Hey. Hope you don't mind a if I go a little off-topic, but just wanted to say I recently found this blog through a comment on John Michael Greer's Dreamwidth, and I've been catching up on the archives. Lots of good stuff there, and I've really enjoyed my binge. Your posts tend to be genuinely well-written, thoughtful and funny, which (as you know) is a rare gem to find. I've always been a fan of overanalysis of absurd pop culture drama, and yours is among the better ones I've seen in a while. Thank you for writing these. I think the rise and fall of American Girl was my favorite. As a European, I had no idea this was a thing at all, haha.
I also appreciate the sincerity underneath the humor, and how you're anti-woke without turning into a rabid culture warrior. In many ways your writing reminds me of the kind of thing you used to find on Something Awful back in the 2000s. Don't know if you ever spent much time there?
Anyway, to try to say something about this post: I think the main solution here is to just walk away from the internet slowly, in all honesty. To circle back to JMG again, it made me think of his posts about how the internet will slowly rot away as people don't find it worth bothering with anymore, plus rising costs of access. Maybe we'll see the rise of paper-only publishers and galleries again? One can hope, anyway... ;)
I largely agree with your comments/warnings, but I also feel the whole "AI"/LLM thing only exacerbates an existing trend. There's already way more content in every medium than anyone can consume, most of it really bland and generic. I'm almost tempted to say the main threat to writers from the language models will be to outcompete the bottom half of bland, serviceable dry biscuit prose that already feels like it could have been generated by a machine.
Off-topic is always welcome, and I'm glad that you've enjoyed what you found here. Honestly, the American Girl series was one I had an immense amount of fun writing myself. And I also really appreciate that I don't come off as a rabid culture warrior. That's really the last thing I want to do. I have my political leanings, yes, but I really don't like the people who do nothing but scream and holler over "da wokies" or "libtards" in Hollywood ruining this, that, and the third any more than the other side baselessly throwing around various "-isms". Simply saying something is "stupid" or "woke" instead of getting to why something may very well be stupid and woke is not the own that so many people in the cultural analysis sphere seem to think it is, but actual critical analysis isn't as appealing to the carping masses as some guy in a silly mask screaming about how "THE END OF WOKE DISNEY IS HERE!" every week. And being wrong every time.
Also, yes, I used to lurk Something Awful, but, to my great shame, I was an avid 4chan poster. I also spent a lot of time on BlogSpot back in the day and would pretty much read anything I could get my hands on, most of it being long-form and semi-educational cultural analysis. A lot of people I looked up to and admired on the early internet were Something Awful goons, and a lot of their stuff directly influences how I write today (one of my biggest influences is former video creator SpoonyOne, who, if you haven't binged those articles yet, will explain a lot about my sense of humor). I really do strive to capture the feeling of that old-school BlogSpot/Forum content you just don't see anymore, and I often say that I'm working to revitalize long-form content in an internet landscape that has been devastated by TikTok's shredding of the average attention span. Truly, we long-form content enjoyers are some of the most oppressed people on the planet, right alongside black coffee drinkers (which is also me).
As for JMG, I suspect he's right about the eventual fate of the internet. I've heard several other thinkers I respect say similar things. I myself think that as the internet becomes increasingly automated, and it becomes bots making content to farm engagement with other bots... what's going to be left for humans? I'm sure there will be those poor people who never manage to wean themselves off of it, but I like to think there will be a renaissance of art outside of the internet. One day. Maybe. All I know is that a computer, one day, may fail to boot up for you. But paper never will. By the way, I'm really curious what article on John Michael Greer's Dreamwidth you found this on. Did someone post a link? I've long respected Greer as both an author and a thinker, and if someone is linking my stuff to share with his blog readership (and hopefully not in a bad way), that would actually be really cool.
Anyways, thanks for the comment and the kind words - they mean the world. And I'm really glad you enjoyed yourself on this publication. I hope to see you in the next one.
It will have to; the internet is rapidly becoming art averse, and not just because of a surfeit of AI content. Even if that wasn't happening, the big players that control the major spaces online don't want real artists sharing their work for a myriad of reasons. Mostly because they can't monetize it, and if they can't monetize it, they don't want it around to make room for shit they can (i.e. YouTube punishing content creators that don't tow a strict line and basically letting favored creators who produce garbage get away with murder). By necessity, the future of the arts will have be offline.
Yeah, looking at it again, I think "anti-woke" was too loaded and an unfortunate phrasing on my part. A better way to put it would be that I really appreciate how you're not intimidated by the social justice orthodoxy, and most importantly, how you're not afraid to poke fun at them. One of the things that make these people so obnoxious for me is how deathly seriously they take themselves. Rather than pouring on more rage like those ranting critics you mention, I think humor is a much better weapon against pompous scolds.
Thankfully it's not nearly as much of a thing here in Europe, and I tend to see it as a very American social contagion. It is making some small inroads here and there, but I think the cultural disconnect is too large for it to ever take root here properly.
Still, it's hard to avoid the social justice crowd if you're involved in any kind of nerdy or fandom-adjacent stuff on the international internet. You mention Magic the Gathering in your post, and I finally quit that game for good after being on again-off again for years because WotC are both so obnoxiously "woke" and so shamelessly money-grabbing. Well, plus the fact that I suck at most competitive games anyway, haha.
I'm also a semi-casual Doctor Who fan, and good luck trying to be part of that scene if you don't love the social justice orthodoxy. I used to be big into speedrunning, and that stuff ended up all over Games Done Quick, and so on and so on. What is it about these ideas that makes nerdy spaces so vulnerable to them? Or: why are there no socially conservative geeks? (As a side note, since you're not the only person with a bunch of trunk novels: I actually wrote one about speedrunning, with fictional Twitch emotes and all, so you can see why I'm in the target audience for this blog :)).
