#but i feel humans are not as nonsensical as an algorithm

[isekyaaa]

There's this really funny part in this study that has been done about suicide methods between males and females (which is not funny), but basically they go to say how men commit more suicides while women attempt more suicides. Men commit to the bit while women just don't. Hence while men will have more "violent" suicides like a gunshot to the head or hanging while women have more drug overdose and whatnot. But that's not the funny part. The funny part is that they say that women choose not to commit suicide via gunshot to the head due to the possibility of facial disfigurement LOL Like you really think that if someone is that in pain and despair to the point of wanting to die that they'll worry about failing and being ugly for the rest of their life?

I remember someone implying at one point that women don't want to be "ugly" when they die, hence why they choose methods like overdose. Granted, the study I mentioned did say that it's likely women choose these methods because they don't truly want to die. But still. The thought of beauty defining suicide method is so sexist it makes me laugh.

But it does get me wondering why women are less likely to commit to suicide. Why are men less likely to attempt but more likely to commit? I get that on some level people that choose these less... 100% mortality rate methods do want to be noticed and saved, but why? Tbh I don't think it's fear of death that's the factor. Is the suffering of a female less than a male? Or is it more the endurance of an male is less than a female?

I know no one is going to believe me, but I did suffer from very very bad anxiety and depression at one point in my life. It was very bad. Like not the kind of depression kids get nowadays, but the kind I'd cry for hours on end. I'd go days without eating. I could not function outside of going to work and coming home. I wouldn't shower or brush my teeth. I couldn't see myself living a year into the future. I wanted to die so badly. But despite all of that, I never was suicidal. I never ever considered killing myself. I fantasized about dying but I never fantasized about killing myself. I never fell into the habit of self-harm. So suicide ideation and suicidal desires is so weird for me to consider.

[hplonesomeart]

Hey!! So turns out a video I made between a certain “well beloved but highly sensitive/emotionally reactive T.V” and an “orange haired inkling-turned-human” has managed to sweep my YouTube channel and accumulate 100k VIEWS!! THAT’S A LOT OF PEOPLE ACTUALLY?? My most widely viewed video EVER to exist in this moment in time?? AAAAA?? Not even mentioning the various comments and staggering increase in subs! It’s so much more then what I expected or even prepared for—might even be the most impactful thing to happen for me this year <3

…aside from graduating high school + the social connections I’ve been fortunate to make lol

BUT THE POINT IS I’d been closely monitoring the YouTube growth through the entirety of October. It’s make me smile like a dork, gawk in astonishment, dance frantically in my room from the energy boosts, and grow courage to stop being so selective/self-conscious with what I wish to share with the world! It’s kept my ambitions going!

I needed to find some way to celebrate the occasion and express my thanks—because I can’t NOT acknowledge this milestone jksjskp. Typically I try to avoid getting tunnel visioned focusing on the metrics/numbers. Mr. Puzzles had already demonstrated how much those things can mess with the minds of creatives. Caring too much about chasing views or placing your artistic value in attention seeking gets damaging. But at same time…it’s hard to deny the sense of pride the 100k achievement has filled me with. I understand that reaching 100k views doesn’t immediately make me any “better” or “worse” then I was before. I’m still just me! It only helps me feel seen by others—and that’s all I really needed. To hear some nice words & receive reminders that my ideas are cared about. So thank you SMG4 fandom for that, seriously thank you.

Please accept this Mr. Puzzle drawing as a way of sharing the happiness around. He’s so entertaining. Love him for simply existing. So glad we can all collectively be super attached to him (and the rest of the SMG4 cast of course). Can’t wait to see more incredible artworks from the fandom :)

Just incase anyone is confused by my vague description over which “animated video” I’m referring to here—hopefully this photo will help clarify lol. It’s this one!! Sorry about not outright stating the title at the start, I got carried away with writing!!

I’ve been in an odd place mentally when thinking about it. Wondering to myself if any of the attention is deserved considering it’s not even fully colored and could be dismissed as “low effort” content (despite taking several days making it). It’s easy to get into a trap of comparing yourself to others and questioning how much of the videos success is based on your skills, sheer algorithm luck, or only because you used popular characters and catered to a specific fandom. And then judging yourself by looking at other peoples videos. I’ve seen several artists post higher quality works then my own but it somehow gets less views. So why did mine succeed when others (who should have gotten just as much attention if not more) didn’t? Sometimes you feel like you’ve unfairly robbed them of that chance to be seen. However I’ve realized that I can’t ever expect views to be consistent—and comparing is pointless. So why worry about it or feel inadequate? I mean it’s pretty common for funny cat videos to go viral, so who am I to question the system lol. “Popular” YouTube videos can range from a passion project which took 7+ artists…to a clip of Toad singing Chandelier or a nonsensical Vine sketch. Anything can happen when it’s the internet! And just-so-happened my video was chosen. I should stay glad about that and get rid of all the overanalyzing. So that’s what I’ve chosen to do :)

[halforcdad]

i remember begrudgingly getting into ncis: hawaii bc the youtube algorithm would not stop recommending me kate and lucy videos no matter how much i ignored them. i didnt know then that i'd find a pairing and a show that would mean so much to me.

this cancellation is not the first and it won't be the last, but it has left me particularly and extremely heartbroken.

kacy means a lot to me. it's the first ship that's made me feel something in a long time, maybe since high school. ill never forget the genuine excitement, the heartache, the happiness, they made me feel, especially in season 1. ill never forget this show and the ʻOhana i never knew id get so invested in.

i look back in my drafts and i still see posts i never finished about s2 and stuff i had yet to post about s3. i still had so much to say about the show. and they still had so much to give us. its a damn shame that they weren't even given a goodbye season.

was it shitty, corny copaganda at the end of the day? yes. was the writing sometimes rushed and nonsensical? absolutely. did they waste a whole season developing a character that had nothing to do with the core cast? you bet. but the cast and crew didn't deserve such a cruel, untimely cancellation without a chance to say goodbye (especially for shows that include a nasty dude who assaults his costars). the human aspect of it all is painful on its own. the show wasn't perfect at all, but it had heart, it had a good cast and crew, and i know i will miss it terribly.

most of all, i'll miss all the good times i had posting about the show and talking about it with everyone here. it's led me to meet some special people that i'm eternally grateful for and reignited a creative passion in me i haven't felt in a while. I'll always remember kacy and hold them dear in my heart. but I won't be giving up on them any time soon. even after the show ends, ill still be here, going insane over them and all the possibilities we won't get to see. kacy gave me such hope and happiness for the future, and i hope everyone keeps that spark alive.

