#apologies to OP for writing a manifesto about your work
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prozac-cat · 10 months ago
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i think this has made me realize my thoughts on AI art (writing, images… whatever) has much more to do with intention and much less to do with effort or soul or ownership or what have you.
like i FEEL a visceral repulsion from so much AI art i see centered in conversations like these, but i studied this issue in a philosophy class like a year and a half ago and still had trouble figuring out exactly where i stand. like i’ll say AI art bad but i don’t really know what i mean by that, and i’ve seen plenty of pro-AI art arguments — most of them taking the same route this comic is — that are very convincing. i learned everything from somewhere. like existence to a degree is derivative. so how can i say AI art automating that process is fucked up and evil if i do it myself all the time?
anyway i think what OP did that’s cemented things for me is specifically using the term “ownership.” not to be anti-capitalist BUUUT… ownership, copyright, all very capitalist ideas. we have to know who owns the thing and who is allowed to sell the thing so the Right people make money. it’s undeniable that modern society (at least that i’ve been exposed to idk idk) has commodified art. if we hadn’t, how would artists support themselves? we show artists their work is valuable by assigning a value to it.
i don’t mind AI art when it’s done for the good of art, i think is what i’m settling on. i don’t even think i honestly care if i can tell apart people-art from AI-art (wherever that distinction lies). what i find myself reacting to and what i definitely care about is i think primarily that the Market ™ will determine that AI has made art so easy, so fast, that artists’ work is no longer valuable, and therefore no longer gets assigned a value. especially if its at the cost of expression. the james somerton types, who look at the humanities and see a disparate gap between effort and profit.
because (i fear) they aren’t looking at AI as a boon to art — they’re looking at it as a new way to cut costs, taking from artists they otherwise would have paid for their “property” to make something slightly to the left. and in the worst case scenario (which may or may not be realistic), this cuts down people who do genuinely care and leaves only people creating soulless (not in the human input sense — in the “this is generic and vague and not really impactful when you look closely at it” sense, which both AI and humans create) stuff.
i hate AI art when its opportunistic. i love it when it adds to our repertoire. and if i didn’t feel a very urgent dread that even improving it as a tool would just add fuel to the exploitative uses, i probably wouldn’t care very much. the ownership wouldn’t matter if it didn’t matter, you know?
i don’t know if a world where this isn’t an issue is like actually within reach — i would like to believe that it is, i’m not really Learnéd on government structure and i’m not going to be — but i would love it to be reality. the arguments that sway me are the ones that really seem to care about art, like this really beautiful comic. i want art to be super collaborative. i think that kind of thing is beautiful. & i think its ugly (but currently necessary) to think of it in terms of property and material value.
this might all be nothing. i’m still kind of hammering it out in my head, but its the most convicted i’ve been on the topic in like two years so i wanted to get it down. i’m gonna be thinking about this piece for a while.
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"Original" Sin is what i've titled this piece. by me. sorry if you don't have "collapse long posts" enabled. I have many thoughts.
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arcticdementor · 6 years ago
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I don’t revisit my old work. I’ve been writing this weekly column for four and a half years now, and I never reread old pieces. Because for me—and I’m sure I’m not alone among opinion journalists in this regard—each essay I pen represents a catharsis of sorts. I had some bee in my bonnet, I wrote about it, and now I’ve had my say. What reason is there to go back? If what I’ve written resonates with readers, the piece will go viral. If not, it won’t. But regardless, I’ve relieved myself of whatever was busting to come out.
The sense of release that comes from having your say and being heard, though it may seem trivial to those with no opinions to share, can in fact be quite powerful.
Which brings me to the recent crop of right-wing mass shooters: Robert Bowers in Pittsburgh (shot up a temple), Brenton Tarrant in Christchurch (shot up a mosque), and John Earnest in Poway (shot up a different temple). As an old-timer with a morbid fascination for these things, there’s an odd twist to this new breed of gunslingin’ whiteys, compared with the ones from my youth. Before James Huberty shot up a McDonald’s full o’ Mexicans in 1984, he tried to seek medical help for what he knew was an incipient psychotic episode. Huberty had no political goals. He was feeling compelled to “hunt humans,” and deep down, he knew there was something wonky with his wiring.
