that-spider-witch

[that-spider-witch]

[that-spider-witch]

there's been plenty of pushback against youtube's plan to age-check users by using an AI to analyze everyone's watching habits, but amidst that, i spotted this playlist circulating among some teens:

(picture is a reconstruction to protect the kids identity)

interesting! they're trying to trick the AI by watching videos that have a primarily adult viewer demographic? well im a curious fella so naturally i have to take a look-see, and

[that-spider-witch]

[that-spider-witch]

Annoying that dairy products are demonized as Unnatural and Disgusting when it's actually kinda neat that humans figured out a way to fulfill omnivorous nutritional requirements without killing any animals (and populations historically dependent on dairy even evolved lactase persistence!). This is biopunk to me

[that-spider-witch]

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had the state pave over the memorial for the 49 Pulse Nightclub massacre victims.

Members of the community responded

🌈💙❤️💛🩷💜🩵💚💛🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️✌🏻🤟🏻

[that-spider-witch]

Looking at some of your work, it is stunning but it is very similar in style to AI artwork, do you have any recommendations for how to tell apart photography like yours from AI.

I've been thinking about this. And this may sound controversial at first, but I'm hoping people will hear me out.

We should stop trying so hard to detect AI art.

I think we should all lift that burden from our brains.

I have often talked about "woke goggles." Where conservatives have lost the ability to enjoy anything because they are hypervigilant about detecting anything woke. They've cursed themselves into just hating everything. All they have left is the "God's Not Dead" Cinematic Universe.

And I worry people are getting AI goggles now. They are so concerned about accidentally enjoying robot art and hurting artists that they have overcorrected to the point where they are hurting artists.

One cannot say "AI is all soulless slop that always looks bad" and then accuse a real artist of making something that looks like AI and not hurt them. By doing so, it includes the baggage of all of the "slop" comments along with it. This crusade is having collateral damage to the very artists we are trying to protect.

Yes, we need to be cautious about malicious AI images. Misinformation and deepfakes are going to be a big problem. People using AI imagery for profit is already a mess. But if you are cruising your feed and like a cool sci-fi robot gal or a photo of a waterfall and it turns out to be AI... that's fine.

It was trained by real artists and AI is going to create some cool shit because of that.

Honestly, I think a lot of the worst slop is because the dipshits creating the prompts have no artistic taste. People keep blaming the AI for how bad it looks and often don't consider it is a product of the loser who published it.

There is plenty of non-slop out there that has fooled me. And, like it or not, it is going to get harder and harder to tell what is AI. Until there are better tools or better regulations, I don't think there is much we can do to avoid enjoying AI art every once in a while. If only by accident.

Current "AI detectors" are mostly a scam. Even the best forensic-level AI image detectors struggle to stay above 70–80% accuracy across a wide range of models and image types. And that's in controlled lab conditions.

Free online tools often drop to near coin-flip accuracy (50–60%), especially with newer image generators and post-processing applied.

The best way to avoid AI imagery is to look at an artist's body of work. It's much harder to create consistent, non-obvious fake images in a large sample size. That is usually enough to have confidence in authenticity. Plus, if they have posted similar art before 2022, you can pretty much rule out any shenanigans.

Otis literally died before genAI was available.

But images you see in the wild, just let yourself enjoy them if that is what your brain wants to do. It'll be okay.

I just think we are attacking this backwards. If we want to protect artists, we need to support them.

Calling out random AI art does not support them.

It does not put money in their pockets.

It does not grow their audience.

Over a decade ago I tried to lead a fight to create better systems of attribution on websites like Reddit and Imgur. I even spoke to the Imgur team after an article was written about me.

I asked them to allow sources on their posts and to develop tech that would help people find where an image came from. They said they were "working on it" and it never manifested.

IMAGE SHARING SITES STEAL MORE FROM ARTISTS THAN AI.

But we just kind of accepted it. No one really joined me in my fight. The prevailing defeatist attitude was, "That's just the way it is."

I think now is the time to demand better attribution systems. We need to be vigilant about making sure as many posts as possible have good sourcing. If an image on Reddit goes viral, the top comment should be the source. And if it isn't, you should try to find it and add it.

Just to be clear, "credit to the original artist" is NOT proper attribution.

And perhaps we can lobby these image sharing sites to create better sourcing systems and tools. They could even use fucking AI to find the earliest posted version of an image.

And it would be nice if it didn't require people to go into the comments to find the source. It could just be in the headline. They could even create little badges "made by a human" for verified artists.

Good attribution helps artists grow their audience. It is one of the single most effective things you can do to help them.

I literally just got this message...

There are maybe 10 popular artists who I helped grow their audience early on. Just because I reblogged their work and added links to all of their social media. I even hired my best friend to add sourcing information to every post because I believed so much in good attribution.

Calling out AI art may feel good in the moment. You caught someone trying to trick people and it feels like justice. But, in most cases, the tangible benefits to real artists seem small. It impedes your ability to enjoy art without always being suspicious. And the risk of telling someone you think they make soulless slop doesn't seem worth it.

But putting that time and effort into attribution *would* be worth it. I have proven it time and time again.

