P eople like to complain about living in 2024. “It’s a world gone mad!” they say. “It’s straight out of a Huxley novel that nobody’s read because everyone’s a gender-studies major now!” they say. But let’s be optimistic: At least there’s no shortage of dystopian irony or unintentional hilarity.

Witness the latest viral advertisement from Apple, everyone’s corporate Silicon Valley best friend that’s totally not combing through your personal information that you naïvely placed on the Cloud as we speak. Aptly titled “Crush!” the ad features a massive, gleaming, sinister industrial compress that slowly smothers and obliterates various items symbolizing beauty, history, and human creativity, including a sculpture of — George Orwell, call your office — the human face.

A trumpet! Books! A piano! A record player! Paint! An artist’s model of the human body! An emoji stress ball whose eyes literally pop out in terror as the pitiless factory press smashes it beyond recognition! Don’t worry, though: We can all get an extra-thin iPad screen to replace all of this outdated nonsense. Just to make things extra spooky, the ad boasts a soundtrack supplied by Sonny & Cher’s “All I Ever Need Is You.” Ah! Get it? Yikes.

Perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps “Crush!” is a bit of 4-D chess, or is actually an ad from a clever piano or guitar or book company designed to create a rush on pianos or guitars or books, or an elaborate practical joke. Perhaps some twentysomething tech genius from Harvard who only took deconstructionist Marxist English classes in his college tenure misremembered Orwell’s quote about the future involving something stomping on the human face as being a good thing. Maybe everyone involved in approving the ad had just gotten back from one of those wild-yet-awkward Silicon Valley shamanic ayahuasca team-building retreats in Costa Rica.

Or perhaps AI has already taken over the world and is already busy writing tone-deaf ads that any functioning human being should be able to sniff out as bizarrely out of touch — but, then again, probably not. As Nostradamus once reportedly said, “Keep one eye on the quatrains, but keep an even closer eye on Silicon Valley, for lo, it looks like there’s some weird stuff brewing out there, and therewith comes destruction.” Well, fine: Maybe he didn’t say that, but he should have.

Ironically, just one day before this smelly moldy sandwich of an Apple ad was released, I reluctantly went out and purchased a brand-new Apple iPhone. Okay, to be honest, I stayed home, and my very kind husband went out and purchased a brand-new Apple iPhone for me. This is because I tend to get hives in tech-related situations, sometimes veering into wild and slightly unhinged rants questioning why every appliance company in the universe seems suddenly convinced that I need a glitchy computer element placed in everything from my curling iron to my toaster oven to my toothbrush.

In any case, while I do like Apple products, I also like to have the oldest and junkiest phone I can possibly have — but unfortunately, my old iPhone had run out of memory. This is because I refuse to use the Cloud, and yes, I know I’m probably going to be forced to do so eventually, but I’m standing strong and quixotic for now. I also wanted a better camera on my phone, because I’m soon going on a two-week road trip through the American West, and I wanted to take good clear pictures of a bunch of national parks before some tech company runs a commercial suggesting they’d like to use a giant machine to crush those too.

Here’s the good news: Across the wilds of the internet, the overwhelming reaction to the “Crush!” Apple ad seems to be shock, awe, sizable cringing, and general horror. On Wednesday, when the company cheerfully released the ad on X, it was brutally and almost universally roasted: “Heartbreaking.” “Dystopian.” “Creepy.” “Gross.” “Sad.” “Worst commercial ever.” Ouch. Others noted the strange and striking contrast to the company’s first big groundbreaking, news-making, “think for yourself” ad, “1984.”

Other critiques were more practical, moving beyond the obvious philosophical problems of an advertisement that symbolically crushes the things that people hold dear. (Again, how did this ad make it through multiple levels of approval? The more I think about it, I’m increasingly concerned.) So, certain commenters aptly noted, the new iPad is little bit thinner: Whoop-de-doo! Who cares? I mean, I’m sure this device can do amazing work and maybe even destroy the world while being extra cute and skinny, but we don’t need to run around wantonly crushing innocent guitars!

I admit that I shall forever be a bit of a Luddite, which is both a gift and a curse. Perhaps we can dream. Perhaps in the future, people will stop attending those weird tech events where some giant corporation announces a new gadget priced at $12,500 and everyone acts like they’re at something cool like a concert. Perhaps the Apple “Crush!” ad will spark a counter-revolution, encouraging people to put down their phones, shelve their iPads, and go outside.

Maybe these new outdoorspeople will even go to a few national parks! But then again, if they go to some national parks, they’ll definitely want a good camera on their phones. Dang it, technology: You’ve got me. Well, I’m happy to have the camera, at least, and podcasts, I guess, and I do like making online restaurant reservations. We’ll just have to soldier on.