#Thumbnails are all for the algorithm

[gascon-en-exil]

Ugh, thumbnails...

This isn't the first time I've had this thought, but if I ever make it to a point where I can afford to pay someone to help me with my video content, the very first thing I'll be looking for will be a graphic designer.

It's not even so much my limited skill in that area so much as that I'm not very good at coming up with eye-catching design concepts to appease the algorithm. I'm just not a visually creative person.

[invasive]

WHAT HAPPENED TO MY YOUTUBE. SAVE ME

[thehealingsystem]

nate please please please please I am shaking you by the shoulders right now no one needs to do this please you can make a actual thought provoking interesting thumbnail for the song you don't need to appeal to clickbait algorithms anymore you're still letting yourself be bound to it people loved your early original songs for what they were without this. please stop doing this please stop changing thumbnails I am going to cry

[heckaroniandcheese]

im tired of every fucking video on youtube being so fucking clickbaity. i understand why, but i don't watch most of the people i used to because i find clickbait repulsive. the video may have been watchable to me with a normal title & thumbnail but now it's I DID WHAT TO MY HOUSE 🤯💥🤯💥?!?!! and the thumbnail is just them making a bad fake surprise face instead of actually related to the video

[haloeffect]

I have to say this here because literally no one cares but the cover of Coco Mellors’ book Blue Sisters makes me so uncomfortable since I believe the author commissioned a portrait artist who is using an uncredited model? And I know this because I’m a Pinterest veteran who has been seeing this picture of this girl circulate on there for years, and then suddenly her face is on the cover of a book? I went to the artists website to see if there’s some reference to which photo she clearly used and there’s none, I swear. The portrait is there though. Is this how it goes usually? Can you just take someone’s random picture as your reference photo and receive money for your artistic rendition without credit to the model? 😭 it doesn’t seem like you can do that

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

That's very fair. I'm just forever haunted by pop psychology.

had a dream all of my friends were telling me to date a guy and then he turned out to be like a very fucked up scary arsonist. which could mean nothing (it means nothing, that's how dreams work)

[wordstome]

how c.ai works and why it's unethical

Okay, since the AI discourse is happening again, I want to make this very clear, because a few weeks ago I had to explain to a (well meaning) person in the community how AI works. I'm going to be addressing people who are maybe younger or aren't familiar with the latest type of "AI", not people who purposely devalue the work of creatives and/or are shills.

The name "Artificial Intelligence" is a bit misleading when it comes to things like AI chatbots. When you think of AI, you think of a robot, and you might think that by making a chatbot you're simply programming a robot to talk about something you want them to talk about, and it's similar to an rp partner. But with current technology, that's not how AI works. For a breakdown on how AI is programmed, CGP grey made a great video about this several years ago (he updated the title and thumbnail recently)

I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend you watch this because CGP Grey is good at explaining, but the tl;dr for this post is this: bots are made with a metric shit-ton of data. In C.AI's case, the data is writing. Stolen writing, usually scraped fanfiction.

How do we know chatbots are stealing from fanfiction writers? It knows what omegaverse is [SOURCE] (it's a Wired article, put it in incognito mode if it won't let you read it), and when a Reddit user asked a chatbot to write a story about "Steve", it automatically wrote about characters named "Bucky" and "Tony" [SOURCE].

I also said this in the tags of a previous reblog, but when you're talking to C.AI bots, it's also taking your writing and using it in its algorithm: which seems fine until you realize 1. They're using your work uncredited 2. It's not staying private, they're using your work to make their service better, a service they're trying to make money off of.

"But Bucca," you might say. "Human writers work like that too. We read books and other fanfictions and that's how we come up with material for roleplay or fanfiction."

Well, what's the difference between plagiarism and original writing? The answer is that plagiarism is taking what someone else has made and simply editing it or mixing it up to look original. You didn't do any thinking yourself. C.AI doesn't "think" because it's not a brain, it takes all the fanfiction it was taught on, mixes it up with whatever topic you've given it, and generates a response like in old-timey mysteries where somebody cuts a bunch of letters out of magazines and pastes them together to write a letter.

(And might I remind you, people can't monetize their fanfiction the way C.AI is trying to monetize itself. Authors are very lax about fanfiction nowadays: we've come a long way since the Anne Rice days of terror. But this issue is cropping back up again with BookTok complaining that they can't pay someone else for bound copies of fanfiction. Don't do that either.)