In 1989, Patrick Purdy opened fire on a bunch of Asian schoolkids at Cleveland Elementary in Stockton, Calif. (our crappiest cities love naming their schools after even crappier ones, as a reminder that things can always be worse). Purdy started his day by calling in a threat to the school, telling them what he was going to do. Then he drove his car behind the school and set it on fire…loaded with fireworks! Still, the teachers and staff laughed it off, displaying the keen intellect that so exemplifies California public school employees. “We got a threat of a mass shooting? And now we have an exploding car? Crazy coincidence, man. Jupiter must be in renegade or somethin’.”
But today, the white dudes who commit these types of shootings leave behind lengthy, detailed manifestos. More than that, they leave themselves behind. Mass shooters in the ’80s and ’90s rarely survived, typically dying by their own hand. But these guys seem to really, really want to be taken alive. Anders Breivik in Norway was the first. Lengthy manifesto, taken alive, and he stood trial with no apologies, like a political dissident facing a kangaroo court (which it kinda was; the bastard got only 21 years for 77 murders). The Pittsburgh, Christchurch, and Poway shooters, same deal. Lengthy manifestos and 8chan posts, taken alive, now awaiting trial. Charleston’s Dylann Roof? Lengthy manifesto, taken alive, unapologetic at trial.
This is the age of the “intellectual” (and please note the scare quotes) racist killer. Black mass shooters continue to excel at their preferred specialty—workplace massacres. But white mass shooters have evolved, so to speak. Now they all want to be op-ed writers. Which brings me back to my initial point: the cathartic nature of ranting in an essay and putting it out for the world to see. It has a cleansing, purgative effect, like (again, not to be crude) a really good poop. I’ve read every one of those racial murder manifestos, and you know what? They’re as good as anything on any leftist race-baiting site. Roof? Tarrant? Earnest? Breivik? In terms of writing ability, in terms of effective polemics, their work is no worse than what you find leftists spewing on BuzzFeed, HuffPost, Salon, ThinkProgress, Vox, etc.
“White guys are killing us,” “Let’s deport all white males,” “White men must be stopped,” “White men are the face of terror,” “The plague of angry white men,” “White people are cowards,” “When white women cry: How white women’s tears oppress women of color.” These actual essays are just as racist and just as inflammatory as anything the murderer Breivik wrote. But guess what? You can post ’em freely on Facebook and Twitter!
Leftist antiwhite sites that are allowed to exist by our benevolent internet overlords—sites that are allowed to have advertisers, sites you can post on social media—employ writers who are no more skilled than these murderers, and just as hateful. In terms of writing ability, I’d put Breivik and Tarrant up against any of the semi-tards who post at Salon. Hell, those two guys, whose manifestos together total more than 1,574 pages, are exactly the kind of prolific ideologues who, were they leftists, would be highly sought after by the editors of high-quantity political sites.
But ay, there’s the rub. See, the right-wing versions of left-wing race-haters aren’t allowed the catharsis. Banned from social media, banned from websites with traffic, they write their “masterpieces” knowing that the only way their work will be seen is if the media has a reason to publicize it. So, they give the media a reason.
Since Breivik, every racial mass murderer with a manifesto has stated that he hopes his words and actions will provoke a race war and foment racial conflict. Same exact goal as the leftist race extremists at CNN, The L.A. Times, HuffPost, and BuzzFeed. Stir shit up between the races. But leftists get to do it with words. They’re allowed to do it with words…words that are seen and heard. When Don Lemon comes home after a hard day of yelling at white people, as he greases his backside with Vaseline, don’t doubt for a moment that he feels a sense of satisfaction that his hate has an audience. Again, this is the catharsis that ideologues feel when they know their words are actually reaching people.
