#or having any sort of repercussions for online activity at any point

[h0neyfreak]

Not to dropkick a hornets nest or anything but I think a lot of you have really lost the plot on the whole internet privacy thing.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

This isn't a religious based question but more about social activism and the commodification of it. Recently I had a conversation with a friend who considers the likes of Jameela Jamil as an "activist". I disagreed and said there's a difference between being a vocal & active supporter of something vs being an activist. Frankly I feel posting things on social media sites doesn't make you an activist, no matter how much time you spent on Canva. I mentioned it's sort of pandering, especially if you have something to gain by stating your political opinions online. She thinks making things on Canva is work - which, sure, but as someone who is in the graphic design field, I don't consider it activism in the slightest. To me, activism and design would mix when you bring in making things easier for people with disabilities (i.e. colourblind optimization, ergonomic keyboards etc) - not just a gradient image that says something most folks would agree with.She doesn't really understand what I'm trying to say & I'm curious to know if you have any opinions on this.

It's not activism if there isn't risk or anything at stake.

Civil rights activists and gay rights activists risked arrest, violence and social repercussions. I'm not saying that you're not an activist if you don't get beat up, but more like you're not an activist if you don't have anything on the line. If your livelihood, social or legal standing aren't threatened by speaking up.

Jameela Jamil is not an "activist" because she's just echoing fashionable talking points. Worse, ones that are the reigning orthodoxy. It's more risky to speak against what she's rambling about than for it.

The only risk she takes is when she doesn't echo those talking points sufficiently on-script. Of course, this happened on Twitter after she already made a big deal of quitting Twitter, so she's not really committed to her principles. When Sam Harris quit Twitter, he just deleted and was gone. Unlike Sam, Jameela needed to be seen. And I think that says everything. The only thing she has at stake is being mauled by the same mob she's acting on behalf of. She's not an "activist" because she doesn't stand up for - or even seem to have - her own principles or values - she just does what the mob tells her to, because she's looking for approval.

Even if she did though, she's not an "activist" when she's repeating the same fashionable rhetoric that's already approved and promoted by entertainment, academic, government, social media, tech, industry and other sectors that have either been ideologically captured, or are toeing the line to maintain their business. Who is her audience? As far as I can tell, the same people she's parroting. Which doesn't seem any less performative or more meaningful than Xians waving their hands at a church service.

She's not "speaking truth to power" when the only people who will come after her or challenge her are those on "her" side. She's speaking on behalf of power.

If it isn't obvious, I don't have much regard or respect for her. There are people I disagree with but respect for having a considered point of view and for sticking with their values and being consistent about them. But she doesn't have any.

[lightbringer-morningstar]

Guidelines and Rules

I'm not really one for rules so I'm gonna call them guidelines for interaction.

This blog is mostly active via mobile for the time being.

On This blog I am highly selective and mutuals only for threads.

Selective follow. I prefer a dashboard that is current and relevant to partners who interact with my muse, so please don't take it personal if unfollowing occurs at some point due to lack of interaction. Follow status always has the ability to change if interactions occur through inbox.

Content. Things here will be 18+/25+ meaning content may at any given moment include topics that are not suitable for minors, such as but not limited to violence, gore, cannibalism, blood, death, alcohol use, drug use, and other mature-related themes. Anyone familiar with the source material: Hazbin Hotel &&Helluva Boss would be well aware of the correlations. Expect nsfw. By following this blog you agree to acknowledging possible explicit content and explicit themes that may or may not be tagged. I will do my best to tag accordingly but if something doesn't appear excessive in my perspective there is the possibility it will not get a tag. Apologies in advanced for any possible triggering content but please consider yourself warned and please request tags if needed. I shouldn't need to state this but blogs posting content such as racism, bigotry, discrimination, hate of any kind, lgbt+ phobia or hate, incest, noncon ect. will be instantly unfollowed for my own wellbeing and mental health.

Frequent posts of ooc drama or callout culture related involvement will lead to immediate unfollow or Block. Also any posts, comments or replies expressing derogatory commenting towards others or noticeable passive aggressive behavior will lead to unfollow or Block. Vague blogging will not be tolerated, be mature and talk things out or learn to block and move on, respectfully.