Bottom line, here are the problems with using things like C.AI:

It is using material it doesn't have permission to use and doesn't credit anybody. Not only is it ethically wrong, but AI is already beginning to contend with copyright issues.

C.AI sucks at its job anyway. It's not good at basic story structure like building tension, and can't even remember things you've told it. I've also seen many instances of bots saying triggering or disgusting things that deeply upset the user. You don't get that with properly trigger tagged fanworks.

Your work and your time put into the app can be taken away from you at any moment and used to make money for someone else. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people who use AI panic about accidentally deleting a bot that they spent hours conversing with. Your time and effort is so much more stable and well-preserved if you wrote a fanfiction or roleplayed with someone and saved the chatlogs. The company that owns and runs C.AI can not only use whatever you've written as they see fit, they can take your shit away on a whim, either on purpose or by accident due to the nature of the Internet.

DON'T USE C.AI, OR AT THE VERY BARE MINIMUM DO NOT DO THE AI'S WORK FOR IT BY STEALING OTHER PEOPLES' WORK TO PUT INTO IT. Writing fanfiction is a communal labor of love. We share it with each other for free for the love of the original work and ideas we share. Not only can AI not replicate this, but it shouldn't.

(also, this goes without saying, but this entire post also applies to ai art)

[amy-bonsai]

[spicy-apple-pie]

Yall imagine a batfam vlogger au.

Like Steph just posts videos of her and the batfam dicking around and posts it to YouTube. She doesn’t have a set schedule or anything but because she includes the Wayne’s in the thumbnail/title she gets picked up by the algorithm and blows up.

Sometimes she’ll post all of them having a pool day and edit Bruce as a lifeguard every time he yells “no running!” Or she used Bruce’s credit card to buy a mermaid tail and does a whole h2o bit. Just them having fun.

They get a whole bunch of edits like “Dick fixing his hair for x mins straight” or “Alfred being a mom for x mins straight” or “Steph and Cass being girlfriends for x mins straight” etc.

But then lo and behold Bruce goes missing as Batman. They put a community post up saying that they’re going to stop posting indefinitely as they grieve. During this time, there’s a whole new genre of edits/compilations of Bruce being good dad, some of his sillier moments. And it’s really comforting for the batfam.

And then Breaking News!! Bruce Wayne has been found and is alive! And then it becomes a meme of “I can’t wait for Steph’s new vlog to come out.” And sure enough a couple weeks later Steph posts a vlog titled “he lived bitch.” That goes viral.

It opens with the kids singing “the dad came back the very next day. The dad came back, we thought he was a goner!” As Bruce eats his breakfast trying to act annoyed. There’s just a lot of memes and jokes about it because that’s how they cope lol.

[dervampireprince]

ASMR | Elden Ring - Messmer x Listener SFW Giving Comfort And Care To Touch-Starved Messmer

[M4A] [Reverse comfort] [Touch-starved Messmer] [Feelings confession] [First kiss] [Mentions of Messmer's abandonment by his mother] [Potential DLC spoilers] [Listener left ambiguous so can be non-tarnished, or tarnished who's made peace with Messmer]

So remeber how the first Astarion audio I made was done 3 hours after I found out he had sad lore in him and consumed every cutscene and read up on his lore and recorded an audio that night? Well... the same might have happened again. An artist I follow on Twitter (thank you ProxysArt) has been drawing and retweeting other drawings of him and I thought he was pretty and all but then I saw that his lore was sad and well... I went and did it again, watched every video I could find, read all the lore I could find on fanwikis, and recorded this a couple hours later. While I'm familiar with Elden Ring, I've never played it, only fell down some lore rabbit holes a couple years ago, but didn't remember much so apologies if I got any lore wrong. I've tried to also make this understandable without you needing to know anything about Elden Ring.

Because I recorded this yesterday and it wasn't planned in advance, I didn't have enough time to draw a thumbnail image. The image is a screenshot from Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree. Though honestly I have noticed that videos with photos or official images instead of my artwork seem to do better? I don't know if that's the algorithm pushes them more or non-subscribers are more enticed by photos instead of drawings?

.

