I do not think it is a hyperbolic take at all. This timeline has taken a really dark turn. We are all interconnected, and I am sad that so many forces are trying to convince people that we are not.
As a novelist whose work has been stolen and consumed and repurposed; and whose fragile squiggly but joyfully fun attempts at art have been made irrelevant, I resonate. I need reasons not to give up. This truth telling helps.
My prediction is that there will be a big counter culture shift towards offline work. More in-person exhibitions, more live shows, more cinema-exclusive releases. When the internet becomes an undesirable place to spend time socially, people will (hopefully) migrate away from it. We’ve been conned by tech companies into thinking their services are compulsory but artists and writers thrived for all of history before Twitter was invented and there’s no reason we couldn’t again.
I agree from personal experience, Thomas. After relying almost exclusively on my online audience for several years, over the last year and a half I have dedicated more time to in-person events and offline networks. It is vastly more fulfilling and 'real'.
Wow, this blew my mind. I am a crochet artist and I try to keep up with the social media but I hate creating content so much! Keeping up with it fried my brain and limited my creativity and I am just realising it. I am so sick of the constant demand to perform my life rather that live it. In the recent months I shitfted from trying to make it on social media to organizing in person workshops and I feel so much better, I feel human again. I love to work with material and people. Lets all do more of that again!
Well said, Kaja. Everything is a performance and life only has value in how it can be monetized and exhibited. I'm glad you're finding more joy in real life spaces. That's my goal too!
The world is run by a group of losers designing products and systems that make us feel like losers.
It’s incredible how much better my mental health has been since I deleted social media and forced myself only to check Substack’s Notes every few days. It’s not a matter of self-esteem (a pretty Western concept) but of staying away from what is destroying the human spirit/art. It’s not the concept of myself that feels better, but it’s the ability to focus on what’s really in front of me, not my screen.
This lack of engaging with Substack and social media also has limited financial growth, but fuck it, I’d rather be that type of loser than the losers who keep financially growing off the backs of others.
hi Nishant! Wow, I love that you are thinking and talking and writing about this stuff! This past month I joined the 21st century and bought a smart phone.... it literally overwhelmed me so much I had to lock it in a drawer for 3 days... Yesterday I took it out and it offered to give me more information about a drawing I had just done and filmed....AI/Siri told me it was a nature watercolour and where I could find similar sites... not wrong but it blew my mind. I posted the video as a reel, it's super slow, it's super choppy but that's what we as humans are... We are not slick
I completly agree with you.... the pleasure is in the doing and not the results... I wonder if there is a way to turn Ai on it's head?
It's interesting to ponder if AI would like a taste of humanity. But congratulations on chugging on with life for so long without a smartphone. That is incredible!
I think is has only accelerated given the current regime in the US only encouraging the tech bro class. It's so aggravating, because unlike the first generation of tech entrepreneurs, these bros have given us nothing truly innovative, nor have they really created anything themselves but rather used other people. So its no surprise that they are all on board with something that doesn't make anything innovative or new but prints money for them for no reason.
When I worked in pharmaceutical advertising years ago, we were working with machine learning tools to better serve the needs of people seeking medical treatments and understanding medical data. It's such a waste that such promising tools have been warped into this nightmarish abomination.
Glad to hear from you, Melissa. The biggest moneymakers of the last 15 years have only been in the field of cannibalizing what already exists and stripping it for parts. No amount of wealth is enough!
Thank you for the reply, Nishant. I'm particularly jaded since I got laid off from my last two jobs in tech marketing solely because some executive wasn't making enough money. Regardless, they can't take away our art!
As a visual artist both professionally and personally, generative AI is like some sort of invasion into my sacred space.
I agree with your premise and essay 100%. Even the work of great classic artists like Michelangelo and Van Gogh will be reduced to the status of memes when their styles can simply be replicated by anyone.
It’s a sad time. Thank you for articulating it so clearly.
Agree with you Nishant, im sure your thoughts resonate with a number of artists. What’s making it scarier for me is that I think many people are okay with it. I work in sports cartooning and not only was my timeline on social media filled with football fans using the Ghibli style for fun (and seeing it as harmless) but even clubs and some really big football sites are using AI now instead of illustrators or graphic designers. I’m glad that AI can’t replicate the nonsense thoughts in my head that drive my cartoon work.
Glad to hear from you Keith. This tech is backed up all the money in the world, and hypernormalization is how they wash the crime of it all. By letting everyone do it first, it becomes acceptable, and that is how we manufacture consent. It's startling and disappointing how easy it is.
Thank you for reading, Anna. I’m glad you resonate with it. (It was written almost entirely in a fit of rage. Had to do spell checks a few hours later.)
"Context Collapse is the stripping away of reason, and circumstances, and motivations, and process. It is the phenomenon by which you see everything in the same way." That's a pretty good description of what Marcel Duchamp was up to. It was done in a spirit of irreverence and playfulness. Perhaps you wouldn't be so frightened of these new purveyors of ready-mades if you thought of their creators as working in the same spirit of playfulness and irreverence.
Context Collapse is certainly already around us, definitely since Duchamp's time. One of my favourite reads on the subject was The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin.
I do see the sense of playfulness in a lot of people that use AI casually to generate images. But I wish I could ascribe mere playfulness to the people that run social media companies or run these AI companies! We are not so free and independent as artists were a hundred years ago, when our labours are expressed through the medium, and using the specific technologies, of billionaire megalomaniacs.