[zalmoxis-the-great]

Scared you! Short Story -Orizyn

‘Are you afraid of anything ?’ asked Trazyn curiously.

‘I am not like one of those unclean organics. I can control my emotions.' Answered Orikan, looking at the screaming humans running away from another human, the former wearing a mask and a knife, sprinting, in turn, after them. ‘It is nonsensical to be afraid when you can control your engramatical processes.’

The archivist asked Orikan to join him on a trip to a small agri-world, to witness one of their harvest festivals, which involved the participants trying to scare themselves using masks and sudden jumps or noises.

‘Yes, but being afraid involves the lack of control over a situation’, Trazyn retorted, greedily looking at the humans wearing masks. ‘ I, for example, am very afraid of a certain someone coming to ruin my Galleries’ he turned and glared hard at Orikan. ‘You must be afraid of something! What if someone managed to transcend before you ?’

The cryptek rolled his ocular.

‘Firstly, I know this will not happen’. He turned his attention to one human wearing a long black cape staring in their general direction. They should have been covered by Trazyn’s distortion field. Why was it staring at them. ‘Secondly, I would just involve myself, so that I could learn how it happened, or to stop it if I deem it hazardous for the tapestry of destiny.’

‘Hmmm’, the archivist let out a static hum from his vocal actuators. ‘Orikan could you hold this for me?’

Orikan, still looking at the eerie human, grabbed whatever Trazyn gave him.

‘Fine.’ He said as he started to turn his head to the overlord.

Looking at what he held, he was met with a logical error from his algorithms.

His cognition engrams were malfunctioning.

He could feel the star in his reactor core collapsing.

He was holding Trazyn’s deactivated head in his hands.

Trazyn was dead.

Alert protocols overtook the logical centers as he almost instantly started reciting the incantations to travel back in time.

A moment before he intoned the last words, his head finished the movement, as he turned to face where Trazyn was.

The image of the smiling overlord brought first relief, then anger as the time started to turn backward.

‘Are you afraid of anything ?’ asked Trazyn curiously.

Orikan turned to stare into his oculars.

‘It would be foolish to admit to such weakness’, he answered. ‘ Not everybody is so obviously afraid to get their possessions destroyed’.

Trazyn sent a pouting glyph in the interstitial channel they were sharing.

‘Spending time with you feels like facing my fears every day’, he replied, unhappily with the fact that the cryptek didn’t take the bait.

Orikan turned to where the odd human should be, only to find it empty.

‘There are some things even I fear’.

[unclekoopus]

Art theory states that art should have intention. A dissertation on "AI Art".

A disclaimer first of all that I am someone that has dived deep into AI image generation, I've worked with and created my own models and generated my own images using the open source code. I did this to understand what it is and how it works and I'd say I understand it more than most artists that talk about it online. I feel confident saying that I know what I'm talking about in this matter. I know its capabilities and limitations.

I'm not going to get into the morality of the use of it. I won't defend the rampant theft and copyright violations, I'm someone that believes that AI image gen at the very least should never be used for commercial purposes, but in this post I only want to talk about something else: Tte plain and simple merits of AI art as "Art" itself.

I'll start with repeating my premise statement: "Art theory states that art should have intention in order to be art." Does AI generation meet this criteria? Well, no, not really. Specifically it's not an image generation user's "art" if it is art at all.

With pattern biased algorithmic image generation, AKA "AI art”, someone pressing a button after typing in a prompt just doesn’t amount to a person actually picking and choosing their subject, their composition, and ESPECIALLY their meaning and message. The result is most definitely not the button-pusher's art, the generation is too random and what comes out belongs far more to the machine than to the prompter.

And a machine cannot by itself cogently make the essential choices to make an image successfully have intent. Language models we currently have cannot communicate a person's intent to the machine beyond a few broad strokes tags and trigger words, and pattern bias will often supercede those prompts anyway. A discerning eye will always be able to tell which decisions were made by a machine because it is not making them in the way a human being would, they appear uncanny in the most basic way. The generator is not understanding and interpreting the space and subject in the way that someone who lives and breathes with binocular vision and a human's infinitely more adaptable brain would.

The generator is incapable of truly understanding stylization or design principals, and all its continual, persistent mistakes in numbers of fingers, in anomalous anatomy, and broken gestalt, in nonsensical perspective, and merged and floating objects are a byproduct of this lack of living intelligence. These are things that will never go away, no matter how much data is fed into it because it is flawed at the core by the very basis of its pattern bias. It cannot "learn" how to fix them and so it can only hope to, at best, get lucky enough, or generate enough iterations of the same prompt that the images won't show the cracks. And that process is not creative, it's gambling at a slot machine hoping for a payout.

AI gen really is just a parlor trick at this moment in time, it’s a parrot that’s been taught to repeat phrases in response to certain stimuli to fool you into thinking you’re having a conversation, but it’s just really been trained to recognize noises, not meaning. It's a very pretty bird, but it's no replacement for the real thing, and the longer you "talk" with it, the more obvious that will become.

Art, the real art that the machine is trying and failing to learn from and replicate, requires a human’s creativity and problem solving to be able to make the decisions that will create a piece of art that someone can confidently call their own.

