I attended a Tech presentation years ago where data scientists were hard at work mining Twitter, and other social media, for trends that could be exploited commercially. It wasn't too long before silly trends starting popping up everywhere as if the universe suddenly agreed that our hollow souls could be made complete with Pumpkin Spice, ugly Christmas sweaters, and the Hallmark/Kardashian channel. I am convinced more than ever that we are being manipulated by a BOT master hanging out in Mom's basement.