The increase in verbose, “literate” white racist mass killers is not unrelated to the banning of far-right thought from popular internet platforms (and, in some cases, from the internet itself). Do you think it’s gone unnoticed by extremists that the only way these manifestos get seen by a wide audience is when they’re accompanied by murder? Several of these manifestos have expressed a hope that the concomitant murders will provoke governments into imposing more censorship, more gun control, and upping the antiwhite rhetoric, thereby creating even more racial conflict. And the left has responded exactly as these killers hoped. More censorship, more gun control, and more antiwhite rhetoric, thus disrespecting the victims by carrying out the wishes of the nuts who murdered them.
After 9/11, the left’s favorite line was “Don’t let the terrorists manipulate us into doing their bidding! They want us to start bombing Muslim countries! They want us to initiate a war between the West and Islam! We honor the victims of 9/11 by understanding what the terrorists were trying to bring about, and not letting it happen.”
Notice how that’s never the talking point in the wake of a racist mass shooting. You know why? The left genuinely did not want to go to war against Muslim nations. The left genuinely did not want conflict with the Muslim world. But the left really does want the same race war that Roof, Tarrant, Bowers, and Earnest seek to foment. So leftists ignore their own post-9/11 advice, and play right into the killers’ hands.
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surflove808 · 7 years ago
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I’m thinking it’s time to stop being in the silent majority.  Don’t you?
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I don't know when I became Captain Save-A-Bro, but I know why.  It's because bullies, online "truth warriors", conspiracy theorists, anti-blogs and people who irresponsibly spread malicious gossip, misinformation and/or incite witch hunts against ANYONE who doesn't deserve it and can't or won't defend themselves really piss me off.  
And let’s be real, these actors are in a catch-22 with regards to this “joke” issue.  They can’t defend themselves because they’d face even more backlash, and they can’t apologize because you know what?  There’s nothing to apologize for, and it would seem falsely contrite.  But, I’m sure that TPTB will have to insist on a public apology from J2, even if it doesn’t merit one, simply in order to get people to put down their pitchforks.
I happen to love this show, and have a great deal of respect for the people involved in creating it, for a variety of reasons that I've already touched on, ad nauseum.  And frankly, I'm irritated because I just wanted to enjoy the goddamn show and its wonderful cast and the hilarious con footage, and leave it at that, because it's ENTERTAINMENT, people.  So why in the actual fuck am I on here right now, feeling compelled to write this manifesto about a television show??  Why is this a thing? I'm genuinely pissed that this is a thing.  
With everything going on in the world today, Why. Is. This. A. Thing??
I've checked out other fan pages (or whatever the hell they're called), because I have other interests, believe it or not... and I have never seen anything like the bullshit I’ve seen with this fandom.  And the thing is.... the shitposters I see on here don't represent most of the wonderful people that comprise the SPN Family.  In theory.  
In print, however, it's a different story, as we've seen.
They're just the loudest.  That's all.  As the saying goes, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.  And these squeaky assholes are making great strides in tearing apart the core beliefs of this show and it's fans from the inside out.  Not to mention tearing down the reputations of certain cast members. They seek to be divisive.  And clearly, it's working.  
We’ve got J2 fans, Jared fans, Jensen fans, Misha fans, Destiel fans, Cockles fans, blah blah blah... as opposed to fans of the show, and apparently they’ve declared allegiance to a character/actor (?), and some of them are, for reasons unbeknownst to most of us, pitting these characters and actors against each other to such a degree, that now we have very real and very dangerous precedents being set with regards to the extremes some of these folks are willing to go to, to tear down whomever is not their fave.  My brain is actually smoking, in an attempt to figure out how these peoples minds work.  
And it's because they run amok on here and on Twitter virtually unchallenged. We need to Shut.  This.  Shit.  Down, and regain our solidarity, our collective dignity as fans, and ability to challenge injustice when we see it.  
NEWSFLASH ASSHOLES:  I'm a squeaky wheel too. ��Welcome to the Thunderdome, bitches.
