I have lived through so many trends in academia (1990s-2000s deconstruction post modernism, cultural studies, queer theory, OOO) but since 2009, the impetus has come from Silicon Valley. Even though social justice activism has almost replaced scholarly ambitions for younger scholars, Digital Humanities MOOCs, and now AI are the top down mandates that we are supposed to adopt or adapt to. I refused to jump on the bandwagon for DH when I was director of the Humanities Center at UCI and a new Dean replaced me with more adaptable admin. At the same time the English dept Marxists gained prestige bc of the 2008 financial crisis but their gnomic statements about financialization were strangely devoid of any analysis of the hard trends within our own work lives. When the AI bubble bursts we will still have to live with its consequences, because we are all forced to contend with something that venture capital dictated.