Interactions. Some muses here are rude and some are flat out dangerous. If they are approached with lack of caution I will not sit by and be accused of God-modding/Meta-gaming. Please do not prod/provoke or instigate muses into action unless ready for the repercussion. I do not god-mod or meta-game (unless it comes up in crack-posts/jokes on dashboard) and I also don't accept it from others during threads. This has happened to me before, and I'd rather avoid it. I'm always willing to chat about/discuss actions that occurred if outcomes are upsetting or uncomfortable in hindsight so there's always the possibility for a do-over, just ask.

Uncomfortable situations. Sometimes uncomfortable dialogue or actions may occur between muses, should this happen please reach out and express the discomfort and we can quickly agree to amend it/change it. Maybe a muse gets too mean or aggressive during chatter or they use possible flirtatious advancements when that sort of attention is unwanted. Talk to me and it won't happen again. Just gotta let me know if something isn't being enjoyed and it will immediately stop.

Replies will be done when I have time, should any need to be dropped a courtesy discussion attempt will be made as notification. Activity will be sporadic, but my aim is to be online often. This is a hobby, and I do it to de-stress. If you at any time find yourself not wanting to drop an interaction, reach out and let me know. Should the opposite be true, and you find you want to drop any threads then same would apply. Asking about certain threads or interactions to get an idea of whether they are being continued or dropped is perfectly acceptable but please do not repeatedly ask/spam or hound me, that could result in an unfollow from me.

Any Anon hate will be promptly discarded and will result in an automatic block. This includes Policing anons. Do not go on anon to police what I post on my blog. Please consider unfollowing. Egotistical Anons who decide to abuse the anonymous function on my blog run the risk of being blocked on sight. I will not apologize or explain my posts or my opinions to anons who disagree with me or those who seek to be some sort of authority on what I choose to post on my blog simply because they disagree with me or my point of view or believe I should be "educated" by their standards. Do not impose yourself onto me. Please unfollow if it gets to that point. I would never intentionally offend or insult anyone, but I do reserve the right to formulate my own opinions and to thereby express them as such should I feel the need. I understand that doing so could possibly result in unintentional offense or misunderstandings and so should anyone deciding to follow this blog after reading the guidelines/rules outlined within this post. If you find this unacceptable, please consider either unfollowing or not following to begin with.

Friendly, neutral, or curious Anons are always welcomed.

Manipulation between muns ooc. Do not do it. If I find out it's your intention or you have actively persisted in certain behavioral patterns I will block without warning or explanation. Let's be transparent, direct and mature about things, please. Open and Direct Communication works best.

Writing. Micro, One-liners, Para, Multi-para and Novella are all welcome. I will be honest, I prefer shorter rather than longer when things have not been plotted. I will be putting my best effort forward but I will not be struggling to match length and hopefully writing partners will not either. Please don't ever feel pressured to write more than motivation will allow, it's completely understandable. I'm the flexible type when in comes to rp here.

Shipping. Please don't force it on my muses. Please don't write on behalf of my muses during replies. This is a cooperative endeavor, and consent should be at the forefront of interactions. I ship for chemistry, please be respectful if it just isn't there between muses. Multiship and multiverse. Love it, can't get enough of it but I do ship and write for chemistry. I'm not likely to autoship. The only exceptions will be the ones I agree on during plotting discussion ooc with other muns. Will not be shipping with minors.

Portrayal. Please don't press personal headcanons onto my muses. Don't press on about inferred or implied assumptions from canon material, don't use knowledge derived from source material to tell me through your muses about my muses, it may seem like a fun idea, but it ends up feeling redundant. Especially if we've just begun interactions. [Example: "Oh hey, don't you LOVE ducks???, you're so in LOVE with ducks, I bet you've got some under your bed! Right?

Multi-verse. Multi-ship. All ships will be treated as though occurring in separate universes unless discussed between writers/muns and/or stated otherwise.