Finally, since you said a bit of off-topic is fine: I'm sure you have a long list of potential blog topics already, but I'm curious if you have any experience with the 90s series The Adventures of Pete and Pete? It's a deeply weird and fascinating kids' show that, as another blogger I read once put it, "was much better and more interesting than it had to be". I'd love to read your thoughts on it, and comparing it with a lot of modern kids' stuff is...instructive. I have a bit of an ambition to get into the middle grade genre, and it's definitely been an inspiration there. To be honest, I've toyed with doing a long-form series on it myself, but we'll see.
Anyway, that's probably more than enough for a comment. I guess the TL:DR is "keep up the good work" :)
As for my work being posted on JMG's site, that's awesome. That actually makes me really happy. I actually recognize the guy who posted it, too. JMG was one of the first authors that I read when I started getting into the occult and had a huge impact on my worldview at that time, and I still read his stuff pretty regularly, especially his blogs. Very exciting to have my stuff shared there.
Lastly, I've heard of the Adventures of Pete and Pete, but it was a little before my time. There is a certain reverence that people who grew up with it seem to have, so, maybe I'll give it a watch. I'm always looking for new ideas for content. You should give long-form content a shot yourself. Lord knows we need more of it on an internet where everything is designed to be as short, glib, and quite frankly "easy to forget" as possible. If you need anyone to give you a boost, just let me know. I'm happy to help.
All in all, I appreciate your comment and support, and I hope you'll stick around on Substack for the long haul. Lots of good stuff coming out here these days.
I promise I won't hijack this comment section too much, but just a few quick final replies here:
Re. Who: Yeah, it's been a long, sad trip, and how that the IP has more or less fallen into the grubby mitts of Mr. Mouse, I don't have high hopes for the future. One detail I think is interesting here is that it shows the contrast between "bland centrist liberalism that wants to pose as progressive but doesn't have its heart in it" under Chibnall and "actual, committed woke" under RTD2.
Re. nerd spaces: All good points, and much to chew on there. And the "not picking a fight" thing describes me to a tee whenever I see anything related to these topics in places like r/gallifrey, haha. I've bit my tongue so many times there, since I knew I'd just be outnumbered twenty to one.
To be clear, I'm not even especially conservative. I'm more of an old-school 2005 liberal blinking and going "wait, what the hell happened here?". I do really hate authoritarianism in all its forms, though, and lately much of the social justice left feels like it's going that way.
Re. novel and esports: Sounds like a potentially interesting angle too. I've seen (and even beta read) a few esports stories, so they seem to be a low-key emerging subgenre.
As for mine, I don't think I'll ever try to publish it "for real". It has a lot of issues, and it's also been a few years now, so it's a little rough by my current standards. Still, if you'd like to see it I'd be happy to give you a link. I actually posted the first draft as a serial on one of the Reddit writing critique subs, which is how I eventually ended up as a mod there to this day. But that's another story...
Re. Pete: Thank you for the generous offer. Will give that some consideration. I have a draft of a first piece about it in my big sandbox doc, which I intended for the P and P subreddit. But, well, that place is basically dead, it turned out too long, and I wasn't sure I was saying enough of substance. Maybe I'll give it another look.
As for the series itself, it's all freely available on Youtube (even if the video quality ranges from bad to atrocious). I didn't see it as a kid, but the quality and soul to it made me enamored of it even as an adult. If you want a sampler, What We Did On Our Summer Vacation and The Call are probably the strongest episodes, while New Year's Pete is probably the most interesting from a writing and acting perspective IMO.
I understand where you're coming from. "Anti-woke" isn't unbefitting. I agree that humor is the best weapon of any kind - it has a way of disarming the self-serious and also makes you more likeable in the eyes of the undecided... which is exactly why the libertarian anti-woke goons on YouTube screaming and slobbering over themselves about "FUCKING PRONOUNS" in a recent video game looked so ridiculous and became easy punching bags for the pro-woke crowd. If this guy got so upset to the point he was nearly in tears over the pronoun option in a character creation screen in a video game... yeah, you basically set yourself up to be laughed at, you know? I digress.
The story of Dr. Who is a tragedy unto itself. I can think of very few series that worked to unravel themselves and actively self-destruct quite like that show under Chibnall, and now Davies (again). I was never the biggest fan but I remember watching reruns of the Tom Baker series as a kid and an ex of mine and I had a good time watching the Eccleston, Tennant, and Smith series, but, more than anything, it just makes me sad to see them dismantle what is veritably an institution of British television so thoroughly and mercilessly.
As for why nerd spaces are so vulnerable to this kind of stuff, I have my theories. If you read my pieces on Brony culture, I touch on it some there. It's a myriad of complicated factors that I'd really like to dive into thoroughly one day, but the long and short is I suspect that it's a mix of A) dedicated infiltration by political ideologues and agitators and B) a former social outgroup (geeks and nerds) that now see an easy way to exert power they never had before over others and be on the top of the social food chain, even if it is only in their own circles (i.e. someone who's a transexual who never felt respected before can now demand respect from others since they're part of what's ostensibly a protected class). Those are two big factors, but I think that most people in nerd culture spaces are generally passive, go-along-to-get-along folks. I know a lot of socially conservative people in these spaces, but pretty much all of them either don't have the desire to pick a losing fight. The Progressive Heterodox is pretty much fully in control and getting into a tussle with them is not going to do anything but ensure that you're roundly excluded from those spaces, so, to a lot of people, they just put up and shut up with it all. I don't blame anyone for taking that route. When that's your main social sphere, it only makes sense that you wouldn't want to make yourself an enemy of the people who currently dominate it. I see the landscape changing, though, slowly but surely. Or maybe bifurcating. A lot of people - even those who are progressive politically - I see beginning to walk away from the bigger names in the industry just because they've become so creatively dead and un-fun. I see a renaissance on the horizon, but, well... we'll see if it comes to fruition. Also, if you ever feel like publishing your novel, I'd read it. I've always been fascinated by more competitive spheres of gaming, even if I don't participate in them myself, up to having an idea about writing a drama about an e-sports team myself. But I don't have the best grasp on how those things work, and I don't care about e-sports all that much, so I'm not the right person for the job.