Most people don't enjoy conflict.  We don't want to ruffle feathers, or be seen as a jerk.  We may worry that directly countering a post, tweet or blog that promotes hate against any members of this cast or fellow fans, might open ourselves up to backlash or criticism from the OP's or their friends.  And these are very valid fears.  Look what they aimed at Shatner, JDM, Jensen and Pellegrino recently for daring to dissent and/or daring to support their friends against this BS.  I get it.  
Heck, even Tumblr says right there in the comment field "say something nice".  I think most of us see that, and police ourselves even when we're seething about something.  Because, we should be nice, right?   Will Tumblr kick me out if I'm not?  What's gonna happen?!!  :D
But they can't hurt you.  We're not public figures.  WE also have the benefit of anonymity, it works both ways.  The "safe place" of online discourse doesn't just apply to them.  No one enjoys internet fights with trolls.  Well....almost no one, ( I have to admit, I don't necessarily enjoy it, but I do derive some satisfaction from standing up to dickheads.) but we need to start standing up to these people.
I think that love really DOES trump hate.  I believe that.  But sometimes, in order to make that a reality, we're going to have to step outside our comfort zone and question people who post malicious content about others.  And I think we all know the difference between an opinion we don't agree with and something that is downright defamatory and/or abusive.  We're going to have to fight for the things that brought this family together in the first place:
Acceptance
Love
Perseverance
Being brave
Helping those in need
Standing up for what's right
It's worth fighting for.  Because staying quiet in the face of hate has never had good long-term results.  And I don't think I need to give examples for you to understand what I'm getting at.  I think it's time to start challenging these people directly and supporting each other when we see someone standing up for what's right and getting roasted by one of these jerks.
I'm not saying be a dick, but if we keep letting these folks run around unchecked and unchallenged, they're going to continue to exert their influence in destructive ways and will represent the "majority" of fans (as unfortunately quoted in the latest articles about the J2 joke debacle), because WE are remaining the silent majority.
We need to rebuild this community.  And in order to do that, we may need to have uncomfortable discussions with these people.  But knowledge is power.  And at the very least, I think we can start putting real facts out there.  
And I understand being nervous or afraid to challenge someone who's spreading hate, just know that if you ever need someone to advocate with you or for you when encountering shitty behavior from one of these people (anyone for that matter), I'm here for ya.  You can message me anytime, and I'll help in any way I can.  I promise that.  However, I want you to start speaking on your own behalf as well, because it’s important.
And to quote an awesome and lovely person that DM'd me:  "Good people will rise i totally believe in that"
You know what?  I do too. And I also believe that this can be a great exercise for flexing our muscles for dealing with real issues.  Bigger issues.  More important issues. Yes, I’m still salty that I had to write this, and every blog post before it.  But it needed to be said.  Good habits start at home though.  So why not start here.  :)
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samdelpapa · 6 years ago
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Se sapete l'inglese capite meglio={Oh, What a Lovely Race War! - Taki's Magazine
photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
Anders Behring Breivik
I don’t revisit my old work. I’ve been writing this weekly column for four and a half years now, and I never reread old pieces. Because for me—and I’m sure I’m not alone among opinion journalists in this regard—each essay I pen represents a catharsis of sorts. I had some bee in my bonnet, I wrote about it, and now I’ve had my say. What reason is there to go back? If what I’ve written resonates with readers, the piece will go viral. If not, it won’t. But regardless, I’ve relieved myself of whatever was busting to come out.
Not to be crude (a phrase inevitably uttered by those who are about to be crude), but it’s a bit like having a really good bowel movement. After you’ve had a fully satisfying bathroom experience, your body feels free, emptied, unburdened. And you’re ready to move on.
The sense of release that comes from having your say and being heard, though it may seem trivial to those with no opinions to share, can in fact be quite powerful.
