No, “aesthetic” is generally just a noun, historically. As in “it has a modern/minimalist/cyberpunk aesthetic.” Its usage as an adjective just means “relating to the general idea of aesthetics as a field of study,” or “someone with a strong sense of and attunement to the design and beauty of things.” Using it to just mean “beautiful,” basically, is a new usage in just the last 5 years or less.

Using it as an adjective, to mean “has a pleasing aesthetic.”

can it? Sure, most any arrangement of bits can be converted into some kind of Unicode text. Can it be converted to something meaningful or readable? No, some formats are plain text (.txt, .ini, .json, .html for some random examples) that are meant to be read by humans, and others are binary formats that are only meaningful when decoded by a computer into specific data structures inside a piece of software.

Well, yeah. That’s not really in the same category or ever really disputed

No, that’s my evidence that it wasn’t ubiquitous and typical.

Maybe not just your social circle, but social-circle-specific.

No, this was just your social circle. I know literally zero people who ever bought into any of that crap

Yes, your aunt has (probably) signed up for what’s essentially a scam. This is their whole business model, they know timeshares sound better than they end up being, so they intentionally trick people into signing contracts that are very difficult to get out of, so they can’t just dump it the moment they realize they don’t want it anymore.

That’s… An extremely bizarre take on what happened, and on whether selling would be a good idea. The stock market almost never has anything to do with electoral politics, and electoral politics almost never have anything to do with what your market position should be.