Two Years of Pain and Moving Forward and Pain and Moving Forward

An exchange from 1953's Tokyo Story

Three words changed everything. "Collider Contributing Update." That was the header of an email that, two years ago, upended my existence.

As of February 27, 2014, I'd been writing for Collider.com for roughly three years. My first article was about which "chunky bois" from the Godzilla canon should appear in post-Godzilla vs. Kong movies. Subsequently, my writing exploits evolved to include movie reviews, deeply personal essays (including my first published pieces about my transness after I publicly came out), and analysis of all kinds of movies, including Agnes Varda works and Kokomo City. I was proud to work here, especially as I secured the privilege of procuring more responsibilities for the site. Heck, as silly as it sounds, it's still astonishing to me that my name appeared on a movie Metacritic's page (specifically Io Capitano), thanks to me reviewing it for Collider.

All that ended with one email. Those three words in the headline revealed a note from an entity called "People Operations Team" that "I've spoken with your editors, and we have decided that it would be best to end our professional relationship." The reason? "Your writing does not match with Collider's current standards."

"Gutpunch" doesn't even begin to describe the agony this email instilled in me. The floor had vanished beneath me. I was now falling through the sky, screaming for aid that would never come. Anger, frustration, and mostly tears bubbled through my body, cascading out of my mouth in a miasma of emotional incoherency. I had just talked to my editors on Slack a few hours earlier. There had been no indication of my writing having problems. 

What was going on? 

How would I afford my apartment? 

Collider provided so much of my monthly income, how could I live without it?

Was my writing career over?

Had I done something fatally wrong?

Things only got more bizarre as I took an Uber ride that day and reached out to one of my editors via LinkedIn to just say "thank you for everything, it's been a pleasure working with you." In response, this editor was immediately confused. They had no clue I was fired, and apparently, none of the other editors I worked with on a day-to-day basis were informed of this either. It was all confusing chaos. To add another layer of bizarreness to this turducken of misery, the next day, the Collider People Operations Team entity emailed me again. Suddenly, they conjured up another new reason for my firing. "25% of your content has failed to achieve 500 sessions and your active session per article has been around the 5k mark which is below the site's average." 

This was a totally separate notion from my prose not meeting "Collider's current standards." I'd also never previously heard of problems related to my viewership count. The lack of any concrete reason for my firing, as well as the lack of communication with my editors, amplified my frustration over this scenario. What was going on here? I've still never received a concrete reason for my firing. It'll undoubtedly remain a mystery despite how much it concretely impacted my life. That impact included the site deleting over 600 of my articles, including profoundly personal essays I wrote about being trans. I got no revenue or "residuals" from them existing online. I just wanted them to endure on Collider's servers so that other trans and queer readers could find them in times of hardship. Perhaps they could find solidarity or temporary relief in my words. Alas, they were obliterated in one fell swoop. All that effort. All those words. Eliminated.

 

In the aftermath of this traumatic event, I was immensely grateful to have friends who reached out to Colldier via e-mail and social media posts to chastise my firing and request my rehiring. They didn't move the needle with Collider's parent company, Valnet, but the kindness in a time of sorrow was tremendously appreciated. Meanwhile, without Collider consuming my day-to-day life, I began reaching out to new places to pitch freelance pieces. From these endeavors came my exploits with AutoStraddle, Salon, Pajiba, Culturess, Dallas Observer, Xtra, and other outlets. At least in that regard, a door closing led to some windows opening. 

Still, in the last 14 months, I've encountered a discernible extra level of difficulty getting any freelance pitches accepted. Outlets centered around experiences from queer and/or marginalized gender perspectives, like Culturess and IntoMore, have been shut down in the last year. Major outlets have begun removing their film critics and art sections. Nobody is safe from layoffs. Everywhere I look on social media, there are talented freelance writers pining for stable work or even just a freelance gig. In some warped way, the Collider firing at least helped provide a "trial run" for navigating the journalism-based heartbreak of 2025 and 2026's earliest months. 

