(for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia Rambles)
Good morning pyromancers and firebenders, welcome to Day 372-378 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.
It is too damn hot.
But I have fled my flat into the safe confines of a place with air conditioning, and considering I have a habit of trying to get the schedule back on track on Tuesdays, may as well take advantage of being in a better space to help my mind write out what I have been feeling lately.
The lack of reviews and my emotional state are quite entwined right now, because the worst thing I feel is that I have almost entirely lost my drive to be myself. I was always a person who prided themselves on being someone who persevered through it all, never letting boulders get in my way, and kept moving.
I do not feel anything like that anymore.
Avoiding falling into doomerism is the hardest challenge I am coming across right now. Every day feels like a constant struggle to not let my negative thoughts and feelings win, to do as I said in my last review and stay positive.
The pain still feels raw in my mind, even though I have not been out of the job for even a month yet, but each day feels longer than the last and finding the strength to do anything is getting extremely hard, which then makes it harder to write because even though I want to present the messiness of the modern job search experience as part of the Redundancy Review, a part of me does not want this to become “Rosa rants into the void in the hopes someone will hear her”.
Within the scope of my current industry, I am one of ten of thousands – if not hundreds of thousands – who is out of work for various reasons. Lack of funding, AI taking business, shifting market conditions, AI taking business, greed of the C-Suite, AI taking business…
…you know after writing that out it kind of feels like I wrote the same thing six times in a row rather than it being an attempt at a joke about one of the leading causes around software redundancies right now.
Tangent aside, I am ultimately not special in the current landscape of tech workers in 2026. All of us are struggling with issues regarding self-esteem after layoffs, financial concerns in the short, medium, and long term, and wondering if the industry that some of us still love will ever recover to the point where we could come back.
And then I fall into another category, a rapidly growing category if my browsing on LinkedIn means anything.
The ones who are done with it all.
The ones who do not want to take the strain or stress anymore.
The ones saying goodbye for good, contributing to a greater industry brain drain that I do not think AI will be able to compensate for in the slightest without a massive downgrade in quality output – especially when you consider QA is often the first to go when these kinds of layoffs come around.
Combine this with the reluctance to hire junior talent, and the industry as a whole is moving towards a collapse that may not be coming imminently, but will arrive when things break beyond repair and no one is left to fix them.
I started this talking about tech, but everything I have said also applies to the games industry as well, and I genuinely think we are in the midst of the next big video games crash, spurred on by lack of original ideas coming out of studios and spiking hardware costs thanks to – you guessed it – AI data centres taking up all of the market for components.
You know what, while I am here making predictions about various industries, I am going to write out my genuine prediction for how AI will take shape in the coming years.
It is not a difficult task to recognise I am against Generative AI. It has pervaded my hobby spaces in a horrendously parasitic way that has taken away my ability to enjoy things on a first glance without having to look for the telltale signs of generated imagery, it has made components for PCs more expensive in a way that is taking a massive toll on the industry and making me panic whenever I think my components are glitching out, and ultimately, I think the window for it in its current form to be utilised in any productive way has long since passed, especially when the executive mind just sees it as a way to cut costs.
But we have gone through a period where NFTs were the next big thing, and even though crypto is not in the news as much as AI is nowadays, there is still a dedicated space for crypto related topics and there is a business going on around it.
Generative AI in its current form will probably fall off massively within the next half decade. After the capex dries up for data centres, after the venture capital dries up for salaries, or maybe as the lakes dry up for both of the above, the bubble will burst leaving a massive toll on the economy.
After that, machine learning based AI is likely to take the forefront and dominate the next evolution instead. A lot of machine learning applications have already taken to branding themselves as “AI” to hop on the gravy train of getting more investment and eyes on the tool – looking firmly at you Grammarly – but it is also where the more practical uses of AI can be found in medical imaging, protein folding, and assistance tools across multiple industries.
We are in a cycle of hype right now, where the ones in charge are desperate to get people hooked to keep this cycle going, and once it is all over, there will be plenty of R&D to build a better foundation for something more utilitarian to take the place of Generative AI.
One I hope actually achieves the talking point of “AI and humans” rather than having all of the big heads spout it as a way to save their arses.
Feels weird to have called this “On-Track Tuesdays” when I have changed track multiple times as I write this out, and now I have to derail myself from “serious and semi-nuanced takes on the tech landscape” to “god I love virtual puppetry”.
