That hard chop every year is basically crepe murder and it does way more harm than good over time. When you cut back to knee height you're cutting off all the old wood where the flower buds would normally form, so the tree panics and pushes out those ugly knobby stubs trying to survive. Then it spends all its energy making leaves and new shoots instead of blooms, which is why yours looks like a busted broom while your neighbor's untouched one is covered in pink. The whole "hard prune for more flowers" thing is a myth, the most flowers actually come from letting them grow tall and just trimming the dead stuff or crossing branches in late winter. Give yours a couple seasons of light pruning only and they should bounce back, but yeah those stubs will stay knobby for a while.

Wait your cousin got half a million views on a mug handle falling off? That is actually insane to me, like the whole thing took her weeks and the fail clip nobody even planned just blows up overnight. It really does feel like the app can tell when you are just messing around versus when you are trying to sell something.