Smothered by the Future

I recently stumbled across an unlikely source of shrew wisdom: The Devil Wears Prada 2. Yes, the sequel to that glossy, champagne-soaked fashion satire centered on the cutthroat world of Runway magazine. In the middle of all the stilettos and backstabbing, a character named Benji—played with oily smugness by Justin Theroux—delivers a little monologue that stopped me cold. Benji is the quintessential modern ass: a slick, soulless technocrat who views the erosion of beauty, craft, and human meaning as not only inevitable but somehow progressive. He has zero nostalgia for the old world and even less concern for what gets crushed under the wheels of “the future.” To him, the disappearance of the human soul from any industry—fashion included—is just collateral damage on the road to efficiency and disruption. He doesn’t mourn it—he shrugs, maybe even smirks.

And yet, in his casual nihilism, Benji accidentally speaks a deeper truth that most sheep would rather scroll past. Here’s the relevant stretch of his speech (lightly trimmed for flow):

The world is changing so fast that sometimes I can’t even comprehend it… tradition? I think the day is coming, perhaps very soon, where Runway won’t need models or locations or even designers. It’ll all just, you know, be AI… The future just comes rushing at us like the lava of Pompeii. And our job is just to let it take what it wants to take. One day, it’s going to come and smother us all. And maybe that’s the way it has to be.

Oof.