“It was like looking out at some terrifying homogenized, digitized vision of the future”

“Dear PoPville,

Can you please call attention to how awful the national tree experience is this year. Throughout the years, things have been taken away. First it was the reindeer. Next it was the yule log fire pit (that everyone loved!) And now it is as if the state trees have been taken away too. Thanks to sponsorship by Google, every state tree was exactly the same programmed lite brite looking robot tree. It was like looking out at some terrifying homogenized, digitized vision of the future. If you walked on, you found that the ornaments sent in by each state, which previously decorated the state trees, were given tree shaped wooden cutouts. And each state was not even given a whole one of those. They were split half one state and half the next state.

In years past, kids and adults would marvel at the flames from the yule log warming the group and providing reflection and conversation. Now kiosks are available for designing your own personalized national tree. So we get to go out with our family to stare at another screen. So much for bringing people together in public spaces. These places used to belong to us. Now just Google.”