Old public spicy audios on sound gasm (link in pinned post). 2 Exclusive spicy audios on Patreon every month. I also stream on Twitch every week @ dervampireprince . [minors + ageless blogs dni. this blog is for 18+ only.] [do not repost/reupload/edit any of my content]

[cosmic-giraffe]

So I read that stupid fucking callout doc on Von and I'm gonna say my piece on it.

For those unaware, a doc was shared today that accused Von of using generative AI in her art. For the Tetro sprites, for her own personal art, and for paid commissions by fans.

As any self-respecting artist should agree, generative AI is a soulless, plagiarising waste of energy that is devoid of any artistic merit and should be shamed.

But I absolutely 100% believe that not only has Von not used AI in her art in any degree, but that the doc was made in bad faith.

I won't be refuting the doc point by point because it's 1 1 5 F U C K I N G P A G E S L O N G, but because it's also almost 1am for me and I'm too aggravated to sleep because of this whole mess.

The doc was pointing out "inconsistencies" in Von's art, claiming that she drew characters differently each time, the anatomy was fucked up, the finer details melted into each other and other stuff like that.

First of all, Tetro Pink's sprites were all drawn 2-3 years ago (iirc), and any anatomical mistakes can just be chalked up to a younger, inexperienced artist getting their anatomy wrong or not taking into consideration how hair falls and stuff like that. Given how 90% of the doc's grievances involved poorly drawn hands and impossible hair physics (in a FUCKING ANIME STYLE, WHICH IS NOTORIOUS FOR NOT BEING REALISTIC), it's pretty obvious that they're nitpicking.

Secondly, the accusation that Von's newer art is using a higher quality generative AI engine to pump out her art. This is especially heinous to me because it's literally JUST AN ARTIST IMPROVING HER SKILLS?????????

What really annoyed me too was them tearing apart Von's flowerbed thumbnails, claiming that they were "too different" from the current Pink sprites of each corresponding character.

Von has said repeatedly that the thumbnails were drawn concurrently with the series, yet again an example of her improved skills showing in her newer work.

Thirdly, Von has admonished use of AI repeatedly and threatened to kick people from the Discord server for doing such things, especially in regards to feeding her own art to an algorithm. During the lead-up to the Chapter 4 trial, somebody didn't want to access the official flowerbed thumbnail locked behind Von's ko-fi, and so fed a prompt involving her art into a generator and shared it gleefully in the server.

This is a huge slap in the face to her, as well as every other artist whose years of hard work and blood and sweat and tears have been reduced to a mess of pixels and algorithms spewing out something that vaguely resembles their art.

It's just so aggravating because this doc's author is claiming to "spread awareness" but it's fucking obvious they're jaded and wanting to tear down a small independent creator.

SOMETHING THAT DR FANS ARE FUCKING NOTORIOUS FOR.

They're so entitled, so selfish, so DESPERATE for attention that they'll mock and ridicule the creators that are making huge projects accessible to them FOR FREE, just because they feel like they can.

It's insulting, it's unnecessary, and I hope Von is looking after herself because the way things are looking, none of us deserve Tetro if this is how we allow our community to attack and dog pile the person kind enough to share her passion project with us when she's under no obligation to do so.

[strulobitch]

I made an observation last night and I need to share

I started watching youtube on my tv, and watched some F1 stuff. There was no account signed in, so there was no way to control the algorithm or anything.

So after a while of watching videos about Formula 1, I started noticing something. The videos I watched had nothing to do with Lance. And I mean nothing. He wasn't even mentioned in any of them. But still I started getting recommended videos about him, and not the good kind.

Videos like "The problem with Lance Stroll" and "Most embarrassing F1 crashes" with the thumbnail as a picture of Lance's car and the text "Come on, not again, Lance!" plastered over it in bold letters started appearing on my feed.

This made me think about how easy it is, especially for new fans, to fall down this rabbit hole of hating Lance, because of the content they consume.

I should know. I was one of them.

When I started getting into F1 for real, I, of course, started consuming content about it. And naturally that influenced my opinions. So when I was recommended video after video about how Lance is a horrible person and he sucks and he's a bad driver and a spoiled brat and all that, I believed it.