I have more to say but I'll continue it in the next comment.
Absolutely looking forward to the time when people don't default to using the internet for their social engagement, shopping, etc. I am just barely old enough to remember what malls were like in the nineties, before online shopping ripped the heart and soul out of the retail landscape. Now my kids (who are all a bunch of artsy crafters) are having a hard time finding any art supplies more advanced than the most basic available at hobby lobby or walmart without going online.
I don't think there was any way this wasn't going to happen, but I wish there'd been some nice middle ground where in-person retail remained dominant and online retail was a nice addendum that could be used to get things normally unavailable (more niche items or just things that don't make it to a more rural setting), but didn't become the dominant form of commerce. I know the reason the internet shifted to be the de facto place for shopping, social engagement, art sharing, etc. was much more complicated than "It's was an easier alternative", but at the same time, for all the benefits it provides, it really always should have been treated as ancillary to the real world rather than a substitute for it.
Also, the state of arts and crafts as a hobby is miserable. I've gotten back into model making recently and it's kind of amazing how little there is in stores like Joanne's and Michael's. They're big stores but they really don't have much.
May I just repeat smash the like button on this a few dozen times?
You've encapsulated every single gripe and frustration I've had with these services from the outset in this single article, and quite nicely pointed out precisely why the issues people like ourselves have are legitimate issues that should be taken into serious consideration. The problem was never the tool itself, but always the unscrupulous way that people will use it.
You're welcome to try. I'm glad that I'm in good company when it comes to my opinions on this technology. Unfortunately, whether our issues will actually be taken into serious consideration by people who can actually do something about it... I suppose we'll have to wait and see.
I think that "AI" art and writing is, for the moment, just accelerating trends that were already quite visible. Shoddy content farms, the mass-psyoping of the average individual online, grifters grifting, etc. But I do not think it will remain that way. There is a very real risk in the near future of the mainstream cultural conversation, which already resembles algorithmically-processed masticulate, becoming an entirely artificial Plato's Cave of infinitely-self referencing sloppa. And one fears that, as the complexity and perfection of the LLMs increases, so too will the content they produce. While the current level of artificial spew is easily recognisable by the imperfections it possess and the very middling level at which it tops out (not to mention the very definite sense of spiritual wrongness that it - the images in particular - exudes), that may not forever be the case. A worrying prospect. Physical media may soon become king once again, for those in the know.
Unlike you, however, I am willing to go on record and say that I think these generative programs are a bad technology (and, as a necessary base, that technologies have a telos and can have ultimately good or bad impacts (a good book to read on this, relevant to your usual topics, is Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, a criminally underread book IMO)). As another substack writer - David Greene, I think - I read put it, the real problem is that creating machines that can think and create for us, even in a flawed capacity, can and will damage the intellectual capabilities of all who touch it. It's like using a Walmart scooter to get around - you will soon be walking less, and your legs will become weaker.
As for Dead Internet Theory, I think the basic version of it has been true for some time. The majority of nominal internet users are not people interacting with it as individuals, but rather are bots or content farms. Whether the more fantastical, supernatural components of it are true is up in the air
PS - A correction from the first in the series - Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland, Edinburgh is the second-largest.
I'd say you're right on the money about those concerns, and, for obvious reasons I'm sure you're aware of, physical media is already king and always has been. There are certain things I still buy physical copies of - mostly music that I don't want to lose access to, ever. I have, like, multiple copies of some albums, just in case. Japanese and Filipino music is hard enough to get as it is in America - if it just gets banished from Spotify due to some draconic and esoteric copyright dispute, I would hate to never hear it again.
I also read David Greene and I respect him immensely. I understand where he's coming from, and you as well, but I also think there really are practical uses for this technology. But I really do understand what you're saying. In the last article, I linked a video by an author named Nick Carlson who actually read and reviewed one of Coull's "books", and he raises the exact point you do - the dangers of exporting culture and art to "thinking machines", that is. Part of my outlook though is that this technology is here and I kind of doubt it's going to go away, so, like nuclear energy, we might as well learn to harness it for good rather than purely destructive purposes. But, there is, as you said, a spiritual matter that's not so easily resolved.
I always appreciate your feedback, just so you know. I feel like I should mention that.
Last thought: it’s weird how no one really cares that so many AI thinkers are part of a de facto apocalyptic cult centered around the imminent arrival of AGI and the singularity, justifying this kind of slop production as the first step toward transhuman eternity.
- Trust me, I'm the same way. But most people aren't. Unfortunately, most people don't have that kind of hyperfixation that lends themselves to this kind of stuff.
- We're already reaching a kind of singularity with AI generated imagery in this respect. These programs rely on human-made art to generate imagery, right? Well, as the internet is becoming more and more suffused with AI generated imagery, the data that's being scraped to generate AI is referencing... well, shoddy AI generated imagery. Which is causing a problematic feedback loops where the problems AI already faces aren't getting fixed and, in many ways, are being exacerbated as it's now relying on itself to generate more, if that makes sense. So, in a way... it's already happening.
- That's one of the main reasons I'm very cagey about this kind of technology. I very much do not trust the transhumanist thinkers that are all in for this stuff. Part of it is because I think they're dumb, but, also, as you said, they really are part of a apocalyptic, eschatological cult that wants to see the end of humanity as we know it. That's kind of a rabbit hole unto itself, but I do agree that I don't particularly care for those fellows, and it is very convenient that much of the hype and publicity around these programs fails to mention the fact that the people most avidly pushing for this stuff are the same people chomping at the bit to push depopulation agendas.