[innernachoesandguacamole]

Input You, Output You

(I understand this may be completely redundant as there’s only so many ways one can describe the very simple and intuitive concept of ‘just be’, but my mind has run in circles with ‘what about the circumstances or senses’ despite the principle being repeated a million times over, so I thought I’d put my thoughts down to help myself better understand it, and hopefully help others better understand through this interpretation!)

I’ve recently been spending more time on my phone that I’d like on brain-numbing, meaningless stuff

Not just social media, but mindless mobile games

Just being inundated with excessive visual and aural stimulation that says nothing, means nothing once the app is closed

I feel drained and disconnected afterwards

I can’t engage with family or friends as much as I like, my thoughts drift back even when I’m not actively scrolling or playing, it’s like my mind becomes a jumbled pile of brainrot mush that doesn’t even make me happy

Yet I find myself going back again and again for that comfortable, predictable stimulation

But I recently came across an ig reel by Adam / etymologynerd that’s lingered in my mind since first watching: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C_VnTi2Pjg8/?igsh=djFuYnNtZnY0c290

If you don’t feel like watching he’s discussing how ai generated content’s ability to make comprehensible… anything is solely due to the massive amounts of human-created data it’s trained on

It doesn’t actually understand or create like a person does because it’s a pattern predictor, not a soul or individual being

Once it starts training on itself it loses that conscious discerner and so the outputs get less coherent until it eventually eats its own tail and just makes nonsense

Same thing can be applied to you because the human mind-body is itself a pattern predictor that spits out whatever it’s fed - think solving an equation, drawing from past experience, a mediocre song stuck in your head because you were fed it against your will by spotify’s stupid algorithm and now you’re singing the lyrics, your internal clock being fucked up because you kept sleeping at 3am lol

The mind-body is not its own conscious entity, it can’t do anything by itself

But even with all these seemingly automatic thoughts and actions, you always have the ability to consciously step out and change the scene

You as the observer bring it into existence and continue to keep it alive through your awareness of it

If you allow your awareness to follow or focus on a certain belief or habit, your world will naturally adjust to output that initial belief again and again and again

This doesn’t necessarily have to be inherently good or bad; it’s up to you to continuously check on the data you choose to input

Are you content with what you are observing? If not, why have you not already tweaked your dataset?

As you continue to submit your power to the primitive, lifeless machine of the mind-body with manufactured fears and desires and identities, does your life feel like it’s losing meaning? Do you want enough to escape that comfort of familiarity in order to go beyond?

Is the reward of loving yourself, of returning to yourself enough for you to step out of the cycle into the vastness of infinity, even with initial resistance and garbage outputs from the pattern predictor?

Remind yourself of your autonomy again and again

Your inner foundation trains your ‘AI’ to imitate the input of your focused attention and your being

Take time to take a step back from the generated illusion and focus on what speaks to you :) as the dataset consolidates, the output will naturally reflect it

Don’t worry about the how or when

You don’t need to source, blueprint, or assemble the parts of the machine in order to install it and reap the rewards

Know it’s part of you and let the magic happen

Input ____, output ____

That’s all :)

[qqueenofhades]

Hiii! I hope this is not too random but you always have such good advices and it's always interesting to hear your opinion about different things.

So, I have this idea for a serialized web-novel that I really want to stick with, write it and actually publish it. But I'm afraid that I'm not good at writing and I'm not sure how to improve. As an academic/teacher who writes fiction, is there anything in particular you would recommend? Like the list of books?

Also, everyone says you can be good at only one thing so you should invest your time in mastering that one thing, otherwise you are going to always be mediocre, Jack of all trades. I have BA in Philosophy, work as a video editor and dream of writing that particular story. Am I too over the place? I thought that I could connect writing to philosophy as there are a few philosophers who write fiction, and connect it to video editing bearing in mind that video editing is also a form of storytelling and can be connected to scripting, in a way.

Ideally, I'd want my story to be in a comics formats, but then I'd also have to learn drawing, which I would absolutely love to do, but then will I be turning into mr. Jack even more? Lol.

First off, my chillun, I am here to safely inform you that the idea of "jack of all trades, master of none," thus implying that it's stupid to do a lot of things when you could devote your time to Doing This One Thing Only, is a pile of crap. What is life even FOR, if not to try new things, experiment, see what you like, make mistakes, and learn how to do it better? Especially when it comes to art??? It is the primal and timeless impulse of human beings in all ages of the world to make art, the end. Someone who has written a "bad" story or drawn a "bad" picture is still 100x more of an artist than some yokel who feeds stolen art into an AI algorithm and presses a button. They have made something original and creative and maybe it's not as good as those who have been doing it more or for longer, but WHO CARES? You can try again! You can laugh it off or pretend it never existed or whatever, but honestly, you should NOT be ashamed.

This whole "do only one thing and don't waste your time with unproductive side hobbies" idea is also an extremely capitalist conceit: you should spend your time being Financially Productive At Your One Skill, and not doing things that bring you joy solely because they bring you joy (even if not money). It presupposes that the only purpose of life is to be generating Profit at all times, which you can't do if you're not "good," etc etc nonsense. (Clearly, I have strong feelings about this.) So if you want to learn how to write and draw in order to make a web comic, you should do that! It doesn't matter if this is totally unrelated to anything you've done before. You don't need to justify it to anyone. You can just go "you know what, I want to do this" and do it!

That said, if you want to produce it to a publishable level in a reasonable timeframe, in this case it might be good to partner up with a person and/or persons who have more experience than you. You can be the storyboarder/show-runner/ultimate mastermind, but you can also reach out to writers and artists who have already practiced to the level needed, so you don't have to spend years becoming good enough (whatever your definition of that might be) to produce a quality product. You have experience with video editing and production; great! You can find someone else whose skills enhance and collaborate with yours, and who can do something that maybe you can't. But if you practice in the meantime, you'll understand more about how it works, what you want to do, and how to translate that into narrative/art form.

