#It's always

[manwiththemagic]

8 seasons of this and those mfs are still lying and fighting 💀

[itsmeatotalsimp]

it's always:

"will you marry me?"

"yes!"

and never:

[13eyond13]

it's honestly such a wild experience seeing any griffguts shipping art because their relationship is so massively overshadowed by their messy breakup

It IS! I think that's maybe what compels people to make it, though... like damn, their breakup was SO BAD that they must have REALLY meant something special to each other... plus after like 300 chapters of angsty pain it's kinda nice to get a little peek at some gentle soothing "what ifs" as well, imo

[star-neo-love]

I'M GONNA LOSE IT. HOW DARE HE LOOK SO DELICIOUS. SHIRTLESS??? WHORE. WHAT A SLUT.

treat me like white tees. don't get me dirty. love on, love on me. 🫦🫦🫦🫦🫦🫦🫦🫦

[tangibletechnomancy]

The problem with AI and the entertainment industry in particular is that...okay, fine, technology marches on. Digital art made physical ink-on-cels animation into mostly a hobbyist novelty (though boy howdy did it ever make it an impressive one). Photography turned portrait painting into a luxury, rather than something everyone who could afford it saved to do at least once for every family member because it was the only way to keep their likenesses alive. Photo editing has gone through so many changes that it's almost unrecognizable compared to what it looked like as recently as the 80s and 90s, and the older methods are, again, super impressive hobbyist passion projects now. Digital painting made physical painting less viable in an economy of scale, but way more impressive as an art form. These kinds of changes always really fucking suck for some people, but you can't really prevent them without stifling human development in general.

But.

The entertainment industry wants to make it suck way more than it has to for everyone but their executives and shareholders. They want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to take advantage of the inherent marketing power of celebrity culture without ACTUALLY involving, let alone paying, the people whose names and likenesses they're using. That, I hope we can all agree, is vile.

Now, the logical endpoint of this is that we push back against that, and as an alternative we get more fictional celebrities in the near-ish future, and as a Vocaloid fan, theoretically, I dont see much of a problem with that. Theoretically, at least. In the best case scenario, I think it could be a lot of fun! But the problem is, well...

See, in the early days, Vocaloid producers tended to take a very backstage role. Very few people were fans of specific producers; they were fans of Miku or any other character. Eventually, though, producers just kind of came more into the spotlight on their own because everyone has their own style and taste. We still love the characters, but we all started to notice when half our favorite songs by Miku were produced by the same person, well, perhaps we were fans of that producer as well!

But in American-born entertainment culture...

You may notice that CGI was conspicuously absent from my Technology Marches On breakdown. That's because while, yes, it has made for an interesting highlight of practical effects, with love for the work and nostalgia for their jank the same way other new art media has shone a spotlight on its predecessors, it hasn't actually gotten to be recognized as an art form the way the others listed have. We've barely moved on from the attitude that got Tron disqualified from the Academy Awards for SFX because "the computer did those effects, not you" (in 1982). In fact, I'm strongly of the belief that if Disney were a halfway decent company, they would be bragging about how they're pioneering photorealistic animation, rather than trying to pass off 90+% CGI animated films, usually (but not always; see: The Lion King remake) with live celebrity actors' faces composited in, as "live-action". Instead, they treat the VFX department as mindless dancing monkeys, and perpetuate the idea that VFX is just "select material, press button, get polished scene" - because to brag about it as its own art form might imply that the people doing it are skilled artists who deserve to be paid fairly and treated like human beings, and oh, we can't have THAT, now can we?

VFX labor is all hidden; very few people have a favorite VFX artist or director, instead we treat the artists, who put the time and effort into wrangling code and semiconductors and routines and layers into creating a professional-looking end product, as just part of the machine themselves, to save the companies some money - and culturally, I fear we're well on the way to regarding AI exactly the same way but worse.

As such, I fear that we wouldn't have the same effect with any digital idols produced by Silicon Valley.

Now, I don't fear virtual celebrities being able to fully replace human ones. Half of the draw of celebrity culture is the illusion of human connection. As much as the word "parasociality" has grown to be associated with only the negative effects of this, in reality, it's also the driving mechanism behind why representation matters. It's fun to be able to feel a connection to a fictional celebrity, but it doesn't replace the feeling of knowing that your fave is a human being with a real life - ...whether you use that knowledge for better or worse.

What I do fear is the fight against using AI to replicate real humans without their input, or with their manufactured consent, being long and drawn-out and doing a lot of harm before we can fully put a lock on it, and virtual celebrities being used to hide the work that the human directors and producers put into them for the sake of saving a parent company a buck.

[be-the-glenn-to-my-maggie]

Do you guys know how disappointing it is to be reading a Spider fic and then suddenly Quaritch has a redemption arc? It's always like framed in a "wow, will he be redeemed?" kind of way and I think he'll turn out to be bad by the end, but sometimes that risk doesn't pay off.

Bro, I'm reading one where everyone is encouraging him and Spider's relationship after he did an actual genocide but like, in the modern day, in our time. He should actively still be in jail, can't iMAGINE why he'd have custody. Insanity, like he murdered a whole village in actual 2023 and we're all chilling. It's like, worse, than Avatar. No aliens he can pretend aren't people, these were just actual humans. Fucking insane.

[benetnvsch]

they (whosever in charge of BSD merch) can't keep getting away with this (leaving Kunikida out of EVERYTHING)

[kaisollisto]

[malbecmusings]

Can I get this in an IV?

[natequarter]

i got burnt at the stake for being too protestant and all i got was this lousy wikipedia page

[artificial-ascension]

The reactions some people have to phalloplasty results are so fucking insane. I look at artificially constructed penis and they're fine. Like at worse they're a bit on the weird looking side but it's not some surgical abomination like people make it out to be and it's not like people with hime grown ones can't be small or ugly. I think they just can't appreciate a penis that isn't a perfect porn star penis.

[goatboard]

when straight people (my mother) assume that my queer ass is gonna conform to her ideas of gender and shit (it makes me feel so gross)

[allo-frouto]

I just wondered how does your "perfect" life looks like? I mean, kids, no kids, a dog, garden, a private island, living in the city jungle or on Mars, stuff like that ...? 🤔 :D

Well, I would like kids in the future, a small home filled with love and laughter that will be shared with the people I love and a dog to give cuddles to.

[thethirdman8]

@jennykin lol..

Can you name an animal that we eat, but doesn’t eat us?

[elbiotipo]

I think one big reason why we don't consider the stars as important as before (not even pop-astrology anymore cares about the stars or the sky on itself, just the signs deprived of context) is because of light pollution.

For most of human history the sky looked between 1-3, 4 at most. And then all of a sudden with electrification it was gone (I'm lucky if I get 6 in my small city). The first time I saw the Milky Way fully as a kid was a spiritual experience, I was almost scared on how BRIGHT it was, it felt like someone was looking back at me. You don't get that at all with modern light pollution.

When most people talk about stargazing nowadays they think about watching about a couple of bright dots. The stars are really, really not like that. The unpolluted night sky is a festival of fireworks. There is nothing like it.