#reduction of fan spaces to hashtags and key words and automated curation

[betterbemeta]

AI represents a unique threat to the 'fannish' or 'nerdy' creative ecosystem. It's infesting all creative spheres but fanart, fanfiction, filk (and its peripherals like 'covers of anime OPs') fan music videos or 'edits', fan essays/videoessays, fan films, and cosplay are in serious danger.

"You're on tumblr complaining like the things that interest you are threatened, of course you are, people are dying in the real world," de-cringe for a second.

I am talking about a greater trend or 'dominant strategy' for Online Engagement that sees all fanwork as only profitable parasitism of SEO keywords.

And Media IP is valued by its owners because it is potentially relevant to people.

And people searching for Topics online is, to a machine, data that depicts that relevance. But to human beings, that is 'a fandom.'

"But you can spin any petty online thing to sound apocalyptic," the global entertainment industry is worth over 2 trillion dollars. listen to me.

The issue here is older than AI Generated Media; AI has the potential to speed it up and expand the scope of the problem. In the past few years, leeching money from SEO and interest in popular IP has boomed as a gig. I can't write it all off as a Bad Thing because that could also describe a professional Let's Player or a patreon-funded movie critic. But farther away from normal human behavior the most cynical content of this type is a way for Content Creators to siphon money from an IP's existence. If they didn't get paid, nobody would make it.

For context here, your grandmother cared enough about her star trek 'zine that she was probably printing it and distributing it at her own expense.

Limiting to YouTube as an example, before the AI boom there were already videos that were churned out in industrial quantities to take advantage of search keywords. Maybe they are chopped up clips from a TV show to capture anyone searching for it. Maybe it is a fake/spam video that claims to be clips from the next episode but fakes the thumbnail. But the reason why these videos nobody likes still make money is the same reason that people are able to navigate AO3.

Fanworks and fan-culture-inspired creative work have very specific key words that a machine can learn. This is probably why also it's easier and more popular for AI to generate images or music in a 'genre': a 'novel' or a 'love song' can be anything but a 'fantasy novel' probably has 'dragons' in it, and a 'synthwave' or 'power metal' song are likely to have certain chords and instruments.

Something more recognizable than 'fantasy themed power metal' though, is 'pictures of Pikachu.'

But you don't even have to search for Pikachu or for Dungeons & Dragons; algorithms are good enough to try and predict what you might search for in the future. It is assumed that you might be willing to overlook a lack of human emotions in things you haven't asked for 'yet' because you might be peripherally familiar enough to recognize their trappings. It would blend in with the rest of what a computer has tagged you with, which doesn't contain your feelings actually! Only how 'likely' you are to be interested in an article/video/song with 'magic missile' in it somewhere.

When I think of fanworks I think of feelings that are so big that the original media can't contain them. A shift to a more machine-like outlook seems destructive to me, and like tapping your blood for gold, and also deeply antisocial.