As ever, my only advice for people who want to learn how to write better is a) write, and b) read. Find writers whose style you enjoy, whose particular technical skills you want to emulate (is it character development? World-building? Plot twists? Smooth prose? All of the above?) and see how they do it. Sure, there are plenty of writing books out there who purport to tell you How To Do It The Right Way, but honestly, I don't think I've ever read them. I started writing around the age of 7 and worked at it ever since (along with a lot of reading, so yes). Some people might benefit from a more structured/guided approach, so if you think that sounds like something you want to see, even if it's just someone putting words down on a page about the basic technical craft of writing, then I do encourage you to check it out. But if at any time you go "eh, this doesn't feel like my style" or "I don't want to do it that way" or "this isn't quite what I'm looking for," you can shut that book and try something else. This, too, is entirely fine.

I realize that for many of us, writing is the Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known, and it's hard to share it if you feel like it's less than perfect, but at some point, you will also need to start doing that. The nice thing about fandom is that we are all amateurs (i.e. not being paid for it, not necessarily "bad," since I have seen plenty of professionally published books that make me go YIKES), and there's generally a forgiving and supportive atmosphere. If you want to write about two blorbos kissing or not kissing (as the case may be) or whatever else, chances are there is someone out there who wants to read that story, and they will enthusiastically respond to you about it. Strangers who offer unsolicited criticism on fanfic are obviously dicks, but there are also beta readers, people who read your writing to support you and also suggest what can be made better or more polished or otherwise better. So if you think that's a feedback structure you might benefit from, put your toes out and see what kind of response you get.

Anyway, this is all to say: write, draw, make art, do it badly, do it again, you'll get better, and don't feel like you have to excuse it or explain why. In the case of this particular project, if you have a strong artistic vision but not the technical skills to execute it to the level you want, consider reaching out to people who DO have those skills and might be interested in collaborating with you. Write a lot. Read a lot. Find what works for you. And have fun.

[bluravenite]

Kinda wanna rant a bit about being a freelance artist and also struggling with mental illness !!

I like seeing Tumblr as my own personal blog because I can talk about things I care about and don't always feel like I have to cater to people, yet I still have sooo much to do, art for myself, commission requests, chores, projects, etc!!

I am currently sick so having a headache and peeled nose doesn't really help my case but I feel like we don't often see/hear about the struggle of being freelance and struggling with mental or physical illness (particularly chronic!!) and how debilitating it can be sometimes.

We often think the measure of success is in productivity and that our worth lies in the validation and approval of an external authoritative figure, like an algorithm. But I think that's often a harmful way to view human success and accomplishments, it is necessary to keep a level of understanding that validation is required as a part of motivation, but not the sole indicator of success.

People say that with great power comes great responsibility, but I think it's different, rather with great power* comes great expectancy of independent responsibility, be the power as it may not power at all, but rather life itself. When we grow up and become independent people suddenly expect this level of responsibility from everyone, but not everyone can meet that criteria. Humans need support, naturally, we are made to work in groups or rely on people for things! Be it emotionally, physically, environmentally, or chemically in our brains we crave to coexist with people, sometimes that can help us maintain a level of productivity and routine, but others it can hinder it. It's all about compatibility and about knowing and understanding yourself and what works for you!!

I don't wake up early every morning and eat breakfast and get to work and then do chores and have a perfectly balanced social life, in my current situation I find that late nights are when I work best, perhaps it could be early mornings but I live with people who are very awake in the mornings and I need my peace ans quiet to work, I find that I enjoy slow mornings and take 45-60 min breaks approximately every 2 hours of work, I like walking around my room and stretching whenever i feel too compressed and I try to eat at the same times every day so that I won't forget to, but it's not perfect and it's still a struggle. That doesn't mean I'm less productive! I've been trying to embrace taking breaks too, like real breaks.

Full days where I go without pushing myself to draw UNTIL I am so bored of the mundane thoughts that plague my mind that I am required to put them down on paper, and then I draw again, because I have a purpose.

It doesn't always work, MUCH easier said than done, but I still think allowing yourself to kind of "go with the flow" shows better productivity results at times, than forcing a habit when your brain and body aren't willing.

This was a little nonsensical journalistic rant about how I'm finding my mindset relating to art lately, been doing lots of explorations and learning to find comfort in creating again, thank you for reading if you did, and if you too struggle with this or with your own issues know that you're not alone, and I am always happy to listen in the replies or talk about other stuff.

At the end of the day I am a little human, just like you.

[mothfishing]

i think chat GPT can be useful for rephrasing things, a couple of my friends have gotten a lot of utility out of using it to do "professionalism speak" for them. but i feel insane when i see tech bros talking about using it to do research for them, summarize books, give them learning plans for new skills, etc.

AI is gullible! AI makes stuff up! it's not good at being true, it's good at sounding true. chat GPT and other chatbots like it are good at giving a convincingly human-like answer and nothing else. they will absolutely bring in unrelated statistics because they sound good. it'll insert false information because it sounds good. etc. the algorithm learns off what it was taught, and it was taught a lot of nonsense!

(although even if everything it was fed were completely true, it doesn't know how to synthesize information meaningfully. maybe "43% of X" is a meaningful, truthful statistic for Y, but the chatbot will say "43% of X" when talking about Z, where it's not, because it learned "43% of X" sounds good)

it's why "AI" getting so much marketing buzz as a term is something i dislike a lot, even though it was ultimately inevitable. there is no intelligence behind it. it is a very complicated statistical model and it does not "know" anything.

[sylvanas-girlkisser]

One thing I feel gets left out ofthe conversation surrounding AI writing and art is just how bad from a purely artistic standpoint the output AI produces is.

Neural networks do not understand context, doesn't matter how much data you throw at it or how many times you layer the algorithm. This is fundamentally how the technology works, you're trying to fit a bigger engine into a car to turn it into a flying machine.

AI evangelist will point to AI written stories winning "prestigious" (read: random) short story competitions as proof of its artistic merit. And like, sure your AI short story got featured in some monthly fantasy zine or another but like, what about when the rubber meets the road?