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A few months after this Collider boondoggle, I was talking to my therapist about how I still sometimes felt like crying over what had happened, especially whenever I looked at my struggling bank account. Given my proclivity for self-criticism and minimizing my anguish. I off-handedly remarked that it was "silly" to feel this way about a writing job. My therapist responded back that it wasn't ridiculous and I was navigating very real trauma over this experience. Trauma. I hadn't thought about using that word for these circumstances before then. I just couldn't imagine they'd apply, much like how I long thought I couldn't possibly have depression. 

Two years later, I can firmly say that my therapist was (once more) right. I did experience trauma that day. The unresolved nature of this whole ordeal means I'll probably always have a kernel of that trauma somewhere in my system.  Lord knows I can't see a Collider piece shared on social media without getting flashbacks to how abruptly my stint there ended. Two years later, I can't say the pain has vanished nor that "everything has gotten better." Money woes persist. An RT-approved site I wrote film reviews for, Culturess, was shuttered last June. Sometimes, I dream about what it would've been like if I'd kept going at Collider and kept on writing for them (including penning that Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire review I'd been assigned days before my firing).

But to quote Past Lives, "this is my life now." That life has been fully disconnected from Collider for two years to this day. In the wake of that firing, I was greeted with immense kindness from others in the wake of this firing. Opportunities, like speaking at the 2024 NLGJA conference, opened up that wouldn't have been possible if Collider hadn't cut me loose. I met so many great people and writers (like Eva Raggio, Drew Burnett Gregory, Henry Giardina, Charlie Jane Anders, etc.) after leaving Collider's orbit. My life has grown in exciting ways that have allowed me to evolve and discover so many incredibly human beings. 

Still, torment continues on. That doesn't erase the kindness I've been graced with nor the good events that have occurred in the last two years. That reality just shows how complicated existence is as well as what a dire landscape journalists are caught in. If it were just me struggling in the last two years, that'd be one thing. What really makes my heart ache, though, is that my firing now feels like a microcosm of larger, more serious issues plaguing the journalism world in the 2020s. 

Film critics all over are feeling the burn and anguish of unstable employment. It's staggering and disheartening to see so little care being given to writers. It is because of people like Lisa Schwarzbaum, Nathan Rabin, Pauline Kael, Siddhant Adlakha, Roger Ebert, and so many more that I even thought of film criticism as a career option. Those guiding lights will be greatly diminished in numbers for the next generation of movie fans, who deserve to know that talking about cinema can go deeper than clickbait YouTube or TikTok videos. These souls deserve to live in a world where journalism isn't molded by David Ellison, Steve Bannon, and Bari Weiss.

That's not the world they're getting. Skydance securing a winning bid for all the Warner Bros. entities last night only reinforces how dystopian everything is. The company that's allegedly kept a blacklist of pro-Palestine artists will now own multiple news organizations and Warner Bros., the studio that just gave the world Sinners and One Battle After Another. Whoopee. Hooray for capitalism. Worst of all, in the last two years, journalism and artists have been constantly under attack, including ICE agents apprehending and attacking journalists. It's a vortex of awfulness that just keeps getting worse day in, day out. 

Much like Dan Olson wrapping up his video about direct-to-video Jarhead sequels, I don't really feel compelled to end this piece on an upbeat note. "Maybe things aren't so hot right now....maybe [these thoughts] don't need a chipper final note," to quote Olson. This current hellscape's immense gravity cannot and shouldn't be diminished. If I can provide any sense of hope for navigating all this misery, though, it's this:

Two years ago, I woke up to a day that would change everything in my life. My bank account and psychological state wouldn't be the same. Art I'd poured my soul into vanished in the blink of an eye. I knew something screwy had gone on here, that I didn't do anything wrong. Yet my mental proclivity towards self-criticism and hatred meant I was still beating myself up for "ruining everything." If anything made this unspeakable torment remotely manageable, it was other people. Collider editors. Online film friends. My therapist. Hugs from real-world comrades. These are what made me feel like I could face tomorrow and that there was a future beyond Collider. Three words from a corporate email can change everything. Tenderness from other human beings, though, can be even more impactful.