RE: large organizations having more sophisticated "AI", as far as language models go, they do not. For social media & blog post type content, what you can get as a consumer is pretty close to the cutting edge.
The difference is just scale and scope. You can get a few paragraphs a minute out of ChatGPT or an LLM you can run on a decent video card on your own machine. ChatGPT is significantly broader in scope than the ones you can run locally, latter of which tend to be specialized toward particular tasks.
At a commercial scale you can just churn out a lot more bullshit a lot faster. Want to flood twitter with 10,000 posts per minute all pushing the same message but with enough variation to look authentic, so it's not so easy to create a block of screenshots like the one you posted above? No problem if you can lay down a few million bucks on hardware and electricity.
But fundamentally they're all just bullshit generators, and they all fall apart under examination. None of them are smart in any meaningful way. Just clever enough that they sound like people who know what they're talking about at first glance and if you don't know anything about the topic yourself. ChatGPT can spit out more genres of bullshit from the same model than the ones you can run locally, and the ones in R&D phase doubtlessly cover even more genres, but it's all still bullshit.
Which leads into another point... LLMs are not *that* much different from the rules-based procedural generators that made all the spam up until a few years ago. ELIZA was capable of convincing some people it was a person way back in the '60s, by following the same basic rules that GPT does: generate some text that looks like a human response to some prior text. Only difference now is instead of rules about grammar, procedural algorithms, and databases you're dealing with giant piles of statistics.
That's very interesting insight. The idea of some super advanced AI that supersedes conventional technology is part of the original Dead Internet Theory's more esoteric half that got left behind, but it's still interesting to humor. I haven't done much research into how AI works outside of the broad strokes, but from what little I've seen, it does appear as if we're rapidly approaching a hard limit of what these programs can do with current computer hardware (correct me if I'm wrong). If what you say is true - and I have no reason to believe it isn't - it's both reassuring to know that Amazon isn't hiding Hyper-Alexa or something that's primed to turn into AM from "I Have No Mouth". And, even if they were, it wouldn't be intelligent, like you said. I use the term AI because it's easy shorthand, but I feel like since most of the biggest programs being used are LLMs (at least it seems that way), the term "AI" is really a misleading marketing buzzword used to make the thing look more impressive than it is to investors and customers.
You're exactly right about "AI" being a marketing term. They're piggybacking on pop sci fi expectations to generate buzz and hype about a product that isn't much more impressive than Minecraft's terrain generator.
The internet was already dead thanks to sweatshop content mills and pre-LLM procgen spam. LLMs are just accelerating the rot.
What blows my mind is how many people are falling for it. Recently at work, we had an email go out where the higher ups "encouraged us" to think of ways AI could be integrated into our workflow. At city council meetings, there's several people who are so bullish on AI that they think it's going to do everything from run robots that harvest strawberries (which can already be done without "AI" run robots) and do urban planning for us and it's just like... you guys are really putting a lot of faith into a glorified chatbot. But, yeah, it's like at every turn there's new "AI" integration to wow the consumer. I saw at Costco that they're selling electric "smart" toothbrushes with "AI" in them. Seriously.
Yeah the hype is insane. Meanwhile here I am poking at LLM code and it's like, Sir, this is a Wendys.
Part of the problem here is we have utterly incompetent trust funders with "journalism" degrees doing science and tech reporting. People who barely scraped by through high school algebra and learned in journalism school that their job is to uncritically regurgitate press releases from major institutions.
And they're repeating bullshit fed to them by PR guys with "communications" degrees, and their job is to ignore what the tech managers say and make up some bullshit that will move some product.
And the tech managers are all guys with MBAs whose job is to promise the stars to the c-suite and PR people, get delivered a moon by the tech people, and then fire someone for failing to meet expectations.
So the difference between tech hype and actual product is more disappointing than 90s kids toy ad expectations vs. reality. But people keep buying it, because we're caught up in this cyberpunk utopia narrative that caught on in the 1980s and has yet to collide with physical reality.
Yeah, it's cropping up more and more. I noticed it coming up in paranormal circles outside of 4chan a few years ago, and I've heard Tim Pool talk about it, too. I think Joe Rogan or one of his guests brought it up briefly as well, though none of them really got into the more esoteric parts of it. The further you dig down into it, the crazier it gets.
"every company except for Google just decided our homepages should be filled with pure visual shit every time we logged in"
That's why the first thing I do, when setting up a computer I'm going to be using for a while, is to shut all that shit off. And I don't fuck with Bing or Edge. (Hell, Microsoft just changed the default font in its Office suite, and I reacted like they were running a psy-op on me. Which they were.)
I noticed that with Outlook myself at work and felt as if I was going insane. I brought in the IT guy and he looked at it and said, "Huh. Weird. They must have patched it." I did some research and apparently they "rolled out" the changes very subtly so that even systems management people didn't know the entire program suite was getting a font change, which really does feel like a PsyOp. Unfortunately though I was using Edge for entirely too long at work, but I also got said IT guy to download Firefox to my computer because Edge is borderline unusuable. I don't even think you can change your default home page on it.
I don't buy David Stewarts opinion that AI art can be a good reference for art. AI art is foundationally flawed, it sucks at perspective, lighting, and our portions. Using it as a reference poisons the core of your piece and retards the ability to master fundenemental elements of art.
I've said this before, notice that your eyes have a difficult time pleasantly focusing on a piece of AI art.
Hey. Hope you don't mind a if I go a little off-topic, but just wanted to say I recently found this blog through a comment on John Michael Greer's Dreamwidth, and I've been catching up on the archives. Lots of good stuff there, and I've really enjoyed my binge. Your posts tend to be genuinely well-written, thoughtful and funny, which (as you know) is a rare gem to find. I've always been a fan of overanalysis of absurd pop culture drama, and yours is among the better ones I've seen in a while. Thank you for writing these. I think the rise and fall of American Girl was my favorite. As a European, I had no idea this was a thing at all, haha.
