#UnpopularOpinion Did you jump on the Ghibli trend thinking its just another fun filter? Guilty. Not a fan of the cartoonized me, and how we are all looking so similar now. But what I found more appalling is the backstory. Ghibli is a Japanese animation art form that takes 50,000 hours to create. Now AI is churning it out in 10 seconds. I read a LinkedIn post likening it to the 19th century weavers of East India who wove muslin as light as air for royalty, each piece taking years of painstaking craftsmanship. When the British industrial looms arrived, they made cheap, mass replicas for a fraction of the price, ending a centuries-old tradition. Many weavers reportedly had their thumbs severed to prevent them from practicing their craft. An imperial report from 1850 read ‘the bones of the cotton weavers were bleaching the plains of India’. Is this Ghibli trend threatening to do the same to the talented artists of Studio Ghibli who hand-draw every animation frame? Are we choosing a ma...