We have each other. That doesn't erase the agony or the fascism bearing down on us all. But we don't navigate all that alone. Even if you think you're alone, I promise you, you're not. Your life is meaningful, and so are the words you put down on paper. 

The pain persists. So do art and the communal bonds making life worth living. 

Recently, hundreds of Washington Post journalists were laid off. Want to help these journalists? Here's a GoFundMe you can donate to that will help laid-off workers cover basic needs.

Here's also a GoFundMe for laid-off Vox employees, as well as a GoFundMe for Tonya Abari, a journalist facing housing insecurity. There are countless other crowdfunding campaigns going on right now for imperiled journalists, so be sure to donate to any you encounter.

On a personal note, I've salvaged some of my deleted Collider pieces and wanted to share just a handful that I'm proud of. Considering how many of my pieces (including a Trenque Lauquan piece I was super proud of) have been lost to time, preserving these essays brings me so much relief. The pieces are:

A look at Across the Spider-Verse composer Daniel Pemberton's film scores

Aftersun and its depiction of childhood memories

Does Taylor Swift exist in the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

Why documentaries should get nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars

Samuel Fuller, not Dave Chappelle, did transgressive cinema right

Nimona and its trans allegory

Monica and its "Numa Numa" scene

My breakdown of why Kokomo City is such a visually groundbreaking motion picture

Please, Keep Letting Directors Talk About Movie Theaters And Projection Formats

On April 10, 2025, Kodak uploaded to its YouTube channel a video entitled "Aspect Ratios with Sinners Director Ryan Coogler". In this video, writer/director Ryan Coogler took viewers through the various film formats audiences could experience Sinners in at their local theater. There were IMAX showings (including those amazing IMAX 70mm versions), 4DX, ScreenX, Dolby Cinema, and, the default for most theaters, traditional DCP (Digital Cinema Package) showings. Coogler exudes persistent enthusiasm, knowledge, and excitement through every second of the video. It's impossible to not get wrapped up in his passion for all the formats Sinners was projected in. 

Yesterday, Amazon MGM Studios uploaded a YouTube video tied to the impending March 2026 release Project Hail Mary entitled "Theater Tour With Phil Lord And Christopher Miller". Here, Hail Mary directors Lord and Miller stroll through various movie theater auditoriums and let viewers know how they can witness this Ryan Gosling sci-fi blockbuster on the big screen. It's not as good as Coogler's Kodak video (how could it be?), but it's still delightfully endearing and full of neat behind-the-scenes information. 

I'm not normally one to advocate for incessant copies, but allow me to make an exception here. Please let these kinds of videos become staples of movie marketing. Please let directors talk about the joy of movie theaters and projection formats.

For starters, there's something so refreshing about seeing online movie marketing that's actually about cinema and the theatrical experience. For the last decade, the Jimmy Fallon-ification of news/interview media has led to director having to work as trained clowns to get the word out about their movies. In 2022, Shazam! director David F. Sandberg remarked in a YouTube video that he didn't mind doing "fun" interviews involving movie trivia questions...but he did resent being asked to "put on this funny hat" and do some dance that's temporarily popular on TikTok. Such stunts don't work to the strengths of the filmmakers nor do they actually help get the word out on new theatrical films.

These videos, though, accomplish so much in a short burst of time. They let filmmakers revel in knowledge and material they're passionate about. They emphasize the big screen domiciles where movies work best. Plus, features like Sinners and Project Hail Mary are front-and-center at all times. Marketers aren't contorting a film that's been in the works for years to suddenly exploit a viral trend that popped up five days ago. Instead, these featurettes remind viewers of all the hard work and specific detail that goes into making theatrical films so special. It's a win-win on so many fronts.