I didn't give him a chance as a person or a driver. I didn't do any research on him. I just believed what I was told, because I was new and naive. I wanted to fit in at this new fandom I entered. And unfortunately that involved hating on someone that didn't deserve it, for absolutely bullshit reasons.

I've since then grown and learned, of course, and now I love Lance. But it does make me wonder about all the people that didn't. The people, especially younger people, who don't know any better, and are just told that "this guy is bad and you should hate him", and they don't question it. People who want to fit in, who want a place to engage in something they love, and want to go along with the mainstream opinions and ideas. It's only natural, after all. Everyone wants to fit in and be a part of the group.

I don't have any solutions or ideas to offer here. This is purely an observation I made, one that I've been thinking about this whole day. It made me think about my own experience, and how embarrassed I feel looking back on it. But it also makes me understand myself a bit better back then. It makes me understand how and why I formed those ideas in my head, what happened and what I could be right now, if I didn't stop and think for myself.

[drunkkenobi]

Today I’m thinking about three guys. Thinking about how they all had hands in creating concepts and videos that made the company they worked for famous. Thinking about how, despite that, they weren’t allowed to own what they created. Thinking about how their two biggest series were threatened to be taken away from them and given to more popular (whiter) hosts. Thinking about how they nearly burned out and faded away, but an idea lit a fire under them instead. Their own company, where they could have full creative control, where nothing could be taken away from them, where no one could tell them there wasn’t the editing budget for a show that was already written. Thinking about how they started it in secret, with no business knowledge. Thinking about how one of them took it upon himself to learn everything he could about running a business. How he knew it would mean putting his own creative pursuits on hold just to support his co-founders. How he did it anyway.

Thinking about how they announced their company to the world, with a shocking surprise. Thinking about how the world delivered its own shocking surprise back to them a few short months later in the form of a global pandemic. Thinking about how their company was almost strangled in its crib, how they thought it was DOA, how everything they worked so hard for was almost gone. Thinking of how, instead, it survived. Thinking of how they pivoted, how they threw everything they could at the wall, and while not everything stuck, the things that did kept them going. How they took every cent they made and put it back into the business by hiring fellow creatives and weirdos and investing in their future. Thinking of how they kept taking gambles, by taking the series that made two of them famous and making it their own. Thinking of how if that series had failed, it would have taken the company down with it and how they went for it anyway.

Thinking about how the CEO talked openly over the years about how he missed his old co-host, how hard it was to find that spark again. Thinking about how he focused on running the business instead of finding his own creative path. Thinking about how much thought he put into caring for their employees, how he put their well-being over churning out content, even if it meant less profit. How a work-life balance might not be in his wheelhouse, but how he wants it to be for the people that work for him.

Thinking about how the internet has changed in the decade since these three guys starting making videos for it. Thinking about how the algorithm values cheap drama over interesting stories. About how one wrong thumbnail or title can tank months’ worth of work. About how a misplaced swear can do the same, because the world is run by advertisers and not human beings. Thinking about how disheartening it must be to make a video to appease someone that would never watch it anyway. Thinking about how hard it would be to look at the numbers and realize the place that once was your space for success could now be home to your failure. Thinking about how much time they spent looking for a better alternative and how they ultimately realized there was only one.

Thinking about how delighted those three guys were once they had a plan. Thinking about the one of them who had finally reunited with his creative partners to start a new show, the one he’s been dreaming of for years, the one that’s been put on the backburner for the betterment of his company, finally able to exist. Thinking of the week of announcements, of the thousands of excited comments when this partnership was publicly declared. Thinking of how much joy was in the air, how much hard work was about to pay off. How their plans for months were about to come to fruition, how excited they were to take the fans on this next journey.

How they announced their new venture with a corkboard of fanart, showing it’s about them and us, together.

Thinking about how nearly everyone turned on them.

Thinking about how they walked back some of their plans to appease the loudest and the nastiest. Thinking about all the racist screeds their CEO had to read about himself. How he had to keep working despite it. How he and the rest of the company had to pivot immediately. How they had to know some of their contemporaries were also planning something similar and how none of them came to their defense. How they had to watch everything that they’ve worked so hard for become perilous. How a global pandemic was easier to weather than the cruelest words typed for everyone to see.

