There’s an AI video making the rounds this week on X, aka Twitter. It shows an '80s-era holiday-bedazzled mall, with schmaltzy Christmas music playing, and families strolling about, holding hands, presumably talking about who they love more - Santa Claus or Ronald Reagan.
The VHS timestamp evokes a supposedly simpler time, in an analog shopping world, filled with now dead or near-dead retail concepts like B. Dalton Books, Orange Julius, Sears, and JCPenney. The caption laments the decline of mall culture: “Amazon and private equity killed so much of American life.”
Reading this, I could’ve sworn I heard a record scratch and a voiceover ask, “Wait, what did she say?”
I’m not familiar with the person (or bot) behind the account, but with almost 10 million views and 98,000 likes, her idea has traction. It echoes a line of populist thinking I hear or read about constantly: Big, evil money murdered something good - in this case, the cultural touchstones of your childhood.
This assignment of blame might feel comforting, but it’s completely wrong. You killed the mall. I killed the mall. We all killed the mall, and I’d do it again, because when you clear your mind of all the nostalgic bullshit, you can see that the mall had issues.