Several of you are missing the point.

[atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org]

Several of you are missing the point. I’m not debating whether quantum computing is real or useful. I’m describing the hype cycle pattern.

Replace “quantum computing” with chicken fingers and the script is identical.

First, someone declares “AI is a bubble,” so the market panics and latches onto… chicken fingers. Suddenly chicken fingers are “the future of protein delivery.” Thinkfluencers with zero culinary training emerge to announce the “Chicken Finger Industrial Revolution.”

Startups that once sold SaaS dashboards pivot overnight to “Fingers-as-a-Service.” VC firms write eight-figure checks to anyone who can spell “panko.” Founders go on podcasts saying things like “At scale, breading becomes a data problem.”

Then a brave soul asks the forbidden question: “But how do chicken fingers… make money?” And the backlash ignites. Essays declare chicken fingers unethical, unsustainable, socially corrosive, and probably responsible for three recessions and the extinction of the dodo.

Give it a month and nobody will admit they ever believed. The hype cycle will abandon chicken fingers the same way it abandoned crypto, VR, web3, metaverse real estate, and whatever we were all yelling about last Tuesday.

And when the next hype cycle hits, people will say, “This time it’s different.”

It won’t be. The only constant is the wheel… and our collective willingness to deep-fry it.