It's also sublime that these featurettes have emphasized the working-class souls and community of artists required to make any motion picture possible. In the Sinners video, Coogler repeatedly emphasizes how "we" made specific bold visual ideas regarding the film's imagery. That's a lovely way of acknowledging how much individuals like cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw contributed to Sinners. Meanwhile, the Lord and Miller video introduces viewers to Irving Barrios, Print Services Post Production Manager for IMAX. Watching these clips doesn't just expand your knowledge about how many "perfs" are in an IMAX frame. They also let people appreciate the villages required to bring any feature to life.

The Lord and Miller featurette, meanwhile, has the specific joy of seeing these directors interact with everyday Cinemark and IMAX auditoriums. They aren't just experiencing Project Hail Mary sequences on isolated soundstages. They're out in the actual multiplexes where this Andy Weir novel adaptation will be play in a month's time. Two cinema architects playing around in the domains where their works thrive (including some brief horsing around with Project Hail Mary standee) is so wholesome. Plus, it's cool to see the endless variety in what movie theater auditoriums can look like. No two movies are the same. Two different places to experience motion pictures have a similar variety. 

My personal favorite thing about both of these featurettes, though, is their personal qualities. Rather than feeling like artificial sales pitches masquerading as paeans to cinema, there's an emotional specificity to the anecdotes shared by each director. Coogler's Kodak video, for instance, features the director openly talking about how important movie theaters were to him as a youngster. “The reason I fell in love with theaters is because …my parents was working class, you know, Oakland,” Coogler recalls. “It was the most affordable way for us to go out and have a good time, have an experience. I still believe in that, that communal experience.”

Meanwhile, Lord and Miller end their movie theater voyages with a trip to the New Beverly Cinema. This Los Angeles landmark is one both directors recall as their go-to theater in their younger years and a place where their knowledge of film expanded drastically. The enthusiastic joy they feel in this space is palpable, ditto the gratitude for how much the New Beverly bolstered their artistic horizons. In both of these featurettes, filmmakers wear their appreciation and enthusiasm for the theatrical experience on their sleeves. Those irony-free emotions are superb to experience.

In the modern world, particularly among the bourgeoisie, apathy is glorified. Celebrities like Reese Witherspoon, for instance, shrug off the idea of challenging horrors like generative A.I. and simply say "the change is here." Who cares about a better future not run by Gen A.I.? It's so much easier to shrug off complaints and embrace the status quo. Drape yourself in nihilistic memes and worldviews. Ignore communal spaces. Stay at home! Stream stand-up comedy specials and TV shows demonizing marginalized people! Make sure your Ring camera is on so you can spy on anybody who looks different from you! Succumb to the Silicon Valley-induced dystopia; it's so much easier than resisting.

Engaging in artistic spaces like movie theaters is a small way to challenge these norms. As Lord mentions at the end of his Project Hail Mary featurette, watching movies theatrically is a vivid reminder that "we all laugh at the same things, we all cry at the same things." More binds us than separates us. Outstanding works like Sinners and (to mention just one of its many masterful idiosyncrasies) its trailblazing approach to aspect ratios, meanwhile, can help plant positive seeds in one's head. If Coogler and company can challenge how movie aspect ratios operate...what else is possible? What other changes can we instill in this world? 

Above all else, these featurettes emphasize the humanity going into movies and all actual art. While companies like Meta and OpenAI scramble over themselves to erase working-class people, Coogler and Lord & Miller celebrate how humanity informs their artistic endeavors. Whether it's formative movie theater memories shaping their enthusiasm for the theatrical experience or emphasis on the communities of artists bringing motion pictures to life, these featurettes are a welcome balm in the Gen A.I. age. 

So please, Hollywood, keep on cranking these featurettes out. I want to especially see Steven Spielberg talk about movie theaters and projection minutiae when Disclosure Day's release approaches. Perhaps Boots Riley could talk about his formative theatrical experiences to get I Love Boosters on more people's radar? Next time Nia DaCosta or Karyn Kusama have a movie coming out, I want to hear all of their thoughts on theatrical cinema. You can never have enough of people talking about the glories of motion pictures and movie theaters. Just ask Ryan Coogler and Phil Lord & Chris Miller. 