What about when you have to produce a full trilogy of novels, or several seasons of a television show? Can it be done? Sure, with human assistance.

However, the thing that makes art stick with you are the little things that makes the artwork feel complete. "Hello, little enemy" is a neat line on its own, but what makes it memorable is how it keeps showing up in the story without explanation for who is saying it.

An AI isn't going to do that, unless it's ripping it off from another novel, it has forgotten the line as soon as it's written. And the human editor isn't going to care enough to add it in; their job is to make sure the main character doesn't randomly change name midway through the story or talks about enjoying sex.

They might even consider the lack of context an error, and decide it was said by Schaffa, cause that sorta makes sense that first time in the pit.

In the future envisioned by AI techbros, every artwork is a hyper detailed anime waifu you tap twice then scroll on to the next one. Every show is a CW superhero show, featuring an endless cavalcade of nonsense plot points loosely tied together by whichever character is currently trending on tiktok.

And this is not news, every (academic) AI researcher has been pointing this out since the 2000s. But techbros don't see this as an issue, cause all they ever read* are ghostwritten word salads about Elon Musk so they can talk about what an enlightening read it was while waiting in line at the in-house campus while refusing to acknowledge the barista as more than a coffee dispensing robot.

*and by read, i mean listened to as an audio book while preparing their slides about how WCAG compliance is a waste of development ressources.

[onewomancitadel]

The idea that what I've been doing all along, myself and probably many others of classic fandom, is interrupting people's personal daydreams and investment in the self-insert which predominates narrative engagement actually makes a lot of sense. It's difficult to decouple that but it's also a mismatch of intention; self-insert is about the last thing I'm interested in.

Of course it's going to feel awful and intrusive when somebody disturbs that. Self-insert is pure id, nothing getting in the way of the most base titillation. In some ways I wonder if that's a natural evolution, or if that's a product of all other emotional conveniences: sex without the messiness of human engagement; prepackaged political and philosophical opinions; automated and algorithmic artistic/media engagement; and so on and so forth. It's also just partly a consequence of 'fandom' - fannish, fanatical engagement with media - going mainstream. The lowest common denominator wins, particularly when it's all community-driven but not community-regulated (outside of the anti/pro nonsense), meaning it's probably most likely that id after all will rule supreme.

But moving away from my attempts at pseudopsychoanalysis, I think it's sort of strange to see my suspicions become concrete. It had always been apparent issues related to Jaune in fandom were 100% self-insert nonsense, masculine neurosis, which is why no one criticism is consistent with another because it's idiopathic, but to see swathes of fandom fall prey to this that even regular OTP's - nay, even the wild fujoshi is threatened - come second to the self-insert, a once rare and contained predator, is truly bizarre! And perhaps I am always trying to understand why it is that fandom is so hostile. If your presence is a threat to their very personal investment - because the fantasy now has real stakes, it has a presence in fandom which isn't private - well, that's going to make people angry in a way they can hardly articulate.

Of course, I don't think beliefs about imaginary characters are meaningfully harmful, it actually matters how you treat other people.

[thowawayuntilfurthernotice]

I’m fully under the belief that public figures/celebrities/artists/anyone who makes anything should undergo rigorous background checks before being allowed to enter people’s hearts and minds. Like, I straight up wish people who made things had no personality other than “I make things/I sing somgs”. I should just be rest assured that the people making things I love are good people or my love and money back. I wish brainwashing were real so we could make everybody a decent human who cares about everything. Genuinely.

I feel like social media has genuinely ruined the way people act online.

When social media was at its infancy during the late 2000's and early 2010's, it was great because it was a good way to connect with people who shared your interests online.

Now that everything is dominated by algorithms, everybody is focused on maintaining high follower counts and engagement numbers, because that's become the only way to get anyone's attention these days.

These giant corporates basically told everyone "Hey, you have to act like the worst fucking version of yourself whenever you use our site/app. Otherwise your posts won't reach a larger audience."

Facebook became a QAnon shit hole, Instagram became a shittier version of TikTok, and Twitter is a rotting zombie that refuses to die.

And look, there are plenty of public figures that still post vapid uninspired feel good nonsense on social media, but whenever I come across that sort of nonsense, I just wanna say to that person "How could focus on something so trivial when a literal genocide is happening right now?"

Yes, not everyone should spend countless hours talking about the same thing, even I get emotionally exhausted talking about Palestine. But I just don't understand how people can be so indifferent.

I live in a middle eastern country, and it kinda breaks my heart to see how quickly we stopped caring.

Everyone was talking about Palestine back in the fall and early winter, then it all just stopped.

I really don't know what else I can say at this point.

[nokingsonlyfooles]

Do Not Watch "Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker"

I'ma tell you why, because writing words helps me regulate my emotions and I have this outlet now, but I'm not having a wonderful time right now. Y'all don't have to click.

I like me some true crime. I consume it critically. It is often painfully obvious the police have fucked up and railroaded someone, but the soundtrack will be dissonantly scary or triumphant, so I know that's not the conclusion I'm meant to draw. Nevertheless, a mystery is interesting, even if it comes with a chaser of systemic injustice.

Netflix's algorithm has been trying to feed me "Hatching Wielding Hitchhiker" for a long time. I finally bit. I feel ill with anger right now.

It's a short documentary. 1'25". I think they had time to say the words "Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder" and "People with mental illnesses are most often the victims of violent crime and not the perpetrators" but it never came up. I don't think they even said the words "child abuse" although they had a child abuser on camera in a nice homey setting who kept deadnaming her child. (Cis people can have deadnames too, it all depends on the circumstances that caused them to change their name. I think an escape from an abusive family warrants a name change that should be respected.)

They had a corroborating, not-mentally-ill person say that this woman had a dark room with blankets over all the windows where she locked her son, and that she'd also tried to lock him (the witness) in there. When they put her on camera she said, essentially, "No, I never locked him in his room. I did have to lock him in his room, but it was because he would get up early and do things that could hurt him."