I also think people should consider having a monthly art budget. I don't care if it is $5. But if we all commit to seeking out cool artists and being their collective patrons, we could really make a difference and keep real art alive. Just commit to finding a cool new artist every month and financially contributing to them in some way.

On a bigger scale I think advocating for universal basic income, art grants for education and creation, and government regulation of AI would all be helpful long term goals. Though I think our friends in Europe may have to take the lead on regulation at the moment.

So...

Stop worrying about enjoying or calling out AI art.

Demand better attribution from image sharing sites.

Make sure all art has a source listed.

Start an art budget.

Advocate for better regulations.

[that-spider-witch]

Absolutely buckwild thread of ChatGPT feeding & amplifying delusions, causing the user to break with reality. People are leaning on ChatGPT for therapy, for companionship, for advice... and it's fucking them up.

Seems to be spreading too.

[that-spider-witch]

WARNING FOR ANYONE WITH AUDITORY EPILEPSY AS OF 8/23/25 - theres a new ad for i think it was "the conjuring" ? that starts with yellow text that reads "test your hearing, best to wear headphones" -

THE FREQUENCY THAT PLAYS SECONDS IN IS A SEIZURE INDUCING PITCH!

please mute the ad or click skip!! in our ad we couldn't click skip in time because it made us sit through the beginning of the pitch.

PLEASE STAY SAFE and avoid this ad's audio if you're seizures or migraines are triggered by high frequency noises!

[that-spider-witch]

[that-spider-witch]

uhg, saw a post literally on my dash of the “if you’re not for banning content on ao3 just admit that you like CP” ilk and it’s just so frustrating because

i don’t want ao3 to ban certain kinds of content specifically because i do not like and do not want to see underage content.

fanfiction.net bans explicit adult content, but i know for a fact that there is still explicit adult content on fanfiction.net because i often unwittingly came across it in fics where it’s not labeled! there’s good reason i don’t go there to read fics anymore!

banning content doesn’t stop it from existing on that website, it simply makes it harder to moderate. part of why ao3’s system is so loved is because we are able to specify our searches to include and exclude multiple elements, but we’re only able to do so when those elements are labeled.

If we ban the “content” what will actually be banned are the labels that allow us to avoid it.

[that-spider-witch]

uhg, saw a post literally on my dash of the “if you’re not for banning content on ao3 just admit that you like CP” ilk and it’s just so frustrating because

i don’t want ao3 to ban certain kinds of content specifically because i do not like and do not want to see underage content.

fanfiction.net bans explicit adult content, but i know for a fact that there is still explicit adult content on fanfiction.net because i often unwittingly came across it in fics where it’s not labeled! there’s good reason i don’t go there to read fics anymore!

banning content doesn’t stop it from existing on that website, it simply makes it harder to moderate. part of why ao3’s system is so loved is because we are able to specify our searches to include and exclude multiple elements, but we’re only able to do so when those elements are labeled.

If we ban the “content” what will actually be banned are the labels that allow us to avoid it.

[that-spider-witch]

"Why is the world [western governments] all of a sudden trying to control us with mass surveillance?"

It's not all of a sudden. They've been trying to do this for years.

And people have been fighting it, for years. People have also been warning you, for years.

You were warned that Net Neutrality was super important. You were warned that COPPA and KOSA weren't what lawmakers said they were. People tried to tell you that banning apps would set dangerous precedent for the internet, and that they'd be coming for your VPNS. People tried to tell you that big tech companies trying to block ad-blockers and selling your data were bad things. People even tried to tell you that it was weird for supermarkets to be collecting mass amounts of data from your purchases to advertise to you, and that it was super weird for places like Walmart to need facial recognition cameras on top of that. You just didn't listen.

And you didn't push back.

And now we're here.

That said, boycott any site that wants you to upload your ID- for the love of the gods don't give them that shit it WILL get hacked/sold- and make some noise about this bullshit. We need to make it clear that we won't just lay down and take this.

[that-spider-witch]

Lil nas x getting charged with 3 counts of battery against a police officer and resisting arrest as a black man going through a mental health crisis where the police approached aggressively and tackled him to the ground is depressingly par for the course for police and specifically the lapd and it should piss people off and instead people are making jokes about it in instagram comments :/

[that-spider-witch]

[that-spider-witch]

Show idea: magical girl group but each girl is based on one of the seven heavenly virtues

[that-spider-witch]

Hey, man, c'mere. Listen. Get in real close, this is important.

You're gonna make stuff again. You're gonna make stuff you're proud of. You're gonna make stuff you're excited to share. You're going to feel that overwhelming drive to create, not just the frantic I want to want to you're stuck in now. You're going to have awesome ideas, and you're going to make them into reality. You're going to create again. You're still an artist. You're still a writer. You're still home to the same passion you had before. You'll find it again. It's not gone. It's just resting. Let it rest. You're going to make stuff again. I promise.

[that-spider-witch]

CHATGPT IS NOT A SEARCH ENGINE

CHATGPT IS NOT A SOURCE OF INFORMATION

CHATGPT IS NOT STUDY NOTES

CHATGPT IS NOT A WRITING TOOL

CHATGPT IS NOT YOUR FRIEND