A Touch of Wish Fulfilment

An image from Wanuri Kahiu's Rafiki

CW: discussions of sexual harassment, groping ahead

Few things hurt as much as something you like getting warped into toxicity. A favorite song forever intertwined with a damaging relationship. A beloved restaurant, the site of learning about your parents' divorce. Then there's me and my enjoyment of feeling hugged and touched by other people. I'm an affectionate person who enjoys snuggling, heads resting on shoulders, and all sorts of other physical contact. Ever since I was young, holding hands with a romantic partner in public has seemed like the height of romantic connection. It's a way of binding two individuals together while the other person demonstrates they don't mind being seen clutching hands with Lisa Laman for the whole world to see.

Unfortunately, since I've started transitioning and publicly presenting as myself, I've often only experienced touching in a way I don't consent to. Several cis-het male strangers have randomly groped my body or followed me on sidewalks, imploring me to let them touch my chest. Heck, there have even been gay guys who, for some reason, think being queer gives them permission to caress my knee or touch my shoulders. Spoiler alert: being gay does NOT do that, get away from me.

Creepy doesn't even begin to describe these encounters. These guys are the absolute worst and have often left me devastated. Since I haven't been in a romantic relationship or a series of dates since I came out, I also haven't had positive, consensual experiences with women/enby's to counteract these traumatic memories. My only experience with being perceived or touched as "attractive" or "sexual" is through the gaze of men I don't want to perceive me on any level. I just want to yell "GET OUT OF HERE, YOU CREEP!" to these bozos.

Now let's move on to something lighter...a fleeting moment this past Thursday where I got to feel the sensation of touch in a positive, soul-enriching fashion.

My romantic life isn't rife with successes (it's more often involved encounters with TERFs or ghosting), but I can't give up hope! Never give up hope! So this past Thursday, I returned to my local lesbian bar for a Sapphic Dating event hosted by a local queer community group. Located on the bar's first-level dance floor, this event was like a large-scale speed dating event. Attendees would, every few minutes, switch up and talk to somebody they don't know. Everyone was adorned with nametags that featured stickers indicating what kind of dynamic they were looking for. Yellow meant "friendship," while pink meant "flirting, date stuff."

As we all started moving around the dance floor, I immediately noticed her, a woman that we'll call Tonya here. She was tall, exuding tremendous confidence, wearing a dress shirt with the top buttons unfastened, and decked out in red hair. My heart did some pitter-pattering once I saw her, and I was determined to chat with her. For the first few rounds of this event, though, she was always on the other side of the dance floor. In the brief time when we all switched conversation companions, it was always impossible to make my way towards here. For a while there, I was certain I'd never get to talk to her.

Then! A miracle struck! The announcer of this event eventually declared that, for this next round, we had to sit down and chat with someone who had the same color hair (we also had those pink stickers on our nametags indicating we were looking to folks to date). Given that there were only three of us that fateful night (including me) with Ariel from The Little Mermaid hues atop our heads, Tonya and I finally had a chance to talk. Huzzah! We sat down at a small table and marveled at how few other people here had red hair. After asking me about my name, she playfully commended me for putting my nametag on my chest in between my breasts. That was unintentional, but that maneuver opened the door for her to make a potentially flirty comment about my tiddies. Good start.

It's been a while now since the sapphic dating event ended. Now, karaoke had descended on this lesbian bar's first floor. Tonya and I began chatting about whether or not she would be signing up to do some singing. We began exploring potential harmonizing choices for Tonya by looking at her Spotify favorites, an endeavor revealing we shared a passion for Megan Thee Stallion, among other artists. At the end of this task, Tonya and another woman near us complimented me on my outfit and makeup. "Oh you two," I remarked, "Y'all are gonna give me a big head!"