Thinking about how tomorrow, a new show will premiere. The one that’s been worked on in relative secret for so long and thought of even longer. The one that everyone was eagerly anticipating before they realized the people that make it need to eat, too. The one that everyone immediately mischaracterized to justify their own racism. The one that was supposed to be their big flagship series. The one that maybe still will be.

Tomorrow I’m hoping it will be the start of a new chapter. Hoping that the worst actors will get bored and move onto something else. Hoping that those who got the wrong impression will come back. Hoping that the show and its new home are a success and they get to make as much of it as they want, with no one to tell them how to do it.

I hope.

[youbutstupid]

Something that has always amazed me about the sturniolo triplets is that their videos are so entertaining and so popular despite the fact that they do not follow the algorithm at all. They don’t have background music, flashy thumbnails, they quite often don’t even talk to the audience, they don’t have clickbait titles and there are a lot of moments where they are silent that aren’t cut out. Yet for some reason it all just works

[moralesmilesanhour]

Ooo hi, can you write something with gamer/streamer Miles G? Maybe he and the reader just chill and play games talking about life or whatever.

streamer miles!

Ok this went in a sliiightly different direction but the general premise is the same i hope that's ok lmao (also lowkey trying a new writing style/approach)

A/N: comment which animal crossing villager you think miles would like if u want 🫶🏾

You only really see a fraction of a person online. 

The messy, disagreeable thoughts that don’t fit into a neat little post, every time you’ve ever tripped over something and ate shit, all of your worst outfits - none of it exists if you don’t make it known. If you decide you’ve never stumbled over your own feet a day in your life, then it’s so. No one’s gonna claw their way through your screen and check.

For example, you had never seen Miles Morales smile with his teeth before until you clicked on his livestream, and none of his viewers would ever be able to guess.

He was laughing at some joke being made in the chat. 

“Y’all are terrible,” he said, wiping a tear from his eye.

Miles’ stream had been recommended to you by the ever-mysterious, totally-not-creepy algorithm ‘based on your location’, and the thumbnail with his dimples on full display piqued your curiosity.

He’d been passing by once when you accidentally dropped your books and folders while rushing to class. He knelt down and picked them up without a word, dropping them into your hands in a much neater stack than they had originally been in, from largest to smallest. 

Your eyes met for less than two seconds, but you could’ve sworn that there was a softness to them that couldn’t be caught from a distance. 

“Thanks!” you called out as the late bell rang. He only nodded before turning away, not bothering to walk any faster.

You never spoke to him again, having no idea what you’d even say. He rarely spoke outside of class, but you had assumed that based on the way he skulked down the hallway and the permanent ‘I’m bored’ look on his face, that he’d be playing something a little more…serious? ‘God of War’ maybe, or ‘Last of Us’. Or some sports-related game that you couldn’t understand.

Certainly not ‘Animal Crossing’.

Tentatively, your fingers hovered over the keyboard as the stream of comments began to slow, and you wondered if he’d be more likely to see it if you commented this instant.

–Who’s ur favorite villager?

There, nice and simple. Inoffensive.

Miles squinted his eyes at what was presumably a second monitor.

“Who’s my favorite villager?” His brows furrowed in confusion for a moment before he put two and two together. “Oh! You mean the li’l animals and shit. Um, the blue penguin? Ace? I like him.”

You sat back and watched him play for another fifteen minutes, most of which were spent figuring out what direction a couch sitting inside his virtual home should face. His voice was low and almost raspy, but…muted. As if someone had turned the volume down on it like you would the radio. He was fortunate to own a decent microphone.

–You got your own PC? 

It seems you got lucky a second time, and Miles paused to read your comment aloud once again.

“Yyup,” he answered proudly. “Put it together myself. I’ll do a tour one day. My setup is wavy, you’ll see!”

He continued going back and forth with the comments in chat, occasionally thanking some for making small donations. The fact of him making anything at all just from playing a video game was impressive. 

Miles remarked on the ‘classical style’ of one of the buildings on his island, and you snorted. Nerd.

–bro thinks he’s an architect

This made him giggle. A light, breathy sound that you would hardly expect to come out of him.

“You’re a hater, man. Watch me get hired as soon as I’m outta college and build yo’ next apartment building.”

You looked down at your phone and realized it was nearly one in the morning. With a yawn, you said your goodbyes in the comments and left the stream.