And I remember being preschool-aged, and climbing up on the kitchen counters to serve myself milk, cereal and sugar (I was not allowed sugar, it was on the highest shelf), sometimes even making a mess, because my dad was at work and my mom was upstairs in a depressive coma, and I wonder, "Oh. Things like that?"

I know my parents would also say, "No, we never locked her in her room. Well, we did lock her in her room, but it wasn't a lock, it was a hook-and-eye latch. She wouldn't sleep, and she cried a lot and wanted us to comfort her, and we wanted to sleep. So, we fixed it. We got her a fire ladder and made sure she knew how to climb down it, so that wasn't a problem. Well, we assume she didn't have to use the bathroom... Anyway, she didn't like to flush the toilet, it was too loud, she said, and that sure was inconvenient for us. What is this about, again?"

Anyway, this kid finally tried to burn down the house (or at least started a fire), got put in foster care and ran away soon after. If I'd been AMAB and had a bit more testosterone on board, I might've done something clever like that instead of hanging out in an abusive situation until my early twenties, but it never seemed like an option.

The boy we're concerned with changed his name, lived on the street, got assaulted more than once (I don't see any reason to doubt that) and had really bad reactions to seeing others assaulted. He stopped an assault with a hatchet. And he became like an adorable duck who drinks a milkshake, no longer a human being who needs food and shelter and safety... if he ever was that, to anyone.

He made the rounds on TV and social media, the police got him to testify against the guy who did the assault, and I see no effort by anyone to do anything more than corral him long enough to get what they wanted from him. During that time, he peed in inappropriate places, and on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (that is an appropriate place to pee, everyone pees there, I have been to Hollywood), threw a knife at the ground (oh no, scary music), and rode his skateboard in a bumpy hotel lobby. This irritated people. When they stuck a camera in his face and tried to get him to perform, he rambled nonsensically. That wasn't very adorable, so he started to not be so famous anymore.

Here is where the scary music, already present whenever he did something weird, became constant.

He says a 70-year-old man picked him up, drugged him and raped him. The 70-year-old man's friends say "He wouldn't do something like that." But, you know, a mentally-ill homeless person who's never participated in an unprovoked attack before would beat a 70-year-old man to death for no reason.

The scary music, and many of the people who met the young man, find it especially damning that he allowed his alleged rapist to drive him to the train station and buy him a ticket, and hugged him goodbye. The young man thought he could take the train and find someplace safe to sleep, but he could not, so he went back to the rapist's house to get a meal and a bed. Why would a person do something like that?

Oh, I dunno, maybe people are willing to do some awful stuff when they need food and a bed? Or maybe he told himself it didn't happen, "I'm just overreacting"? Or maybe he gave the guy a chance to not try something, and the guy tried something, so he killed him? I could forgive any of that. I know how hard it is to get away from an abusive situation, how that helplessness gets ground into your bones, and how scared and angry you can get when you feel like it's all going to happen again, and that would give me some reasonable doubts.

(The police officer saying that it's almost impossible to fracture the orbital socket, when it is only difficult to fracture one part of the orbital socket, and an elbow to the face can easily fracture another part of it, and the young man saying in his interrogation that he elbowed his rapist in the face, also gave me some doubts.)

It did not give the judge, the jury, or most of the people who shoved cameras in the young man's face, any reasonable doubts.

Now he sits in prison, saying, "But I was raped!" and being denied a new trial. He does not wish to see his abusive mother. The closing captions deadnamed him some more.

Thanks, Netflix. What an intriguing mystery. Not unlike that thing you tried to get me to watch where someone vacuum-bagged a kitten, only you didn't play scary music to make me afraid of the kitten.

Don't watch this. And don't watch that, either. It's called "Don't F**k with Cats," don't watch it.

[impostoradult]

I locked that other post I made about AI because I can't possibly respond to everyone individually. But for the record...

A) A lot of you genuinely don't understand how these AI language models work (and I don't have the time to explain it to everyone individually). You are using analogies for what the AIs do that I don't agree with, and think are bad/unfair comparisons.

B) A lot of you are arguing about this from the anthropocentric premise that humans creativity is AUTOMATICALLY a special, magical process that isn't just a reiteration of things YOU'VE consumed before. Which I just don't buy into. I don't think human creativity is the romanticized process you all think it is. And that's just a philosophical difference that can't be 'proven' one way or the other. But I don't believe humans are special just because it flatters our egos to think we are.

(Also the anxiety you have about the AI stealing your work and a corporation profiting off it is a possibility that has always existed. How do you know human beings aren't already using your work as inspiration to write commercially profitable things? You DON'T. If your work is publicly available, human beings RIGHT NOW could be 'stealing' your ideas, changing them just enough to avoid plagiarism charges, and using them to profit. That could easily be happening to you RIGHT NOW. And I get that this is to some degree a matter of scale, which is fair critique up to a point. But that's where we circle back to point A where a lot of you are assuming the AIs are 'stealing' work in ways that are (in my view) just a misunderstanding of the process. All creative output is indebted to prior creative output. That has never not been true. And acting like its less stealing because it cycled through the grey matter of another person's brain as opposed to a computer algorithm feels like a distinction without a difference to me.

Furthermore, I think one of the reasons you all make that distinction is because it is more FLATTERING to you to be creatively stolen from by another human being than by a machine. If a human steals your creative idea and uses it in their own creative work, someone has made a qualitative judgement about your work that it is good/worthwhile/worth imitating. Which is flattering. If an AI does it, there's no flattery involved. But lets be clear, then, about the fact that this is, again, about egos and human emotional insecurity about the art we create. Other people stealing our work and repurposing it for their art is emotionally validating in a way that a machine doing it isn't. But then your issue ISN'T that you are being stolen from, your issue is that it isn't an emotionally gratifying form of stealing. Which I guess it is your prerogative to care about that. But at least be clear about what your motives are)

C) Just because a process is more work, that doesn't make the end result more 'valid' or worthwhile. That's like saying because farming with automated machines is less work than a human harvesting food by hand, the food harvested by machines is less food. Which is nonsense. Just because traveling by walking is more physical WORK than traveling by car, that doesn't mean you didn't make the trip. Humans have ALWAYS developed machines to make the things that are work LESS work. That's universal in human history. I don't know why all of a sudden we are acting like that's evil.