Instantaneously, Tonya wrapped her right arm around my head and grabbed a tuft of my hair. Then, she stared right into my eyes and declared, "you deserve to have the biggest head there is." She let go after that and returned to figuring out a tune, but honestly, I wouldn't have minded if she kept clutching my hair for the entire evening. I was momentarily standing there agog, almost refusing to believe I'd just experienced that. A hot queer she/they individual had voluntarily reached out and touched me. Not only thatm but they'd done it in an explicitly flirty fashion.

When those creepy men had extended their palms to grope or harass my body, it left me feeling so small. Afterwards, I was always reeling over being perceived as an object by these harassing wretches. Here, though, the spontaneous act of touching was one shared between queer gals looking for some kind of romantic connection. There was an equal playing field, rather than some cis-male stranger grasping me as just a means to his vomit-inducing sexual pleasure ends. Plus, Tonya's incredibly kind comments pre-touch about my appearance and her rhetoric while she had me in her grasp (literally) were all about reinforcing my humanity, not draining it. 

As a cherry on top, hey, I'll admit, I was in Heaven being controlled and grabbed by a taller lady. Trying to stop on top of rent, job opportunities, and all sorts of capitalist demands have often pushed my own physical, romantic, and sexual interests to the margins. It was enthralling to have such a visceral reminder here of "oh hey, I like this, this is what gets my heart pitter-pattering and makes me feel alive." And it all happened so spontaneously! I never could've predicted that would've happened even five minutes before my hair was clutched, let alone at the start of the evening. My wishes for some event like this to occur had come true! Wow!

In hindsight, I wish I'd immediately remarked something flirty to Tonya about how much I liked her clutching my hair, but hey, I was living in the moment. If a lady ever does something akin to that again, I'll know to keep the interaction and flirty vibes going. Plus, what's the good in going "ah, I could've done X or Y" on something so wonderful? After so often having my self-critical mind and anxiety tell me, "nobody would ever find you attractive," I got a brief moment of someone touching me that suggested otherwise. Here was the polar opposite of when those men contorted my love for physical affection into trauma.

Ironically, the whole day before this dating event, I was super cynical about attending, especially given the problems I've encountered at this lesbian bar before (like my dysphoric experience with a cis-lady on New Year's Eve). I was convinced all I would get out of this evening was just more feelings of isolation and feeling like a trans anomaly in a land of cis-queer/sapphic ladies. Instead, I not only made several new pals and experienced multiple positive social experiences...a lady grabbed me by the hair and said I was pretty. Finally, those creepy men were not the only people in my memories who'd touched me or said I was "attractive" after I'd transitioned.

Maybe that's the thing that makes life bearable. When I wake up in the morning, I'm entering a day that could contain unspeakable trauma or unexpected financial hardship. I could also be entering a day where I encounter cool new gay people, uncover an obscure cinema gem, or get my hair grabbed by a hot, tall she/they dyke. Life is chaos. To quote a wise Remy the Rat, "the only thing predictable about life is its unpredictability." Furthermore, to quote a Taylor Swift lyric, "it's miserable and magical." Even the sliver of a chance of experiencing the "magical" parts of life (not to mention basking in the presence of the tremendous friends I'm privileged to know) propels me out of bed each day. The chance to carve out new memores combatting and overwhelming recollections of cis-men who groped me...that'll also force a person to abandon a cozy blanket and pillow. 

Life's "magical" moments can materialize in so many ways. As this past Thursday solidified, I sure do like it when it manifests as gay women grabbing my hair and complimenting my appearance.

We Need Those Muppets And Their Love For Jaggedly Imperfect Art

Any advertisement for generative A.I. products makes my skin crawl. How can you not feel that way about technology damaging the environment, low-income neighborhoods, and stealing from artists? However, there's also something so dystopian and empty about these ads. These commercials focus on people needing help figuring out the most mundane things ("how do you talk to your date's father?") or feature celebrities like Lil Wayne and Pete Davidson alone in their expansive homes just talking to their Alexa. 

This isn't an exciting glimpse of technology. These commercials just feel like sad visions of how money and influence can't buy you happiness or reliable companionship. One day, you too can have oodles of cash and end up talking to your appliances like your Moe Syzlack trading barbs with The Love-Matic Grandpa.

