Gather ‘round, children. Tonight’s story will be about a man who was much like you and I. He led an innocuous life, perfectly satisfied with the ebb and flow of the UTD campus. But now he wanders the stale halls of ECS South, harassing people to get hyped for whatever the latest tech fad is. This is the tale of Gartner Siekel, a man damned to the cycle of tech hype samsara, all because of a single JPEG…

It was a beautiful day in ECS South. The malignant aura that permeated the building was lighter than usual. There was a defense contractor tabling around the elevator, giving less morally-inclined students hope for a possible internship. Gartner was one such student. He bolted to the table and  began desperately begging them for an internship. This invoked the pity of one of them, who decided to bless him with advice. “Buddy, if you wanna be with us, you gotta be in touch with the newest trends,” proclaimed the recruiter. This advice would worm its way deep into Gartner’s brain, budding into his future demise. He turned around to write it down, but when he turned back, everything was gone, apart from a singular thumb drive. 

Gartner booted up the drive and found an NFT contract. When he saw the NFT, it was as if the sweaty miasma of ECS South had disappeared around him. In his mind, it was just him and the NFT, which depicted a dejected-looking monkey. He felt a deep connection with every contour on the digital simian’s face, and for a moment, it was as if they were one. This beautiful gift breathed life into the recruiter’s advice and ignited Gartner’s passion to familiarize himself with the newest trends of the industry. He went back to his dorm, kissed his ravishing NFT, and went to bed.

To the Moon… with the Electric Bill

With the recruiter’s advice burning in his heart, Gartner decided to investigate a new trend — crypto. After several days of raiding GitHub repos for pieces of long-dead cryptocurrencies, he was able to assemble one of his own — ECSSouththerium. Now all he needed to animate his creation was power. With his invention in hand, he ascended the stairs of ECS West until he reached the open computer lab. He ran the software, and the monitor began glowing with a wan light. The cryptocurrency was live! Unbeknownst to him, however, he had just unleashed unspeakable horrors onto the sleepy campus of UTD. For you see, the colossal power consumption of minting a new cryptocurrency drained the university of its power, leaving it enveloped in darkness. Residents of the university may know that the lights on campus typically remain on during nighttime. This is intentional, for when the lights go out, the creatures in the tunnels under campus come to the surface. By causing a power outage, Gartner had torn down the only safeguard protecting the denizens of UTD from the subterranean fiends. But even when the creatures emerged, Gartner remained satisfied with his crypto accomplishment — that is, until he decided to check on his NFT. His digital simian’s dejected expression had morphed into a crooked frown. In its sullen mouth, Gartner saw his own selfishness reflect back at him. Anguished, he shut the computer down and went to sleep.

Touching Fields of Metaverse Grass

Still stuck in the malaise of the image’s corruption, Gartner resolved to pursue another trend to take his mind off the image — the metaverse. Ignoring the fact that the metaverse peaked with Poptropica, he proceeded with the preparations necessary to connect himself with it. He powered on his headset, and suddenly his mind was unshackled from the cage of his flesh. The Apollonian had finally triumphed over the Dionysian, and it had left a new man in its wake. He was no longer beholden to concepts like hygiene (for his digital being was immaculate), and he subsisted himself on hallowed soma (taquitos) and ichor (G-fuel). Whenever he went to class (the ECS attendance policy doesn’t excuse ascended beings), his sanctified aroma caused campus laymen to swoon in his presence. It wasn’t long before others followed his digital path to ascendance, with ECS South quickly becoming a shrine for those who sought to cast off the limitations of corporeality. Those followers of Gartner who completely severed their connection to the real world became one with the internet, never to be seen again. While worried families tried to find their ascended relatives, Gartner couldn’t stop thinking about his NFT. He eventually took the headset off and stooped back to the echelon of man to check on his NFT once again, trying to see if his eyes had deceived him earlier with the image’s corruption. This time, it was worse. Not only had the monkey’s face twisted into expressions unrecognizable by even the most talented of empaths, but JPEG corruption had started to creep along the edges of the image, crystallizing the image into multicolored chunks. It was then that Gartner understood. Every time he tried some new tech fad, his primate picture would take on the burden and change to reflect the sins of his new hype-obsessed nature. Knowing this, Gartner went to bed and swore to stop trying new fads.

If Intelligence is Artificial, then is Stupidity Natural?

Gartner woke up and had a perfectly normal day. No fads, no nothing. Or at least he did until he stumbled upon a poster: “Temoc Painting Contest: Winner Gets $20”. Gartner gritted his teeth. He himself couldn’t draw, but he knew what could — artificial intelligence. AI wasn’t a fad, it was the future! He got to work feeding the robot thousands of pieces of Temoc fanart, and finally the TemocDrawingBot9000 was complete. He submitted a couple thousand AI-generated images of Temoc in hundreds of styles to the competition (just to be safe) and waited for the results. Unbeknownst to him, his actions completely devalued the Temoc fanart commission market due to the sheer quantity of AI-generated art, plunging the local artist economy down the drain. UTD artists, recognizing the threat of AI to their way of life, decided to revolt. All technology in AHT was excised from the building, leaving only the AH in AHT. The absence of hundreds of years of technological advancement caused a return to the Dark Ages for all UTD liberal arts students, leaving the forces of student-led neo-feudalism to scuffle over the remains of the school. Gartner, after seeing UTD’s artist population fall victim to radical social regression, realized the weight of his actions. Realizing that he had relapsed back into chasing tech fads, he ran home to check on his NFT once again.

The Cycle Begins Anew

After running home, Gartner checked his NFT, or at least what was left of it. The image had been reduced to a vaguely mammalian garble of lurid shapes. Shocked, Gartner started thinking about what had led him there. Had he not tried to ride every new fad, perhaps he wouldn’t have fallen to such a state of tech bro-ness. Maybe if he had just thought about what his actions did to others, he could’ve avoided all of this. As he was about to repent, his eyes fell on the NFT price chart. His NFT was worth more now than it had ever been. It turned out that the corruption made the picture more “unique” and therefore more valuable. All of Gartner’s regret washed away, and all that remained was a man forever condemned to drift aimlessly amongst the waves of tech hype. Thus, the tale of Gartner Siekel ended how it began — with a monkey NFT.