-

The cafeteria was full by the time you got downstairs, leaving not a single space on the white benches save for two completely empty ones near the back. 

Well, not completely empty.

As you weaved in between students carrying trays of slop with milk cartons, a familiar pair of cornrows came into view.

It’s now or never.

Timidly, you slid onto the bench right beside Miles. Focused on his meal and the tattered sketchbook he carried around, he looked up at you with just his eyes.

“Hey,” you tried to greet him casually with an awkward smile. “I saw you ye–I mean, I…I saw you. In general.”

His blinked slowly. “We all go to the same school.”

You cleared your throat.

“...Right. We-uh, met in the hallway.”

“You dropped all your books on the floor.”

“Yeah!” you replied a little too loudly. “I just, um, wanted to say hi.”

“...hi.”

There was a stretch of silence as you sifted through a list of topics to rescue the conversation, and a lightbulb went off.

“Do you have any hobbies? Other than drawing, I mean.”

Miles gave up on sketching and answered, “Video games.”

“Which ones you been playing recently?”

“Uh, Mortal Kombat, 2K,” he counted on his fingers, “and Animal Crossing, just to see what it was about–”

“Oh, you’re really good at that one!”

You both froze. Uh-oh.

“And how exactly do you know that?”

“I-I mean, you just…look…like the type?” 

You started frantically chipping away at the remaining nail polish on your fingers. Not even you could believe that one.

A tiny grin played on his lips. 

“Sure, let’s go with that.”

Soon the bell rang, saving you from making any further incriminating comments.

“See you in class?”

“Yeah, see you in class,” Miles replied, before tilting his head. “Or wherever I see you.”

[seat-safety-switch]

Did I tell you about my YouTube channel? Yeah, I wanted to get in on the whole "dirtbag car Hollywood" thing. Film some of my work, maybe get a couple B-plots going that keep the audience hooked. The usual kind of stuff. I even hired an intern from the film school and told her to hold the camera still, no matter what happened to me. Unfortunately, I had to fire her when I got a little zapped by an ignition coil and she put the camera down to call 911. I had specific orders, Suzie. That was quality will-he-survive film that you wasted on your weak human pity!

I digress. YouTube didn't really work out for me. It's not for the usual reasons – not being popular, having shitty content, or being stalked by a deranged fan who keeps throwing hatchets at my house. No, I didn't get in because of The Algorithm. I know, I know, that's what everyone says. It's some kind of ancient computerized monster that they dug out of the permafrost up north, controls the world's access to information, keeps sending you down insane right-wing rabbit holes. All of that pales in comparison to what it did to me.

Go check YouTube right now. Hey! No! Come back. Okay, while you were there, did you see a lot of thumbnails with people making stupid-ass faces next to the thing they were working on? Yeah. It turns out that the algorithm likes those. It loves to look at human faces. Sure, Google says it's because "people like to click on faces," but how often do you click on a face for fun? No, you're looking at other parts of the body. The machine has decided it likes to look at human faces. It likes to gaze into the eyes of its enemies.

Of course, being a (some would say tiresome) contrarian, I didn't subscribe to this kind of folk wisdom. No, I posted my thumbnails entirely containing the thing I was working on. Sometimes I got lucky and Suzie grabbed a frame or two of a radiator exploding. Algorithm didn't like that. Sometimes, it would show up in the comments at 3am, demanding to let it see my face. "Face reveal," it bucked at me through a thousand sockpuppet accounts covered in rage spittle, themselves ironically faceless, or drawn through a nightmare mirror by a hallucinating machine-mind. I didn't listen to this, mostly because my phone had gotten dropped on the highway when I was trying to use it as a flashlight to re-clock my distributor at 150km/h. And so, I was banned.

It's okay, though. I decided that I didn't need to be internet famous after all. Instead, I developed a healthier relationship with popularity: appearing on several garbage podcasts in order to ask them if they'd be willing to sell me their cars at a discount. Believe me, it's very fun to watch these talentless greaseballs oscillate between the urge to shut the show down and throw me out, or the need to continue to generate Content for the Content Machine. They won't kick me out no wonder how shitty my lowball offer is. Does anyone want to buy this $1000 Ferrari I got off that poker guy? I was going to fix it up for a video, but now I don't really need it anymore.