Way smarter people than me have already pointed this out ad nauseum, but these commercials also feature endless, eerie undercurrents that demonize vulnerability or imperfections. Do NOT show up to a social gathering without knowing everything about soccer. Do NOT examine books or the larger world around you. Just ask your Amazon-approved appliance. A.I. slop imagery, meanwhile, is all about coating everything in an eerie, sterile sheen placing everything these machines create in the Uncanny Valley. They're disgusting simulations of creativity, not actual artistic endeavors reflecting blood, sweat, tears, and a human being laying bare some innermost part of themselves.

As we navigate a Silicon Valley Hellscape where the rich run rampant without consequence and generative A.I. nightmares are abundant, we could use quality homegrown art now more than ever. What better time, then, for The Muppets to return to pop culture. The stars of this past week's new Muppet Show TV special have always epitomized the joys of handmade artistry and making art with other people.

From the very beginning, the Muppet characters, pioneered and created by Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Richard Hunt, and so many others, exuded delightful, rickety attributes. I'm personally fond of those 1950s Wilkin's Coffee Commercials, starring proto-Kermit character Wilkin's perpetually torturing Wontkins for not enjoying Wilkin's Coffee. You can practically see the paintbrush strokes populating the thrown-together backgrounds, while the Wilkin and Wontkins puppets are sparsely designed. However, those qualities are immensely charming, not a drawback. To boot, they allow more room for imaginative demises for Wontkins and deeply detailed (and hysterical) performances from Wilkins. 

These ads also established the violent chaos that the Muppets would be known for. These aren't just characters meant to sell Pizza Hut products in the 2000s. They're known for blowing up places with dynamite, kidnapping Jack Black, and accidentally setting rats instead of lamps on fire. You never know what bizarre mayhem will unfold with these beings. Wilkins and Wontkins perfectly established that with their dark comedy shenanigans (like placing a bomb in a house, kicking Wontkins out of a tree, or wiping blood off a sword) that I can't believe they got away with on 1950s television. 

Generative A.I. is all about regurgitating pre-existing art and giving people sickening, warped visions of what they've seen before. Right from the start in those Wilkin's Coffee ads and various Sam & Friends skits (the latter of which is where Kermit first properly premiered), though, The Muppets embraced enthralling unpredictability. Oh, and the innate humorousness of random explosions.

With The Muppet Show in the 70s, Kermit and his troupe of wackadoodle friends (Fozzie, Gonzo, Scooter, Miss Piggy, etc.) established another pivotal motif of Muppet media that spits right in the face of generative A.I.: artistic collaboration. The Wilkin's Coffee commercials were about two characters quarreling over a coffee brand. Budgetary constraints limited how many characters could be on-screen at once in Sam & Friends. The Muppet Show and feature films like The Muppet Movie, meanwhile, saw Kermit leading an ensemble of characters who were all working together (or, more often than not, crashing into one another) to make a show possible.

That creative crusade is built on a desire to create art with their own two hands (or flippers). Art that often doesn't go right. Fozzie's jokes rarely land like they're supposed to. Gonzo's stunts or trumpet playing never follow expectations. Poor Kermit never sees any of his best-laid plans come to fruition. Amazon, Meta, and other Silicon Valley companies would likely see these outcomes as impetuses to shill for generative A.I. products that could "solve" their struggles. 

The Muppets, meanwhile, see their jagged imperfections as delightful. Gonzo, Fozzie, The Electric Mayhem, Rowlf, they're always out there the next week or movie, ready to pursue their artistic passions once more. As Sunny Moraine put it on Blue Sky: "A small but very deep thing that bothers me about generative AI as a shortcut to practice and work and skill is the basic assumption that it’s impossible to take pleasure in a creative pursuit that you aren’t very good at and I assure you that is not the case." The Muppets thrive on that pleasure and create special art in the process.

