Within the horror genre specifically, the types of horror stories being told and the types of monsters that appear in stories reflect the fears of the times. Mary Shelly's original Frankenstein novel reflects concerns people were starting to have about science outpacing man's ethos, and the notion of using science to "defy" nature. Vampires have been notably mutable over the generations, reflecting whatever elements of sexuality and gender that are concerning people at the time. (Part of why vampires are frequently shown as eternally youthful -- it's the younger generations that are more often seen as being "in danger" of committing waton sexual behavior.)
While the concept of zombies has been around for ages, they started gaining popularity back in the 1970s and began really taking off in the late '90s and early 2000s. In particular, the notion of the zombie apocalypse where the individual zombies were less of a threat than the sheer overwhemling volume of them. This can be read as a reaction to the notion of societal changes happening at an increasingly faster and faster pace (I've written about the notion of "future shock" more than a few times here) and it becoming more and more difficult to keep up. I once saw someone make the analogy specifically to email; that you take care of one email and there's another behind it, and another, and another, and another... and you set up more spam filters but they keep coming... and you keep trying to get to Inbox Zero, but the moment you do another shows up... and heaven forbid, you take your eyes off it for too long -- you'd be just overwhelmed!
With all that said, though, I'm not seeing a whole lot with zombies this year. Personally, I've seen none at all in people's Halloween decorations in my neighborhood. There don't seem to be too many comic titles around with zombies in them. (Not "none" certainly, but not a lot, it seems to me.) And you could argue that The Walking Dead's popularity cycle has gone on long enough that might deplete people's interest, it seems that the concept of zombies is a perfect metaphor for the AI slop we're seeing everywhere these days. Content that's human-shaped but lacking any soul. Something made from the vestiges of human ingenuity but not inherently creative itself. Something mindless that comes at you through your screen, and every time you click it away, there's another that pops out in a virtual jump scare. I should think the notion of fighting through an army of zombies a perfect analogy for trying to sort through the non-stop barrage of AI slop coming through our monitors.
But I don't see that anywhere currently.
Maybe it's just me. I've never been partial to the zombie concept to begin with, and maybe I've self-selected out of those avenues so much over the years that it just never hits my radar any more. But with Halloween right here, and seemingly everybody talking about spooky season and such, I would think the idea would at least show up a little for me.
Then again, I've never exactly been on the cutting edge of trends, and I've never quite understood how any given thing becomes popular in the first place, so what do I know?
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