron DeSantis Dilemma – Okay, he probably doesn’t eat pudding with his fingers. He might not wear lifts in his cowboy boots. He might not want to legislate all of the LGBTQ+ and Black people and anthropomorphic animals out of existence. And his shot at being elected President of the United States in the election coming up in November is only marginally higher than zero… but it’s not zero! I mean, he definitely does wear those cowboy boots…
Eh, it’ll be okay probably.
