#effort is value

[blazehedgehog]

What do you think of AI stuff like DAll-E or Midjourney?

It's not as useful as some people want you to believe. A lot of people pushing for the acceptance of this kind of software are the same tech bros that invested in crypto currency and were trying to sell you NFTs, which should tell you enough.

All of this "it's democratizing art!" and "finally, people can make art even if they don't have natural talent!" is snake oil.

You know where my "natural talent" came from? I started drawing when I was 4 or 5 years old. I drew at least one thing per day for over 20 years. I earned the ability to crank out dumb doodles on a whim.

You can't just show up one day and think you deserve to make artwork without putting in the work to learn and get good at it. Art's importance comes from the length of time needed to learn to master it. And I don't just mean drawings, I mean music, film, food, everything. No matter what it is, effort is value.

Financial value, sentimental value, it doesn't matter. All value is derived from the effort required to make it.

If you can just push a button and churn out artwork en masse, that devalues the importance of art. I mentioned this back with the Martin Scorsese ask, but it's like, which has more value? An original hand-made piece of artwork, or a print of that artwork? Prints are easy to mass produce. You can get a nice, high quality, glossy print of the Mona Lisa almost for free at this point. But the actual Mona Lisa, the original product, is actually valuable beyond value.

Art prints are literally just replicating a single file over and over and over again, but the original is one-of-a-kind and where all the effort is most evident. All the layers of paint can be felt as DaVinci sought perfection in his work. That's what makes it special. That's what makes it important.

My uncle does woodworking. He's so good at it, he gave my Mom an end table that looks like it came from a high-tier furniture store. A mass-produced end table like that would be at least $100. He made it by hand. It is beautiful. I will treasure that end table forever.

Effort is value.

If you spend any length of time looking at art websites where AI art is allowed (such as deviantart or pixiv), what you'll often find is these AI art chumps submitting massive amounts of artwork. They'll submit 10, 20, 40+ images a day, all from the same prompt, all with slight differences, because to them, every single thing the generator produces is worth submitting.

Even when I was drawing regularly, I could only really do maybe one finished piece per day. Two if you were lucky. Not only because sketching, inking, coloring and shading would take so long, but because after I was done the tank was empty. I'd used up all my effort for the day and had no more creativity left to give.

All the claims of "letting people without artistic talent generate art" are bogus because it throws the whole signal-to-noise ratio out of wack. Too much signal in itself becomes noise. And it devalues the effort that real artwork takes, because real artwork is now part of that noise, instead of rising above it.

When anyone can vomit out hundreds or even thousands of AI generated images that are of decent-to-good quality, a lot of what would be considered "b-tier" artwork ceases to be important anymore.

In a world where AI generated images are normalized, only the top 0.1% of artwork (your Mona Lisas) are considered to have real value. And who benefits the most from that kind of stuff? Rich people. Rich people who can afford to drop a million dollars on a historic piece of hand-crafted artwork. And just to be clear: these are exactly the same people who are trying to sell you on how important AI generator software is going to be going forward.

Or to simplify it even more: the people who stand to profit the most from AI "art" are the ones trying the hardest to sell you on its benefits. Because it benefits them more than it will ever benefit you.

Because, full disclosure, over this last week, a friend of mine has been having a lot of fun with Bing's new image generator feature, and I couldn't help but also play with the toy. The quality of images it can generate is shocking.

Microsoft, in their endless desperation to get anyone to use Bing on purpose, is clearly playing with fire here.

When effort is value and value is effortless, nothing has any value anymore.

I understand how, if you aren't an artist, this is all probably incredibly difficult to comprehend. The lure of fast and easy artwork from a simple line of text is a net gain to you, and nothing else really matters to your perspective. But imagine all of the up-and-coming artists who get completely pushed out of the conversation because of how easy it is to crap out endless AI generator output. I spent 20 years drawing every day for results that can be beaten in 20 seconds.

How many future artists is that going to discourage? There's a lot of buzz, now more than ever, about "late stage capitalism" and the way that's manifesting in our lives. When AI generated images are "good enough", how is that going to change the world around us?

You can't just think, "we'll figure something out" because the people trying to control this narrative do not have your best interests in mind. The people trying to control this narrative think they still don't have enough money yet even though there's not much money left to give them.

Their solution is to stop paying people to do work that they can get a computer to do for free, even if it means destroying the entire foundation of human culture. Long term destruction for short term gain. The same old story.

Are they going to get away with it?

(Another good ask along this line is over here, from February.)

[sweet-lil-darling]

💕 There are men who enjoy investing in you.

💕 There are men who enjoy providing for you.

💕 There are men who enjoy maintaining you.

Don't listen to the ones who can't or won't treat you the way you want to be treated.

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

This clown is up for reelection. Drag him on Texas based social media and websites.

This mother f—ker is on twitter praising the rescue operation that liberated 4 Israelis from Hamas terrorists but not mentioning the nearly three hundred civilian deaths and over 400 injured civilians that were “collateral damage.” He’s promising more military aid and calling for more such brutal raids.

Everyone who is against Israel’s brutal actions in Gaza needs to drag this bastard as much as they can. He’s believed to be the largest recipient of AIPAC money and he’s Netanyahu’s loudest champion in Congress. Time for him to pay for his sins at the ballot box.

[canisalbus]

very random question and don’t feel obligated to reply but your style reminds me of dark souls/pathologic/those types of games in general. that might just be due to the historical context but i’m curious, are you a fan of games like that?