I also appreciate the sincerity underneath the humor, and how you're anti-woke without turning into a rabid culture warrior. In many ways your writing reminds me of the kind of thing you used to find on Something Awful back in the 2000s. Don't know if you ever spent much time there?
Anyway, to try to say something about this post: I think the main solution here is to just walk away from the internet slowly, in all honesty. To circle back to JMG again, it made me think of his posts about how the internet will slowly rot away as people don't find it worth bothering with anymore, plus rising costs of access. Maybe we'll see the rise of paper-only publishers and galleries again? One can hope, anyway... ;)
I largely agree with your comments/warnings, but I also feel the whole "AI"/LLM thing only exacerbates an existing trend. There's already way more content in every medium than anyone can consume, most of it really bland and generic. I'm almost tempted to say the main threat to writers from the language models will be to outcompete the bottom half of bland, serviceable dry biscuit prose that already feels like it could have been generated by a machine.
Off-topic is always welcome, and I'm glad that you've enjoyed what you found here. Honestly, the American Girl series was one I had an immense amount of fun writing myself. And I also really appreciate that I don't come off as a rabid culture warrior. That's really the last thing I want to do. I have my political leanings, yes, but I really don't like the people who do nothing but scream and holler over "da wokies" or "libtards" in Hollywood ruining this, that, and the third any more than the other side baselessly throwing around various "-isms". Simply saying something is "stupid" or "woke" instead of getting to why something may very well be stupid and woke is not the own that so many people in the cultural analysis sphere seem to think it is, but actual critical analysis isn't as appealing to the carping masses as some guy in a silly mask screaming about how "THE END OF WOKE DISNEY IS HERE!" every week. And being wrong every time.
Also, yes, I used to lurk Something Awful, but, to my great shame, I was an avid 4chan poster. I also spent a lot of time on BlogSpot back in the day and would pretty much read anything I could get my hands on, most of it being long-form and semi-educational cultural analysis. A lot of people I looked up to and admired on the early internet were Something Awful goons, and a lot of their stuff directly influences how I write today (one of my biggest influences is former video creator SpoonyOne, who, if you haven't binged those articles yet, will explain a lot about my sense of humor). I really do strive to capture the feeling of that old-school BlogSpot/Forum content you just don't see anymore, and I often say that I'm working to revitalize long-form content in an internet landscape that has been devastated by TikTok's shredding of the average attention span. Truly, we long-form content enjoyers are some of the most oppressed people on the planet, right alongside black coffee drinkers (which is also me).
As for JMG, I suspect he's right about the eventual fate of the internet. I've heard several other thinkers I respect say similar things. I myself think that as the internet becomes increasingly automated, and it becomes bots making content to farm engagement with other bots... what's going to be left for humans? I'm sure there will be those poor people who never manage to wean themselves off of it, but I like to think there will be a renaissance of art outside of the internet. One day. Maybe. All I know is that a computer, one day, may fail to boot up for you. But paper never will. By the way, I'm really curious what article on John Michael Greer's Dreamwidth you found this on. Did someone post a link? I've long respected Greer as both an author and a thinker, and if someone is linking my stuff to share with his blog readership (and hopefully not in a bad way), that would actually be really cool.
Anyways, thanks for the comment and the kind words - they mean the world. And I'm really glad you enjoyed yourself on this publication. I hope to see you in the next one.
Totally right about paper versus computer. I'm also hoping for a time when art will find itself in the offline world once again.
It will have to; the internet is rapidly becoming art averse, and not just because of a surfeit of AI content. Even if that wasn't happening, the big players that control the major spaces online don't want real artists sharing their work for a myriad of reasons. Mostly because they can't monetize it, and if they can't monetize it, they don't want it around to make room for shit they can (i.e. YouTube punishing content creators that don't tow a strict line and basically letting favored creators who produce garbage get away with murder). By necessity, the future of the arts will have be offline.
Yeah, looking at it again, I think "anti-woke" was too loaded and an unfortunate phrasing on my part. A better way to put it would be that I really appreciate how you're not intimidated by the social justice orthodoxy, and most importantly, how you're not afraid to poke fun at them. One of the things that make these people so obnoxious for me is how deathly seriously they take themselves. Rather than pouring on more rage like those ranting critics you mention, I think humor is a much better weapon against pompous scolds.
Thankfully it's not nearly as much of a thing here in Europe, and I tend to see it as a very American social contagion. It is making some small inroads here and there, but I think the cultural disconnect is too large for it to ever take root here properly.
Still, it's hard to avoid the social justice crowd if you're involved in any kind of nerdy or fandom-adjacent stuff on the international internet. You mention Magic the Gathering in your post, and I finally quit that game for good after being on again-off again for years because WotC are both so obnoxiously "woke" and so shamelessly money-grabbing. Well, plus the fact that I suck at most competitive games anyway, haha.
I'm also a semi-casual Doctor Who fan, and good luck trying to be part of that scene if you don't love the social justice orthodoxy. I used to be big into speedrunning, and that stuff ended up all over Games Done Quick, and so on and so on. What is it about these ideas that makes nerdy spaces so vulnerable to them? Or: why are there no socially conservative geeks? (As a side note, since you're not the only person with a bunch of trunk novels: I actually wrote one about speedrunning, with fictional Twitch emotes and all, so you can see why I'm in the target audience for this blog :)).
Re. JMG's site, it was a comment on this Magic Monday post asking about Gamergate 2/the Sweet Baby controversy: https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/271523.html?thread=47207331#cmt47207331
Finally, since you said a bit of off-topic is fine: I'm sure you have a long list of potential blog topics already, but I'm curious if you have any experience with the 90s series The Adventures of Pete and Pete? It's a deeply weird and fascinating kids' show that, as another blogger I read once put it, "was much better and more interesting than it had to be". I'd love to read your thoughts on it, and comparing it with a lot of modern kids' stuff is...instructive. I have a bit of an ambition to get into the middle grade genre, and it's definitely been an inspiration there. To be honest, I've toyed with doing a long-form series on it myself, but we'll see.