D) Making things less work is a GOOD thing. (Also you can still walk places, even when cars exist. You can still grow food in your garden, even when industrial farming exist. You can still do math by hand even when calculators exist. No one is stopping you)

E) Please stop talking about this like it is a zero-sum-game where EITHER the machines make art, or humans make art. That's a false binary. Both can happen at the same time. One doesn't preclude the other. It's not either/or. There's no reason to buy into that false binary.

F) The question of what capitalism is going to DO with this technology is a valid question, and that's the area where I agree, we need to be the most cautious and the strictest about how this technology gets used. I don't necessarily approve of the idea of publishers just switching to AIs and just unilaterally eliminating all paid human creative labor (particularly not without a social safety net in place). However...

G) One of the reasons I dislike reactionary responses to AI is I actually think -- IF WE PLAY OUR CARDS RIGHT -- AI could free us from a LOT of bullshit labor and be the mechanism that ushers in UBI. If we play our cards right. But it requires acknowledging that reducing human labor should be a GOAL, not a thing to fear.

I get that people worry that corporations are just gonna replace people with machines, those people will be left to fend for themselves, and capitalism will continue on as before with more people out of work and not able to support themselves. Which is ONE POSSIBILITY. And admittedly a very bad one.

However, that trajectory of events depends on the political consciousness we collectively have around labor, technology, and what the goals of human life really are.

Ironically, I am (by and large) supportive of AI precisely because I think it COULD lead to a situation where human being are actually given the opportunity to be MORE creative. Which I think is a good thing.

A lot of human creativity is hampered by the fact that we have to work 8+ hours a day to support ourselves and we don't have the free time to do all the creative things we want to do.

Also, a lot of creativity is hampered by the fact that corporations want to make money off of human creativity, and creatives are strong-armed into making art that is commercially palatable. (Which is one of the reasons I find a lot of your responses to this baffling. You are acting like corporations aren't ALREADY taking creative human labor and churning out watered down, imitative, sanitized storytelling from it. Which they very much ALREADY are. Have you seen the MCU lately? The thing you are afraid of IS ALREADY HAPPENING RIGHT NOW. It's just less mechanized, which I don't think therefore makes it less of a problem.)

So, why not let the AIs make commercially palatable art, and do a lot of the other bullshit work that eats up human lives. And then it can free people to make the art they actually want to make because they'll have enough time to do that AND they won't be under commercial mandates to make what they create 'marketable.' (Again, this doesn't have to either/or. It can be both/and).

***

I think you all are looking at this very wrong in the sense that I think there is a very real possibility this is a massive BOON for human creativity. I get that that feels counter-intuitive and paradoxical. And I also get that it's not *inevitable*. Capitalism does have a tendency to ruin things that could be good.

But I think part of the way to avoid that is to NOT be reactionary about AI but embrace its liberatory capacities. And to develop a vision of how human beings might flourish by integrating AI into society in a just way. Which I think would lead to MORE and BETTER human creativity. Growing vegetables in your garden is probably a more rewarding process if you don't have to live under the fear that if your gardening goes bad one year, you'll starve to death.

People still garden in a world where machines harvest a lot of our food. And they probably get more joy out of it when their survival isn't pegged to the outcome process.

[acorpsecalledcorva]

Did I ever write an essay here on Edward Bernays and propaganda? Dissociative amnesia go brrr so I'll see if I can quickly bash something out to distract myself from cramps. This post is going to be completely uncited and I'm barely gonna fact check myself so if any of this sounds interesting I strongly recommend looking this stuff up and if I'm wrong then yay! You'll learn something by doing so.

So who is Bernays? No he is not a sauce made out of butter, egg yolk, and white wine vinegar, he is the nephew of Freud and regarded as one of the most influential men of the twentieth century and the father of Public Relations.

He was very interested in his uncles work, and worked in the fields of psychology and sociology. His main schtick was that he viewed humanity as deeply and fundamentally irrational, illogical, emotional, and needed to be controlled lest they fall into chaos. Through Freud's work on psychoanalysis he devised a way to influence the masses by playing on their emotions and insecurities, something which we should all be very familiar today in politics and advertising.

Before Bernays, advertising was very, like, practical. "These shoes will survive up to a thousand miles of walking, they're comfortable and hand crafted with fine leather" kinda thing. People were interested in what products could do for them and made informed choices. Now though advertising is much more about lifestyle and aspiration. No joke in 2021 I saw an advert for a company that sells kitchens that said you needed to drop 20k on a new kitchen to prevent "zoombarrassment" when you work from home because all your colleagues will think you're a bad person and shame you for it.

Where we're at with this stuff today with algorithms and stuff is that engagement is key. If people are talking about you, if you're trending, then that's good. And the best way to get people talking about you? Controversy. Budweiser, Gillette, and I think a brand of coffee machine?, all jump out as recent examples of companies capitalising on a hot social issue to generate free advertising by whipping the masses up into a frenzy. Rainbow capitalism isn't only bad just because they hope that if they put a trans women in an advert that you'll buy it, it's also much worse because they're actively trying to piss off conservatives and fascists and incite flame wars as the official sponsor of transphobia. On the one hand, yay representation, but on the other, every time this happens I get to see just how many people in the world fucking hate me for existing. They're actively contributing to a global pandemic of deepening division and increased risk of violence.