When it's not about stealing art, generative A.I. ads and technology emphasize a lonely status quo where people only need to talk to Alexa and ChatGPT tools for "information" and companionship. Meanwhile, throughout the most memorable Muppet productions, the very act of singing and dancing brings people together and uncovers unseen depths in one's soul. With each Muppet Christmas Carol musical number ("When Love is Gone", "It Feels Like Christmas", etc.), fresh layers of Michael Caine's Ebenezer Scrooge are unearthed. How does Scrooge eventually signify that he's bonded with the larger world? Why by singing "Thankful Heart" with everyone, of course. 19 years later, The Muppets featured a bevy of delightful Bret McKeznie-penned ditties that helped newcomer Muppet Walter (a lifelong outcast) discover just where he belonged. To boot, tunes like "Life's a Happy Song" get so much of their euphoric and toe-tapping spirit from being crooned by large groups of people. 

You could spend your days alone talking to an Alexa or wasting entire lakes to create the ugliest A.I. generated art known to man. Or you could take a cue from those lovable Muppets and embrace the wider, tangible world around. There's so much vibrant humanity to bear witness to. Who needs a hideous digital, Elon Musk-endorsed simulacrum of art and human interactions?

This all feeds into a profoundly important core of the Muppets: they need each other and their idiosyncratic personalities. Week in, week out, no matter how crazy they drive each other, they'll always reunite to put on a new show. Animal and his loudness needs the sage, ivory-tickling chops of Rowlf the Dog. Ladies man prawn Pepe needs the stiff and uptight Sam the Eagle. Pragmatic Rizzo needs devil-may-care stuntman Gonzo. What makes these characters and their passions different is also what binds them together.

Kermit himself emphasized this in The Muppet Movie's deeply moving finale, where he told the villainous Doc Hooper... 

"Well, I have a dream too, but it’s about singing and dancing and making people happy. It’s the kind of dream that gets better the more people you share it with. And I found a whole group of friends who have the same dream, and that makes us sort of like a family."

A life talking only to appliances and spewing out images plagiarizing pre-existing works sounds like an empty and hollow life. The Muppets, meanwhile, epitomize the joys of discovering people who aren't exactly like you, who look different from you, who have different dreams and ambitions, and creating art with them. Not the "best" art or art that Silicon Valley moguls deem "proper." Jagged, imperfect art that comes from your soul, that only a frog from a swamp, a whatever with a chicken, or someone like you, dear reader, could create. 

Those qualities were on full display in February 2026's incredibly endearing Muppet Show special. In the universe of this fictional program, these Muppets are once more bursting with enthusiasm for performing and each other. Doors falling down? An overcrowded schedule? Chickens unexpectedly losing feathers? No matter! The show goes on! Externally, though, it was also great to see little details like a discernible puppet rod on Kermit's arm when he's plucking away on a banjo. These elements subtly harken back to the days of Sam & Friends and those Wilkin's Commercials in reinforcing the homemade charm of the Muppets. 

Kermit and pals aren't CG beings striving to simulate reality. Their strings and reminders of their human performers are sometimes visible. Isn't it wonderful? While digital de-aging in The Flash or generative A.I. art makes me want to throw up, the techniques used to make Kermit play a banjo on a log in The Muppet Movie still captivate me. Human ingenuity always reigns supreme. Especially when it's servicing characters as hystericalas Rowlf the Dog and Uncle Deadly.

We need each other and our distinctive artistic perspectives, not generative A.I. monstrosities. Meanwhile, as video essayist Dan Olson pointed out, the modern surge of right-wing fascist politicians thrives on nihilism and contempt for other people. The Muppet's undaunted enthusiasm and embrace of communal joys are the perfect respite for those toxic norms. Let's keep making art and working together for a better tomorrow, no matter how many things go haywire in the process. "Keep believing, keep pretending," The Muppet Movie's character harmonizes in that feature's final scene. Cling to that mantra in these challenging times. And maybe also cling to a cup of Wilkin's Coffee. You never know when that psychoapth Wilkin's will show up to ask about your feelings vis-a-vis this brand...