Which brings me to the recent crop of right-wing mass shooters: Robert Bowers in Pittsburgh (shot up a temple), Brenton Tarrant in Christchurch (shot up a mosque), and John Earnest in Poway (shot up a different temple). As an old-timer with a morbid fascination for these things, there’s an odd twist to this new breed of gunslingin’ whiteys, compared with the ones from my youth. Before James Huberty shot up a McDonald’s full o’ Mexicans in 1984, he tried to seek medical help for what he knew was an incipient psychotic episode. Huberty had no political goals. He was feeling compelled to “hunt humans,” and deep down, he knew there was something wonky with his wiring.
In 1989, Patrick Purdy opened fire on a bunch of Asian schoolkids at Cleveland Elementary in Stockton, Calif. (our crappiest cities love naming their schools after even crappier ones, as a reminder that things can always be worse). Purdy started his day by calling in a threat to the school, telling them what he was going to do. Then he drove his car behind the school and set it on fire…loaded with fireworks! Still, the teachers and staff laughed it off, displaying the keen intellect that so exemplifies California public school employees. “We got a threat of a mass shooting? And now we have an exploding car? Crazy coincidence, man. Jupiter must be in renegade or somethin’.”
Sadly, five Vietnamese and Cambodian kids soon realized it wasn’t just a “crazy coincidence” as Purdy’s bullets shattered their bodies. Having defeated the dastardly tykes, Purdy killed himself. Authorities found that he’d carved the words “freedom,” “victory,” “Earthman,” and “Hezbollah” into his rifle, and on his flak jacket he’d scrawled “PLO,” “Libya,” and “death to the Great Satin [sic].”
“I’m not saying the recent spate of racist shootings can be entirely pinned on the silencing of the far right, but I do believe it’s a factor.”
And on that very day, a homicide detective coined the phrase, “the fuck?” Because how disjointed can you get? There was no coherent agenda. Death to America, hooray for PLO and Hezbollah, yet he targeted Asian kids and practically dared the school to stop him before he killed. Like Huberty, this was no ideologue. He was a loon with a bunch of loose screws.
But today, the white dudes who commit these types of shootings leave behind lengthy, detailed manifestos. More than that, they leave themselves behind. Mass shooters in the ’80s and ’90s rarely survived, typically dying by their own hand. But these guys seem to really, really want to be taken alive. Anders Breivik in Norway was the first. Lengthy manifesto, taken alive, and he stood trial with no apologies, like a political dissident facing a kangaroo court (which it kinda was; the bastard got only 21 years for 77 murders). The Pittsburgh, Christchurch, and Poway shooters, same deal. Lengthy manifestos and 8chan posts, taken alive, now awaiting trial. Charleston’s Dylann Roof? Lengthy manifesto, taken alive, unapologetic at trial.
This is the age of the “intellectual” (and please note the scare quotes) racist killer. Black mass shooters continue to excel at their preferred specialty—workplace massacres. But white mass shooters have evolved, so to speak. Now they all want to be op-ed writers. Which brings me back to my initial point: the cathartic nature of ranting in an essay and putting it out for the world to see. It has a cleansing, purgative effect, like (again, not to be crude) a really good poop. I’ve read every one of those racial murder manifestos, and you know what? They’re as good as anything on any leftist race-baiting site. Roof? Tarrant? Earnest? Breivik? In terms of writing ability, in terms of effective polemics, their work is no worse than what you find leftists spewing on BuzzFeed, HuffPost, Salon, ThinkProgress, Vox, etc.
Leftist antiwhite sites that are allowed to exist by our benevolent internet overlords—sites that are allowed to have advertisers, sites you can post on social media—employ writers who are no more skilled than these murderers, and just as hateful. In terms of writing ability, I’d put Breivik and Tarrant up against any of the semi-tards who post at Salon. Hell, those two guys, whose manifestos together total more than 1,574 pages, are exactly the kind of prolific ideologues who, were they leftists, would be highly sought after by the editors of high-quantity political sites.
But ay, there’s the rub. See, the right-wing versions of left-wing race-haters aren’t allowed the catharsis. Banned from social media, banned from websites with traffic, they write their “masterpieces” knowing that the only way their work will be seen is if the media has a reason to publicize it. So, they give the media a reason.
