Garden Snaps: Skeuomorphism

New word for your vocabulary.

You know that feeling when we legacy producers sit around saying, “I should start playing around with Midjourney and AI VFX apps. You know, to get the hang of them. This stuff is really going to transform cinema…”

Yeah, that’s skeuomorphism at work.

Traditionally, the term refers to design elements in new technology that mimic old-school objects—like digital buttons that look like physical ones. But Doug Shapiro, in his piece GenAI Video as a New Form, broadens the definition to critique how new media—AI-generated content, digital storytelling—often just imitates old formats instead of fully embracing what the technology can actually do.

This reminds me of blockchain and NFTs. NFTs were supposed to revolutionize ownership, but instead, they just mimicked traditional collectibles. A digital flex. People spent millions on JPEGs of cartoon monkeys.