Anyway, that's probably more than enough for a comment. I guess the TL:DR is "keep up the good work" :)
As for my work being posted on JMG's site, that's awesome. That actually makes me really happy. I actually recognize the guy who posted it, too. JMG was one of the first authors that I read when I started getting into the occult and had a huge impact on my worldview at that time, and I still read his stuff pretty regularly, especially his blogs. Very exciting to have my stuff shared there.
Lastly, I've heard of the Adventures of Pete and Pete, but it was a little before my time. There is a certain reverence that people who grew up with it seem to have, so, maybe I'll give it a watch. I'm always looking for new ideas for content. You should give long-form content a shot yourself. Lord knows we need more of it on an internet where everything is designed to be as short, glib, and quite frankly "easy to forget" as possible. If you need anyone to give you a boost, just let me know. I'm happy to help.
All in all, I appreciate your comment and support, and I hope you'll stick around on Substack for the long haul. Lots of good stuff coming out here these days.
I promise I won't hijack this comment section too much, but just a few quick final replies here:
Re. Who: Yeah, it's been a long, sad trip, and how that the IP has more or less fallen into the grubby mitts of Mr. Mouse, I don't have high hopes for the future. One detail I think is interesting here is that it shows the contrast between "bland centrist liberalism that wants to pose as progressive but doesn't have its heart in it" under Chibnall and "actual, committed woke" under RTD2.
Re. nerd spaces: All good points, and much to chew on there. And the "not picking a fight" thing describes me to a tee whenever I see anything related to these topics in places like r/gallifrey, haha. I've bit my tongue so many times there, since I knew I'd just be outnumbered twenty to one.
To be clear, I'm not even especially conservative. I'm more of an old-school 2005 liberal blinking and going "wait, what the hell happened here?". I do really hate authoritarianism in all its forms, though, and lately much of the social justice left feels like it's going that way.
Re. novel and esports: Sounds like a potentially interesting angle too. I've seen (and even beta read) a few esports stories, so they seem to be a low-key emerging subgenre.
As for mine, I don't think I'll ever try to publish it "for real". It has a lot of issues, and it's also been a few years now, so it's a little rough by my current standards. Still, if you'd like to see it I'd be happy to give you a link. I actually posted the first draft as a serial on one of the Reddit writing critique subs, which is how I eventually ended up as a mod there to this day. But that's another story...
Re. Pete: Thank you for the generous offer. Will give that some consideration. I have a draft of a first piece about it in my big sandbox doc, which I intended for the P and P subreddit. But, well, that place is basically dead, it turned out too long, and I wasn't sure I was saying enough of substance. Maybe I'll give it another look.
As for the series itself, it's all freely available on Youtube (even if the video quality ranges from bad to atrocious). I didn't see it as a kid, but the quality and soul to it made me enamored of it even as an adult. If you want a sampler, What We Did On Our Summer Vacation and The Call are probably the strongest episodes, while New Year's Pete is probably the most interesting from a writing and acting perspective IMO.
Will definitely stick around. :)
I understand where you're coming from. "Anti-woke" isn't unbefitting. I agree that humor is the best weapon of any kind - it has a way of disarming the self-serious and also makes you more likeable in the eyes of the undecided... which is exactly why the libertarian anti-woke goons on YouTube screaming and slobbering over themselves about "FUCKING PRONOUNS" in a recent video game looked so ridiculous and became easy punching bags for the pro-woke crowd. If this guy got so upset to the point he was nearly in tears over the pronoun option in a character creation screen in a video game... yeah, you basically set yourself up to be laughed at, you know? I digress.
The story of Dr. Who is a tragedy unto itself. I can think of very few series that worked to unravel themselves and actively self-destruct quite like that show under Chibnall, and now Davies (again). I was never the biggest fan but I remember watching reruns of the Tom Baker series as a kid and an ex of mine and I had a good time watching the Eccleston, Tennant, and Smith series, but, more than anything, it just makes me sad to see them dismantle what is veritably an institution of British television so thoroughly and mercilessly.
As for why nerd spaces are so vulnerable to this kind of stuff, I have my theories. If you read my pieces on Brony culture, I touch on it some there. It's a myriad of complicated factors that I'd really like to dive into thoroughly one day, but the long and short is I suspect that it's a mix of A) dedicated infiltration by political ideologues and agitators and B) a former social outgroup (geeks and nerds) that now see an easy way to exert power they never had before over others and be on the top of the social food chain, even if it is only in their own circles (i.e. someone who's a transexual who never felt respected before can now demand respect from others since they're part of what's ostensibly a protected class). Those are two big factors, but I think that most people in nerd culture spaces are generally passive, go-along-to-get-along folks. I know a lot of socially conservative people in these spaces, but pretty much all of them either don't have the desire to pick a losing fight. The Progressive Heterodox is pretty much fully in control and getting into a tussle with them is not going to do anything but ensure that you're roundly excluded from those spaces, so, to a lot of people, they just put up and shut up with it all. I don't blame anyone for taking that route. When that's your main social sphere, it only makes sense that you wouldn't want to make yourself an enemy of the people who currently dominate it. I see the landscape changing, though, slowly but surely. Or maybe bifurcating. A lot of people - even those who are progressive politically - I see beginning to walk away from the bigger names in the industry just because they've become so creatively dead and un-fun. I see a renaissance on the horizon, but, well... we'll see if it comes to fruition. Also, if you ever feel like publishing your novel, I'd read it. I've always been fascinated by more competitive spheres of gaming, even if I don't participate in them myself, up to having an idea about writing a drama about an e-sports team myself. But I don't have the best grasp on how those things work, and I don't care about e-sports all that much, so I'm not the right person for the job.