If I had to guess it could be just the vaguely historical setting, religious overtones and occasional darker themes? My knowledge on Dark Souls et al. is sparse at best, people have been telling me to give them a try but I haven't gotten around to it.

[kaison07]

Car Salesman

[dailymanners]

When having a conversation with others, make sure everyone in the conversation is getting a chance to speak and everyone who is speaking gets a chance to finish their thought. Avoid speaking over others or cutting others off. Even if you do accidentally interrupt someone before they had a chance to finish their thought, give them a chance to finish by saying something along the lines of "sorry for interrupting, please continue what you were saying"

And, if you do notice someone in the group keeps trying to speak but someone else keeps speaking over them, or someone else speaks first every time they try to open their mouth, you can create an opening for them by saying "what did you want to say?/what was it you were saying?" or you can look at them after someone else in the group has spoken over them / cut them off and say "go on, I'm still listening" to make them feel heard and included.

Ideally in a conversation everyone deserves equal speaking time, and everyone deserves to finish their thought. If someone is dominating the conversation by not giving others the chance to speak and interrupting others before they can finish their thoughts, it can give the impression that they view what they have to say as more important and more valuable that what others in the conversation have to say.

Likewise if someone isn't getting the opportunity to speak or finish their thought due to always being spoken over, it gives the impression that others in the conversation don't value what they have to say, that what they have to contribute to the conversation isn't as valuable or as important as what those dominating the conversation are contributing.

[faelapis]

journey to bethlehem SLAPS. it is so fucking extra. its so "high school musical but 5% more religious" that i genuinely had to double-check to make sure kenny ortega had nothing to do with it.

[jattendschaton]

I think we spend too much time thinking about Adrien buying a bunch of Ladybug merch and not enough time thinking about him making his own. Taking all those boring white Gabriel pieces of clothing and dyeing them red. Painstakingly adding spots to them. Marinette teaching him how to sew so he can rip apart his old clothes and use the fabric to make something new. Embroidering "Lady's Man" onto clothing he already wears. Learning how to crochet so he can make LB plushies.

[venusmage]

Did you opt out of the AI trawling yet? You have to do it to each of your sideblogs individually as well

I did, thank you! Though I'll be honest, I do think some of my beloved fellow artists (understandably) focus on the wrong points of the matter. Personally, I'd rather continue sharing my work no matter what. I know it has a chance of getting used for AI slop, but that's everywhere. Who knows, it could be like NFTs and eventually most people realize what little substance it has, and therefore what little worth. My main concern is artistic industries and jobs getting even worse for artists as employers try to use said AI slop to take away what meager rights and wages we have to begin with.

TLDR i'm anti ai because it's basically junk, but it by itself does little more than annoy me. it's the concept that it could be used to hurt livelihoods that's my concern. An AI tech bro/supporter wouldn't be a good client for me in the first place, so I'm not really worried about losing their attention, so to speak. It's not the kind of person I think would be getting anything meaningful out of my art to begin with.

[mishapen-dear]

look at them having a completely normal non-manipulative friendship what good friends they all are. look at those happy smiles and ignore the red lines im sure the red has no symbolism at all hahaha

[theshadowrealmitself]

One of my guilty pleasure stories that I love to read is when a put together character undergoes something that makes them “feral” but at the same time it never quite scratches that itch and I think I know why (hopefully this is coherent)

So, like, for Vulcan fics when it has the Vulcan go through it (usually Spock cause I read a lot of Spirk fics), that character also usually loses the ability to speak?

And I love the stories of Vulcans becoming “feral” but I really want it to be like,,, feral, like in the actual “becomes wild after escaping domestication,” as in they’re reverted back to pre-Surak ways

And I think the pre-Surak vibes are lost when the Vulcan can’t even speak, I want them to be highly emotional but also still highly intelligent

Ideal “feral” story for me with Vulcans would be sort of like the very beginning of how pon farr stories usually go where the Vulcan is fighting to stay in control so maybe no one (at least not the Humans) even knows something is wrong at first

(Till they start saying batshit stuff like “I’ve decided this area is too open and makes it difficult to keep you safe so I’m going to carry you off to a different area” “Carry me off?” *picks them up* “Yes.”)

[sweet-lil-darling]

🩷 Invest in your skincare.

🩷 Invest in your wardrobe.

🩷 Invest in your skill sets.

🩷 Invest in your knowledge.

🩷 Invest in yourself.

[lastlifesmp]

P!SCOTT ALREADY HAD ABANDOMENT ISSUES AND NOW THERE'S THIS SHIT??

I did not expect better from P!Owen tho I'm not going to lie, this is not a surprising action from her character, it's just sad she never got the development that would make her change her mind.

[mamawasatesttube]

one thing that is kinda wild to notice is the way fic seems to have gotten a shorter and shorter lifespan over the years. granted, i only have my own anecdotal experience to go by, and there's plenty of factors that can contribute to that, but it's wild because like i remember posting fic in like 2015 would get so much more engagement over time than posting fic today. in 2015 if i posted something i generally would get comments and interaction with it for a week or so before it tapered off into obscurity. today, its like. you post a fic and after 24 hours its dead in the water. odd.

[decarbry]

a frequent visitor

[in-tenebris-et-in-solitudine]

I want to feel loved without feeling like I'm begging for it..