I Welcome CGI Colonel Sanders, the First True Sign of the Impending Apocalypse

I’m not sure where KFC lost its way, but I’m pretty sure that they haven’t quite found it yet.

Meet Colonel Harland Sanders. He is a CGI influencer with a CGI girlfriend. He is the spokesrobot for KFC, the inferior fast food chicken brand that has, in recent memory, convinced Reba McEntire to dress in drag and created a cat tree shaped like their mascot. He is not the avuncular, Foghorn Leghorn-adjacent Colonel Sanders you might remember from your childhood. He is a salt and pepper, smooth-skinned zaddy who is definitely trying to smash but also wants you to know that he is out here for his brand, building and reaching and striving, every day of his fake, computer generated life.

Part of me wants to hate this because I think I’m supposed to: a brand is not your friend; Colonel Sanders should not be a “virtual influencer”; also, the skin on the hands of his CGI girlfriend is just a little too clammy to be fake. The rest of me—the part that has stopped being upset about what multinational corporations do and also advertising—is thrilled and also disgusted by this baldfaced attempt at grasping relevancy and appealing to both actual influencers and people like me, a dumb blogger looking to dunk on a brand for doing something that is so clearly stupid. But I can’t muster the energy to do so because I recognize that a CGI Colonel Sanders is the clearest sign we’ve seen yet of the impending apocalypse. For that, I am so grateful.

Get mad all you want at this shit, but I’m sorry, I can’t? I see you. I recognize you. Thank you for sending me the sign I’ve been seeking for so long. The fires will start soon; the sky will rain frogs. The end of the world. It’s coming. Finally.