I have more to say but I'll continue it in the next comment.
Absolutely looking forward to the time when people don't default to using the internet for their social engagement, shopping, etc. I am just barely old enough to remember what malls were like in the nineties, before online shopping ripped the heart and soul out of the retail landscape. Now my kids (who are all a bunch of artsy crafters) are having a hard time finding any art supplies more advanced than the most basic available at hobby lobby or walmart without going online.
I don't think there was any way this wasn't going to happen, but I wish there'd been some nice middle ground where in-person retail remained dominant and online retail was a nice addendum that could be used to get things normally unavailable (more niche items or just things that don't make it to a more rural setting), but didn't become the dominant form of commerce. I know the reason the internet shifted to be the de facto place for shopping, social engagement, art sharing, etc. was much more complicated than "It's was an easier alternative", but at the same time, for all the benefits it provides, it really always should have been treated as ancillary to the real world rather than a substitute for it.
Also, the state of arts and crafts as a hobby is miserable. I've gotten back into model making recently and it's kind of amazing how little there is in stores like Joanne's and Michael's. They're big stores but they really don't have much.
I love everything about this, and you’ve said it so well. Thank you so much.
And thank you for reading, Jenn. Really appreciate all the support :)
May I just repeat smash the like button on this a few dozen times?
You've encapsulated every single gripe and frustration I've had with these services from the outset in this single article, and quite nicely pointed out precisely why the issues people like ourselves have are legitimate issues that should be taken into serious consideration. The problem was never the tool itself, but always the unscrupulous way that people will use it.
You're welcome to try. I'm glad that I'm in good company when it comes to my opinions on this technology. Unfortunately, whether our issues will actually be taken into serious consideration by people who can actually do something about it... I suppose we'll have to wait and see.
I think that "AI" art and writing is, for the moment, just accelerating trends that were already quite visible. Shoddy content farms, the mass-psyoping of the average individual online, grifters grifting, etc. But I do not think it will remain that way. There is a very real risk in the near future of the mainstream cultural conversation, which already resembles algorithmically-processed masticulate, becoming an entirely artificial Plato's Cave of infinitely-self referencing sloppa. And one fears that, as the complexity and perfection of the LLMs increases, so too will the content they produce. While the current level of artificial spew is easily recognisable by the imperfections it possess and the very middling level at which it tops out (not to mention the very definite sense of spiritual wrongness that it - the images in particular - exudes), that may not forever be the case. A worrying prospect. Physical media may soon become king once again, for those in the know.
Unlike you, however, I am willing to go on record and say that I think these generative programs are a bad technology (and, as a necessary base, that technologies have a telos and can have ultimately good or bad impacts (a good book to read on this, relevant to your usual topics, is Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, a criminally underread book IMO)). As another substack writer - David Greene, I think - I read put it, the real problem is that creating machines that can think and create for us, even in a flawed capacity, can and will damage the intellectual capabilities of all who touch it. It's like using a Walmart scooter to get around - you will soon be walking less, and your legs will become weaker.
As for Dead Internet Theory, I think the basic version of it has been true for some time. The majority of nominal internet users are not people interacting with it as individuals, but rather are bots or content farms. Whether the more fantastical, supernatural components of it are true is up in the air
PS - A correction from the first in the series - Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland, Edinburgh is the second-largest.
I'd say you're right on the money about those concerns, and, for obvious reasons I'm sure you're aware of, physical media is already king and always has been. There are certain things I still buy physical copies of - mostly music that I don't want to lose access to, ever. I have, like, multiple copies of some albums, just in case. Japanese and Filipino music is hard enough to get as it is in America - if it just gets banished from Spotify due to some draconic and esoteric copyright dispute, I would hate to never hear it again.
I also read David Greene and I respect him immensely. I understand where he's coming from, and you as well, but I also think there really are practical uses for this technology. But I really do understand what you're saying. In the last article, I linked a video by an author named Nick Carlson who actually read and reviewed one of Coull's "books", and he raises the exact point you do - the dangers of exporting culture and art to "thinking machines", that is. Part of my outlook though is that this technology is here and I kind of doubt it's going to go away, so, like nuclear energy, we might as well learn to harness it for good rather than purely destructive purposes. But, there is, as you said, a spiritual matter that's not so easily resolved.
I always appreciate your feedback, just so you know. I feel like I should mention that.
“Do you think most people have the willingness to slog through pages and pages of search results to find the content made by people?”
You underestimate my enjoyment of Wikimedia Commons
Very interesting piece otherwise.
It makes me wonder what will happen to the internet when we reach the event horizon of not enough new human works for AI to source from.
Perhaps an AI content generation ouroborus?
Last thought: it’s weird how no one really cares that so many AI thinkers are part of a de facto apocalyptic cult centered around the imminent arrival of AGI and the singularity, justifying this kind of slop production as the first step toward transhuman eternity.
Well, to reply one comment at a time:
- Trust me, I'm the same way. But most people aren't. Unfortunately, most people don't have that kind of hyperfixation that lends themselves to this kind of stuff.
- We're already reaching a kind of singularity with AI generated imagery in this respect. These programs rely on human-made art to generate imagery, right? Well, as the internet is becoming more and more suffused with AI generated imagery, the data that's being scraped to generate AI is referencing... well, shoddy AI generated imagery. Which is causing a problematic feedback loops where the problems AI already faces aren't getting fixed and, in many ways, are being exacerbated as it's now relying on itself to generate more, if that makes sense. So, in a way... it's already happening.
