Hands up if you hate donuts.

Hands up if you hate donuts. Not hands up as in you’ve got a gun pointed at you, rather confess that you have negative feelings towards the world’s most beloved sugar rush.

In the universe of Artificial Intelligence, a donut is not merely a doughnut (different spelling). Basically, a donut is a good place to start a journey of useless 21st-Century understanding. Ask AI why a donut is important to the human condition,

and this is what you get:

“A doughnut symbolizes community, unity, continuity, and friendship due to its circular shape and common presence in social gatherings. It can also represent faith, love, and togetherness, and its historical role is associated with the working class and democracy. The hole in the donut can symbolize oneness and a lack of being left out, as in the concept of the Doughnut Economics Action Lab, which refers to a social foundation.”

You could have blown me over with a feather. The humble doughnut is the basis of an entire school of economics! Officially, “The Doughnut offers a vision of what it means for humanity to thrive in the 21st century - and Doughnut Economics explores the mindset and ways of thinking needed to get us there.”

First published in 2012 in an Oxfam Report, the concept of the Doughnut rapidly gained traction internationally, from the Pope and the UN General Assembly to Extinction Rebellion.

You can’t make this stuff up. It’s like a David Lynch movie. And if you go into it, you discover that Lynch himself is a believer in the heavy symbolism of the doughnut.

If you ask Meta what the hell Lynch has to do with dounuts this is what you get: “For David Lynch, the donut symbolizes life’s positive, sweet, and present aspects, as captured in his philosophy, ‘Keep your eye on the donut, not on the hole’.”

The donut represents goodness and things to be enjoyed, while the hole signifies endless negativity or the meaningless void. By focusing on the donut, one embraces positivity and gratitude, whereas dwelling on the hole leads to no constructive outcome.

Stay out of the hole, folks. Don’t get trapped in its nothingness. #fringetheartist