And politicians cottoned onto this too. Boris Johnson is particularly good at this, and it's called the dead cat technique. If he ever feels like things might get tricky and might actually have to do a politics, he throws a dead cat on the table in the form of some inflammatory or bizarre remark because it shuts down the conversation. I mean, there's a dead cat on the table, how can you talk about anything other than the dead cat? His go to increasingly became trans people towards the end of his political career, just constantly talking about penises, absolutely obsessed with penises, but there's this really incredible interview he did where an interviewer asked him what his hobby is and he started talking about making London buses out of milk crates. It's absolutely nonsensical but you can also tell he's choosing his words very very carefully. Why? Because during the Brexit referendum he put a massive lie on the side of a bus and he wanted to manipulate the search results for when you search "Boris Johnson Bus".

Another technique politicians absolutely adore is being completely contradictory in your positions. Say you're committed to providing an inclusive and compassionate asylum system while actively dismantling said system. Say your committed to reducing wealth inequality while actively increasing it. Say you're committed to reducing national debt while actively increasing it. It keeps your opponents confused and unable to oppose you because they never know what your true position is and therefore what theirs should be, and it also provides you a get out clause. If someone accuses you of being against something? Just point to all the times you supported it. If someone accuses you of supporting something? Just point to all the times you condemned it.

So why am I writing any of this in the syscourse tag? Because a lot of syscoursers use these techniques to grow their own popularity and reach. It honestly doesn't even need to be a conscious effort, those who engage on syscourse over at Twitter are rewarded for doing this whether they know it or not, and then it gets brought here. Thankfully Tumblr isn't as bad, but we still feel it's effects. Whenever I see absolutely deranged "anti endos do this" or "pro endos do this" stuff I just assume it comes from Twitter because I struggle to find it here when I look, but the beefs and long standing arguments are still very twitteresque.

I do think it's important to be aware of this stuff though, because when you understand it all becomes deeply unserious. You may not be immune to propaganda but at least you can learn to recognise and step outside of it. When a syscourser admits to openly trying to be inflammatory to the other side and enjoying watching them get upset over it, or if you notice them restarting old arguments after not being talked about for a few days then you can finally give yourself permission to let go and not get involved. You can no longer take anything that person says seriously, because you can't ever know if they are being serious. They literally told you that they do it on purpose, therefore anything they say fails to be credible or sincere. If it pisses you off? It's meant to. If it's factually incorrect? It's supposed to be. Feel like writing a call out post to denounce them? That's exactly what they want you to do because you're talking about them. Keeping them fresh and trendy at all times.

[madseance]

robocalypse probably never: a.i. & art

I used to be a professional graphic designer. I quit for a variety of reasons. Like the time I wanted to teach a couple of my coworkers Photoshop, and my boss said, "Well, if you do that, what will I need you for?" Or the fact that none of my superiors could genuinely tell that my work was any better than what they could whip up in Canva. It absolutely was; but if they couldn't see it, did it matter?

I've thought about this a lot lately with all the A.I. business going on. The whole "will A.I. replace artists/writers/etc" conversation seems to be focused on whether A.I.-generated content can ever be as good as human art. Whether it will ever be, in every perceivable way, equivalent to human art.

I don't think that's the right question, though, and I don't think that's what's really bothering people. It's not what's really bothering me.

When I quit graphic design, I went back to school to study biology and psychology, with vague ideas of maybe switching into computer science and A.I. learning. I presented one paper about affective computing, thought about it a bit more, and decided it wasn't the field for me.

I don't think a computer can ever meaningfully simulate being human; I don't think we'll ever see the kind of truly indistinguishable A.I. everyone always thinks is just around the corner. I'm not worried that an algorithm with a typewriter will ever produce Shakespeare.

What worries me is that, whenever computers do reach their limits of simulated creativity, whatever slapdash approximation of human art they're able to produce will be good enough for most people. That they won't be able to tell any meaningful difference, the same way my boss thought anybody who could work Photoshop could replace me.

Right now, there are no end of websites pushing A.I. tools to generate blog posts and essays and articles purported to be equivalent to or better than human-written ones. Websites are already full of their output. If you're looking solely at things like that, it can feel like there soon won't be any place for human writing. The same with all the A.I.-generated "art". If everyone's so impressed with the seven-fingered image mashup nonsense these tools crank out, maybe there's no point in humans even bothering to make their own art anymore.

But there are two things I've been thinking about that contradict that.

One: I've touched on this a bit, but all the A.I. generated stuff ranges from amusing nonsense on the high end, down to absolute incoherent garbage. However good it's supposedly going to get any minute now, it's going to have limits. As a friend just pointed out to me, it sure can't fucking physically paint yet. I can definitely see art that is fully outside A.I.'s wheelhouse becoming more valuable because of that. Even with writing, just to take one example, everyone who's paying for it on the internet right now knows that there are a few things A.I. is okay at and a fuckload it's bad at. Even the content farms are saying "do not submit A.I.-generated garbage to us." If you want good writing, you need a human. Humans who can fucking write may end up being more valuable thanks to A.I., not less.

Two: This one's a little less concrete, but I think it should be even more important, because I think there are more important things about art than its monetary value. Even though my ex-boss probably still thinks Canva is better than me, I fucking know better. And there are quite a few other people who know better, too. One time, my workplace did this pop culture event, and I made a flier for it that I knew the target audience would think was cool. And I was right, because not only did it help bring in record numbers of attendees, one girl literally asked me to print her a fresh copy of the flier to keep with her other souvenirs of the event. No one ever fucking did that about a flier a coworker bashed out in five minutes using clipart.

My point is, you cannot make art for the 75% or 90% or 99.99998% of people, as the case may be, who can't tell the difference between it and computer-simulated garbage. You already don't. You don't make it for the people who don't get it; you make it for the ones who do. No matter how much of a content-farmed corporate hellscape the world of professional creativity becomes, you have to ultimately be in it for those rare moments where it connects with somebody. Those are not going away unless the machines replace every single human with a Terminator or whatever the fuck.

So no, I'm not really that worried about A.I. replacing me any more than I'm worried about ignorance and apathy replacing me. The SEO-content-monetisation-engagement drones are more than welcome to keep asking chatbots to generate shitty blog posts for each other to not read. It doesn't have any more to do with me than it ever did.