- That's one of the main reasons I'm very cagey about this kind of technology. I very much do not trust the transhumanist thinkers that are all in for this stuff. Part of it is because I think they're dumb, but, also, as you said, they really are part of a apocalyptic, eschatological cult that wants to see the end of humanity as we know it. That's kind of a rabbit hole unto itself, but I do agree that I don't particularly care for those fellows, and it is very convenient that much of the hype and publicity around these programs fails to mention the fact that the people most avidly pushing for this stuff are the same people chomping at the bit to push depopulation agendas.
RE: large organizations having more sophisticated "AI", as far as language models go, they do not. For social media & blog post type content, what you can get as a consumer is pretty close to the cutting edge.
The difference is just scale and scope. You can get a few paragraphs a minute out of ChatGPT or an LLM you can run on a decent video card on your own machine. ChatGPT is significantly broader in scope than the ones you can run locally, latter of which tend to be specialized toward particular tasks.
At a commercial scale you can just churn out a lot more bullshit a lot faster. Want to flood twitter with 10,000 posts per minute all pushing the same message but with enough variation to look authentic, so it's not so easy to create a block of screenshots like the one you posted above? No problem if you can lay down a few million bucks on hardware and electricity.
But fundamentally they're all just bullshit generators, and they all fall apart under examination. None of them are smart in any meaningful way. Just clever enough that they sound like people who know what they're talking about at first glance and if you don't know anything about the topic yourself. ChatGPT can spit out more genres of bullshit from the same model than the ones you can run locally, and the ones in R&D phase doubtlessly cover even more genres, but it's all still bullshit.
Which leads into another point... LLMs are not *that* much different from the rules-based procedural generators that made all the spam up until a few years ago. ELIZA was capable of convincing some people it was a person way back in the '60s, by following the same basic rules that GPT does: generate some text that looks like a human response to some prior text. Only difference now is instead of rules about grammar, procedural algorithms, and databases you're dealing with giant piles of statistics.
That's very interesting insight. The idea of some super advanced AI that supersedes conventional technology is part of the original Dead Internet Theory's more esoteric half that got left behind, but it's still interesting to humor. I haven't done much research into how AI works outside of the broad strokes, but from what little I've seen, it does appear as if we're rapidly approaching a hard limit of what these programs can do with current computer hardware (correct me if I'm wrong). If what you say is true - and I have no reason to believe it isn't - it's both reassuring to know that Amazon isn't hiding Hyper-Alexa or something that's primed to turn into AM from "I Have No Mouth". And, even if they were, it wouldn't be intelligent, like you said. I use the term AI because it's easy shorthand, but I feel like since most of the biggest programs being used are LLMs (at least it seems that way), the term "AI" is really a misleading marketing buzzword used to make the thing look more impressive than it is to investors and customers.
You're exactly right about "AI" being a marketing term. They're piggybacking on pop sci fi expectations to generate buzz and hype about a product that isn't much more impressive than Minecraft's terrain generator.
The internet was already dead thanks to sweatshop content mills and pre-LLM procgen spam. LLMs are just accelerating the rot.
What blows my mind is how many people are falling for it. Recently at work, we had an email go out where the higher ups "encouraged us" to think of ways AI could be integrated into our workflow. At city council meetings, there's several people who are so bullish on AI that they think it's going to do everything from run robots that harvest strawberries (which can already be done without "AI" run robots) and do urban planning for us and it's just like... you guys are really putting a lot of faith into a glorified chatbot. But, yeah, it's like at every turn there's new "AI" integration to wow the consumer. I saw at Costco that they're selling electric "smart" toothbrushes with "AI" in them. Seriously.
Yeah the hype is insane. Meanwhile here I am poking at LLM code and it's like, Sir, this is a Wendys.
Part of the problem here is we have utterly incompetent trust funders with "journalism" degrees doing science and tech reporting. People who barely scraped by through high school algebra and learned in journalism school that their job is to uncritically regurgitate press releases from major institutions.
And they're repeating bullshit fed to them by PR guys with "communications" degrees, and their job is to ignore what the tech managers say and make up some bullshit that will move some product.
And the tech managers are all guys with MBAs whose job is to promise the stars to the c-suite and PR people, get delivered a moon by the tech people, and then fire someone for failing to meet expectations.
So the difference between tech hype and actual product is more disappointing than 90s kids toy ad expectations vs. reality. But people keep buying it, because we're caught up in this cyberpunk utopia narrative that caught on in the 1980s and has yet to collide with physical reality.
Tim Pool has spoken of the Dead Internet theory now and again but only due to the amount of bots yo see online.
Yeah, it's cropping up more and more. I noticed it coming up in paranormal circles outside of 4chan a few years ago, and I've heard Tim Pool talk about it, too. I think Joe Rogan or one of his guests brought it up briefly as well, though none of them really got into the more esoteric parts of it. The further you dig down into it, the crazier it gets.
"every company except for Google just decided our homepages should be filled with pure visual shit every time we logged in"
That's why the first thing I do, when setting up a computer I'm going to be using for a while, is to shut all that shit off. And I don't fuck with Bing or Edge. (Hell, Microsoft just changed the default font in its Office suite, and I reacted like they were running a psy-op on me. Which they were.)
Point your propaganda hose elsewhere, assholes.
I'm still digesting the rest of your article.
I noticed that with Outlook myself at work and felt as if I was going insane. I brought in the IT guy and he looked at it and said, "Huh. Weird. They must have patched it." I did some research and apparently they "rolled out" the changes very subtly so that even systems management people didn't know the entire program suite was getting a font change, which really does feel like a PsyOp. Unfortunately though I was using Edge for entirely too long at work, but I also got said IT guy to download Firefox to my computer because Edge is borderline unusuable. I don't even think you can change your default home page on it.
I don't buy David Stewarts opinion that AI art can be a good reference for art. AI art is foundationally flawed, it sucks at perspective, lighting, and our portions. Using it as a reference poisons the core of your piece and retards the ability to master fundenemental elements of art.
I've said this before, notice that your eyes have a difficult time pleasantly focusing on a piece of AI art.