Pumpkin Spice is IRL AI Slop
Autumn deserves better. And so do we.
At this point, dear reader, you could probably guess The Cure’s relationship with autumn.
You’d fairly expect some kind of stupidly heady take that goes something like: fall is one long blast of glory where the life-fire that burned green through spring and summer manifests itself anew through the blazing foliage, backyard firepits, tailgate grills, and the technicolor hearth of October sunsets alike etcetera etcetera so on and so forth.
And you’d be 99% right.
Fall is at once the most ethereal and earthly of seasons, a brief turn in the year that feels singularly, crisply alive.
Maybe it’s our deciduous East Coast heart, but we sure do love autumn for all its poetry: the Sunday afternoon texture of the light, the giddying smell of woodfires and metal tang of bourbon from the flask, the buttery tooth of beer-boiled bratwurst, the gossamer rustle of wind through fallen leaves.
You know what isn’t on that list, though?
Fuckin’ pumpkin spice.
Now, because we are lovers, not fighters, it saddens us to have to take this tone.
But in an era of crumbling norms and shattered taboos, someone has to stand up and do something about the spiraling pumpkin-spice-ification of autumn.
Someone has to call out pumpkin spice as the cute, seasonal invasive species hell-bent on seasonal domination it truly is.
And look. This all happened by accident.
We welcomed pumpkin spice into our coffee shops, thinking it could be contained by lattes. We couldn’t have fathomed the flavor profile’s insatiable need to leech the beauty from autumn and distill it into endless new forms of mediocre pumpkin simulacra.
We were all naive. But then again…how could we have known what a scourge pumpkin spice would become?
Now, there are pumpkin spiced tacos and pumpkin spiced pizza. There are pumpkin spiced deodorant and pumpkin spice cat litter. There is pumpkin spiced cannabis and actually pumpkin spice toilet paper.
No flavor should apply to the above constellation of items.
There is no world where cat litter and tacos should share notes of any kind, no matter how festive.
Your toilet paper should not be in direct conversation with your bag of Pumpkin Kush reefer.
At this late hour, it’s become clear that pumpkin spice is the closest thing physical reality has to AI-generated slop. And that Starbucks, by spraying said slop with a corporate firehose across an entire society of consumers, is probably responsible for summoning this scourge into the world.
But that’s too easy an explanation. It lets us — people of conscience and taste — off the hook a little too easily.
It’s worth mentioning here that we have no beef with you lovers of pumpkin spice. This is not about individual choices. We’re simply carving existential pumpkins here. Examining the sinister and systemic dynamics of pumpkin spice’s psycho-social world takeover, unpacking society-at-large’s moral relationship to seasonal gimmicks.
We do not fault or disparage you for your PSL affection, because we, too, are guilty.
All of us are.
We all knew coffee was already perfect. We accepted pumpkin pie as nature’s intended vessel for pumpkin flavor. We nodded reverently toward apple-cider donuts as the official taste of fall.
But we let our guard down. Stood by as Big Pumpkin hijacked our love of autumn, ground it into synthetic flavoring, mixed it into everything from coffee to cat litter, and sold it right back to us.
We were the ones collectively drinking our pumpkin-spiced lattes while buying pumpkin-spiced cat litter and acting like that was just an OK thing to be doing in the world.
But the good news is: we’re all reckoning with our own mistakes. We’re capable of forgiveness and change. And slowly, we’re coming to terms with the pumpkin-spice-pocalypse we’ve wrought.
Just look at the inspiring figures out there. Heroes like Sloop Brewing Company, who recently released their No Pumpkin Hazy IPA. It’s brewed with zero pumpkins and 100% normal awesome beer. Or there’s the No Gourds Were Harmed Coffee Blend, roasted especially for making coffee that tastes like coffee. Even Etsy’s awash in the kind of anti-pumpkin-spice merch every movement needs.
So take heart in these pioneering spirits, for it won’t be easy wresting autumn back from the depraved pumpkin powers that be.
It’ll take time. The anti-pumpkin-spice revolution will require sacrifice. Our character will be tested. We’ll question why we actually carried this silly bit through an entire Cure, when really, we should’ve just told you to read the perpetually incredible piece of autumnal satire “It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers” instead.
And yet.
Armed with nothing but furious moral clarity and the courage of our convictions, we can still beat pumpkin spice at its own game.
We can put down the latte and pick up the apple cider.
We can take back autumn.
CONVICTS