I’m not saying the recent spate of racist shootings can be entirely pinned on the silencing of the far right, but I do believe it’s a factor. Groups like the ADL and SPLC, and cowards like Zuckerberg and Dorsey, have so effectively cleansed the ’net of rightist thought (including the commonsense, nonviolent kind), extremist whites are not allowed the release of taking a good figurative shit (oh wait, I forgot to preface that with “not to be crude”). Yeah, they can write stuff for their eyes only, but any real opinion journalist knows that the catharsis comes not just from the writing, but from knowing that your words will be seen. That’s where the feeling of satisfaction comes in. That’s what allows you to move on.
Since Breivik, every racial mass murderer with a manifesto has stated that he hopes his words and actions will provoke a race war and foment racial conflict. Same exact goal as the leftist race extremists at CNN, The L.A. Times, HuffPost, and BuzzFeed. Stir shit up between the races. But leftists get to do it with words. They’re allowed to do it with words…words that are seen and heard. When Don Lemon comes home after a hard day of yelling at white people, as he greases his backside with Vaseline, don’t doubt for a moment that he feels a sense of satisfaction that his hate has an audience. Again, this is the catharsisthat ideologues feel when they know their words are actually reaching people.
A feeling of helplessness and the frustration of being ignored often accompany mass killings. This helps explain why blacks prefer workplace shootings to ideological ones. D’Quanté Jones can scribble a barely literate “essay” about how “white people be racist when they be chewin’ they food,” or “white people need to STFU and quit havin’ babies,” and it will get published, guaranteed, at HuffPost, The Root, Ebony, The Grio, etc. His screed will be allowed on Twitter and Facebook, and he’ll see, from the cheers and jeers in the comments and the retweets and reposts from friends and foes alike, that he’s had an impact. He’ll get that purgative release. But at work? D’Quanté feels left out, ignored by his white colleagues, who, oddly enough, don’t enjoy socializing with someone who hates them.
Eventually, D’Quanté will deal with those feelings of frustration by coming to work with a gun. “Now y’all pay attention to me, motherfuckers.”
The increase in verbose, “literate” white racist mass killers is not unrelated to the banning of far-right thought from popular internet platforms (and, in some cases, from the internet itself). Do you think it’s gone unnoticed by extremists that the only way these manifestos get seen by a wide audience is when they’re accompanied by murder? Several of these manifestos have expressed a hope that the concomitant murders will provoke governments into imposing more censorship, more gun control, and upping the antiwhite rhetoric, thereby creating even more racial conflict. And the left has responded exactly as these killers hoped. More censorship, more gun control, and more antiwhite rhetoric, thus disrespecting the victims by carrying out the wishes of the nuts who murdered them.
After 9/11, the left’s favorite line was “Don’t let the terrorists manipulate us into doing their bidding! They want us to start bombing Muslim countries! They want us to initiate a war between the West and Islam! We honor the victims of 9/11 by understanding what the terrorists were trying to bring about, and not letting it happen.”
Notice how that’s never the talking point in the wake of a racist mass shooting. You know why? The left genuinely did not want to go to war against Muslim nations. The left genuinely did not want conflict with the Muslim world. But the left really does want the same race war that Roof, Tarrant, Bowers, and Earnest seek to foment. So leftists ignore their own post-9/11 advice, and play right into the killers’ hands.
To be clear, neither side will get its beloved race war. As is the case with all wars, the vast majority of ordinary people want none of it. They go about their lives, generally getting along well with others, reserving violent impulses for domestic situations and personal squabbles, rather than grand ideological goals.
But still, the clown parade will march on. Leftist race extremists will continue to be allowed major platforms to spew antiwhite hatred with a clear desire to provoke, while rightist extremists, denied platforms to do the same, will continue to find “creative” ways to be heard. There’ll be no race war, but lots of small-scale bloodshed. And the twisted, unspoken “partnership” between far-right killers and the media and government leftists who do their bidding will continue.
And everyone will live happily ever after (except for the victims and their families, but c’mon, who cares about them when there’s a race war to wage!).}
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