It is still VTuesday after all, and my unemployment has given me more time to enjoy actual streams from talents rather than engaging in VODs or music as I am normally one to do. Even if I am only able to catch the end of an eight hour stream of Hollow Knight (thank you Biboo) or if I can watch something from start to finish to zone out to, it feels nice to engage in one of my hobbies live rather than living in catch up land.
Before I was only able really able to catch small amounts of streams when I had bandwidth to put them on in the background as I worked, which is why I was able to watch so many different Holomems play Monster Hunter World during the whole “Return to World” push around the time of Monster Hunter Wilds starting marketing itself.
One of these talents is one I have mentioned before, the very fluffy fox of Hololive 1st Generation, Shirakami Fubuki. A VTuber in contention for my all-time favourite from JP, often referred to as “kamioshi” in community lingo, my infatuation started the same way it started with a lot of HoloJP members: through their music.
And then one day, I saw Fubuki streaming Monster Hunter World. I only really tend to engage with the JP side of things when it is something I am able to understand without needing to understand Japanese. Monster Hunter falls perfectly into this category, as I do not need to understand a single word of what is being said or any word on screen because the universal language of “oh shit I am about to be crushed into soup by an Anjanath” is universal.
Watching Fubuki stream World is one of the best memories I have as a Hololive fan, not only for getting to watch someone I admire greatly play a game I love, but also because it has bore a running joke with me and my partner from seeing a Dodogama – my all time favourite monster – absolutely body an endgame monster in a fight, all the while she was cheering “DODOGAMU!” in the hopes he would win, which now causes me to shout that whenever I see a Dodogama.
But ultimately, I follow Fubuki for her music, which is the subject of today’s piece… kind of.
Cause whilst it is a Fubuki song I want to talk about today, it is not the original.
KONKON Beats is Fubuki’s fourth original song, initially released on October 6th 2022. It is my… second… third… favourite of her original songs, but one I still love dearly nonetheless for its catchy beat, amazing MV courtesy of Haru, and a chorus I cannot help but dance along to given how simple the moves are for it as shown in this short from the fox herself.
This is a cover from her genmate Ookami Mio, one who has a close relationship with Fubuki and sang this song in the 2024 Hololive Shuffle mix, where talents found themselves swapping outfits and singing each other’s songs as one big showcase as part of the New Year’s show. Unrelated to the topic, I miss this shuffle mix so dearly, it was such a fun way to showcase other talent’s songs in a fun way and I am so sad it never made a return past 2024.
Mio does not change any of the lyrics as part of the cover, which gives some segments a wholesome touch. Sadly Fubuki does not put official English lyrics on her MVs, which makes it hard to do lyrical analysis due to the variety of unofficial translations available, but I will be working from this video from Pina on Youtube.
The chorus goes as follows:
“KON KON KON
Yes I’m head over heels for this fox
Knock knock knock
Open your heart
Cause I got the feeling that everything’s gonna be alright
Now, I’ll cast a spell to bewitch you”
It is specifically the second line of the chorus that gets me in the wholesome feels when taken in the context of Mio’s cover. In the grand scheme of things they are just colleagues, but like last week’s discussion of CCGG Madness showed, Hololive has the wonderful of having colleagues turn into close friends that you can rely on in tough moments whilst also being able to produce wonderful art alongside them, which Mio saying “I’m head over heels for this fox” definitely helps emphasise.
The ending of this MV also helps to reinforce that, with absolutely gorgeous art of Mio and Fubuki performing together on stage at Our Sparkle, Mio’s first official solo live concert, reinforcing that Mio sees Fubuki as a trusted colleague and close friend, and wants to keep performing with her for however long her career may last.
There is no way to predict the future when it comes to how long talents can stay, but the important part is to cherish them while they are still around. Fubuki has had an illustrious eight-year career with Hololive up until now, and there are no signs of her stopping any time soon, but regardless of what happens, I will always keep the memories I have with her close to my heart.
Started this review talking about how I have lost drive, with the person behind the keyboard worrying about how much she would be able to write, and I end up doing almost two-thousand words entirely within the confines of this cafe over the course of about an hour and a half.
Pretty good work if you ask me, now if only I could do it consistently.
Regardless, thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope you are able to relax today and stay away from the heat. It is boiling hot in the UK and even the measures I take inside the flat do not work too well. Hopefully the end of the week cools down a bit and I do not have to stress too much about cooling down.
I say that, and my intention tomorrow is travelling to my parent’s place to make sure my mum’s plants survive – pray for me.
Rosalia Rambles 