Blocking, &&Unfollowing. If I, at any given point sense that my guidelines or personal boundaries are ignored too many times, I will unfollow and/or block with no warnings or explanations. Please respect my decisions and do not choose to harass me, thereafter, thank you.

Cross-over enthusiast. Open to writing with characters from various outside fandoms.

OC friendly. I am always open to writing with ocs provided it isn't only done with intention to ship. I enjoy interactions with some ocs but I do not prioritize ocs over canon. I prefer for there to be some believable explanation behind how the ocs are fluidly integrated into the universe and for them to be fully aware of their place within it prior to beginning interactions as well as awareness of my muse's status and the overall "established world/verse/reality rules". If not please ask.

Mains, &&Affliates. I don't mind adding associated or affiliated rpers/blogs if we've known each other awhile and have been writing together regularly and communicating ooc frequently, and for a long time. If we have a shared formed continuity, it's fine. I'm not likely to take on mains or any 'status' such as married due to being multiverse and multiship. Each relationship is in it's own separate universe unless discussed between writers/muns. Now, I will be transparent here, when I see these things on other blogs: "mains" or "married to" I will be less likely to initiate any interactions as I take it that those blogs prefer to default to their "mains" or "spouses" as priority, so I prefer to either be tagged directly or prompted via inbox in those situations, thanks for understanding.

Duplicate friendly. This means I am interested in writing with duplicates as though they are multiverse variants or clones of some sort, plotted or not. Usually in cases of multimuse blogs. But I will unfollow or block if duplicates of single-muse blogs never interact.

Gaphics and icons. The majority are made and edited by me. Please do not use them without permission. Thank you. Any that are not made by me will be credited if needed.

I'm here to have fun. I'll basically be doing my best to enjoy myself and bypass any drama.

[cobblepottery]

Can i ask what's your opinion on ai generated art?

I’ve put off answering this ask for a while because I have a lot to say AND I have a lot of conflicting feelings, but I’m beginning to get in fights about it online now so I guess this is the time to finish off this disorganized ramble lol

Tl;dr I think AI art is a very cool and useful tool, and I don’t really think it’s theft, but as with many new technologies, it has terrible repercussions and is going to be used by corporations to the detriment of workers.

I think AI generated art is very cool, in concept-- I mean, I love AI in general (that’s probably why you asked me), and I especially love creative AI. That said, I don’t think the results LOOK that good most of the time (at least not without substantial tuning). Plus I very much enjoy making art myself, and am unlikely to commission others, man or machine, if there’s an image I want to exist. I am fairly interested in the creative process of how other artists use AI art as a supplementary tool, which is often pretty fascinating.

I definitely dismiss any complaints about AI art that come down to “it’s not true art because AI doesn’t have a soul” or “true art has to be difficult to make”. The first argument is meaningless (a camera doesn’t have a soul either, it’s about where you, the human, decide to point it). The second argument is actively harmful to artists and has been used repeatedly throughout history to bash new forms of art. There are far better reasons to hate AI-generated art than either of these: like art theft!

This is an argument I’m very sympathetic to, because it’s very difficult to define whether using pre-existing art as training data is theft or not, I think. My gut tells me that it is theft, but I’m actively going against my gut on this one. AI art doesn’t trace bits and pieces of other people’s art or edit it together like a collage; rather, it learns from other people’s art what art is supposed to look like (i.e. portraits often have a squiggle in the right-hand bottom corner) and then creates an entirely new image according to the guidelines it has learned and the prompt it is given. If we decided that training a model on data is theft, then we would have to rethink what's allowed when humans create art, because it’s really very similar to how humans work when looking at other artworks as inspiration. (I know I’m going to lose a lot of people here, because a lot of people are going to think this is art theft no matter how little of their art is recognizable in the final product, and I get that. It somehow feels different than someone just using your art for inspiration, even if practically the final result is the same, and software automatically scraping a database is a lot less flattering than an individual coming across your art and deciding they want to emulate it.)

I think the biggest problem with AI generated art isn’t about AI at all, but is really a combination of two distinct issues unrelated to AI. The first of these is copyright infringement, and the second is job security.

On the subject of copyright infringement, I’m gonna be brief, because admittedly I don’t know a ton of law and I don’t want to look too stupid. The courts consider copying art to be “fair use” if the art is transformative in some way. When I’m using other art for reference in my own art, I’m transforming it in some way that leaves the final result very different from its references. How different does it have to be? Hell if I know! Andy Warhol’s estate is currently facing a lawsuit over this! More restrictive definitions of “transformative” tend to help corporations more than they help individual artists (you can see this in the music industry, which has much stricter copyright laws). So I don’t think making stricter copyright laws is the answer here, but I like having some sort of social etiquette revolving around crediting major inspirations. If you’re actively specifying stuff belonging to a certain artist or group of artists (i.e. if you specify “in the style of artist x” or “in the style of animation studio y” in the prompt for the AI), it would be a dick move not to credit artist x or studio y, less so if they’re incredibly well known (like Disney) and much more so if they’re relatively unknown. I don’t think this is as important for something like “in a comic style” because the number of artists used as training data is going to be so large that any individual influence will come out so diffused as to be barely noticeable. Of course, feeding in a single image to be slightly altered in some way and then claiming it was entirely made by you is utterly unconscionable.

Alright, now for the job security part.

I have a relative who is a concept artist. He's being put out of work by AI generated art, because why hire a concept artist when you can just use a free AI? (To be clear, there are many reasons why, and those reasons are why human artists are always going to be wanted... but the fact remains that they won't be wanted quite as much, and existing artists' careers will be negatively affected.)

I also have a relative who is a virtual reality artist, primarily working in 3D. She tends to commission other artists to work on smaller parts of her project when she doesn’t have time to do it herself, but that’s very expensive. She's very excited for AI generated art to extend to 3D models because it would make her artwork cheaper and quicker to produce overall. Her artistic career will likely be positively affected as these AI improve.

Some artists are hindered and some are helped. A lot of non-artists are also helped, like writers who want to create a webcomic but lack the ability to fully create visual art for their story by themselves, and can’t afford to commission it either. Corporations are very much helped, which I certainly don’t consider to be a good thing. It’s easier to create, and it’s also easier to take advantage of people.

When cameras were invented, the number of professional painters went down, but it became cheaper and easier to obtain visual representations of life. When digital art software was created, the number of traditional media artists went down, but again, it became cheaper and easier for aspiring artists to create art. As AI generated art improves, we will also see the numbers of professional artists go down. This is always the problem with technology that makes a task easier-- there's always someone out there whose livelihood depended on that task being difficult. BUT we will also see an increase in art overall, just as the invention of cameras-- the accessibility and convenience of cameras to the average person-- made it possible for ordinary people to start experimenting with photography and videography without needing to hire professionals. It's absolutely a horrible tragedy, and its been a tragedy every single time a similar automation has pushed workers out of jobs over the centuries.

So what do we do about it?

That’s where I’m stuck. Because I want to eradicate the cons, but I want to keep the pros, as well. I wouldn’t want to go back 200 years and destroy the camera. I don’t want to go, “it’s all capitalism’s fault!” but it’s all capitalism’s fault. If we had, say, universal basic income, then artists wouldn’t need to rely on art being difficult in order to make enough money to survive. But like, I fully acknowledge that UBI is a distant dream right now, and will not be a solution to the immediate real problem many artists are facing currently. I don’t know! I don’t know. I think you can probably tell from this post that I lean more towards the side of “AI art good”, but this part keeps coming back to haunt me. Fully hand-drawn art very well could be largely replaced by AI-made art, the way that so many artisan crafts have been largely replaced by mechanized versions of themselves, and it’ll probably happen much faster this time since AI image generation is SO fast. I really really really don’t want that to happen.

I guess probably one of the best things to do is to support and commission non-AI artists as much as we can? Push back against corporations relying on AI art and laying off their human workers? Try to encourage the use of AI art as a tool for human creativity, not as a replacement for it? Any and all of these.

Sorry if you thought this would be more coherent!