These new mediums and technologies that distress you didn't erase the old mediums and technologies. You are "free and independent" to work with whatever mediums and technologies you choose. Paint, yodel, garden. Everything's allowed.
The "people that run social media companies or run these AI companies" don't give a damn. Just don't expect to be praised or promoted or paid.
My 14yo has filled countless sheets of loose leaf paper and sketchbooks with her drawings. When I ask about whether she would like to sell them, she is appalled. “These are NOT for sale! These are for me!” She finds joy in the creating, and shares by sitting next to me or someone else to highlight and explain her favourite drawings and comics. She loves to witness a person’s reactions to her “risqué” artwork, and snickers about our seeming confusion about what it all means!
I am usually not optimistic. But this article really makes me re-question everything. I won’t stop wanting to make art, or making art at all, but you ask the good questions. And it scares me.
I felt so seen reading this. I remember when music would play on the radio, and sometimes there'd be a song I didn't enjoy at first, but it'd grow on me. I feel like content has become so homogenous because it's tailored to what will keep your eyeballs on the screen that we're no longer being exposed to things we might not like right away or agree with. It creates tunnel vision and as you described it, slop. Thank you for calling this out...it's scary times we're living in.
Ambi, I agree 💯! Accidental discoveries are becoming rarer and our circles are becoming smaller. We are being funneled towards pop culture and pop music and ... Tunnel vision is the right phrase!
I do not think it is a hyperbolic take at all. This timeline has taken a really dark turn. We are all interconnected, and I am sad that so many forces are trying to convince people that we are not.
Thank you for validating this, Christina. 🙌
As a novelist whose work has been stolen and consumed and repurposed; and whose fragile squiggly but joyfully fun attempts at art have been made irrelevant, I resonate. I need reasons not to give up. This truth telling helps.
Toby, a friend said this and I keep it on repeat in my mind - the worst time to be an artist is the best time to be an artist. 💪
My prediction is that there will be a big counter culture shift towards offline work. More in-person exhibitions, more live shows, more cinema-exclusive releases. When the internet becomes an undesirable place to spend time socially, people will (hopefully) migrate away from it. We’ve been conned by tech companies into thinking their services are compulsory but artists and writers thrived for all of history before Twitter was invented and there’s no reason we couldn’t again.
I agree from personal experience, Thomas. After relying almost exclusively on my online audience for several years, over the last year and a half I have dedicated more time to in-person events and offline networks. It is vastly more fulfilling and 'real'.
That’s so great to hear!!
I agree, I want this too. Let’s make it happen.
Wow, this blew my mind. I am a crochet artist and I try to keep up with the social media but I hate creating content so much! Keeping up with it fried my brain and limited my creativity and I am just realising it. I am so sick of the constant demand to perform my life rather that live it. In the recent months I shitfted from trying to make it on social media to organizing in person workshops and I feel so much better, I feel human again. I love to work with material and people. Lets all do more of that again!
Well said, Kaja. Everything is a performance and life only has value in how it can be monetized and exhibited. I'm glad you're finding more joy in real life spaces. That's my goal too!
"Content is the junk food of the internet."
Absolutely right Nishant. Like junk food, it satiates but nourishes little. In terms of skill, sensitivity or effort, zero nutrients in many cases.
This was all spot on, Nishant. Thank you.
The world is run by a group of losers designing products and systems that make us feel like losers.
It’s incredible how much better my mental health has been since I deleted social media and forced myself only to check Substack’s Notes every few days. It’s not a matter of self-esteem (a pretty Western concept) but of staying away from what is destroying the human spirit/art. It’s not the concept of myself that feels better, but it’s the ability to focus on what’s really in front of me, not my screen.
This lack of engaging with Substack and social media also has limited financial growth, but fuck it, I’d rather be that type of loser than the losers who keep financially growing off the backs of others.
Nolan, I agree so much. Having control over our own attention is the ultimate achievement today, and I'm glad to see how it's working out for you!
hi Nishant! Wow, I love that you are thinking and talking and writing about this stuff! This past month I joined the 21st century and bought a smart phone.... it literally overwhelmed me so much I had to lock it in a drawer for 3 days... Yesterday I took it out and it offered to give me more information about a drawing I had just done and filmed....AI/Siri told me it was a nature watercolour and where I could find similar sites... not wrong but it blew my mind. I posted the video as a reel, it's super slow, it's super choppy but that's what we as humans are... We are not slick
I completly agree with you.... the pleasure is in the doing and not the results... I wonder if there is a way to turn Ai on it's head?
It's interesting to ponder if AI would like a taste of humanity. But congratulations on chugging on with life for so long without a smartphone. That is incredible!
I think is has only accelerated given the current regime in the US only encouraging the tech bro class. It's so aggravating, because unlike the first generation of tech entrepreneurs, these bros have given us nothing truly innovative, nor have they really created anything themselves but rather used other people. So its no surprise that they are all on board with something that doesn't make anything innovative or new but prints money for them for no reason.
When I worked in pharmaceutical advertising years ago, we were working with machine learning tools to better serve the needs of people seeking medical treatments and understanding medical data. It's such a waste that such promising tools have been warped into this nightmarish abomination.
Glad to hear from you, Melissa. The biggest moneymakers of the last 15 years have only been in the field of cannibalizing what already exists and stripping it for parts. No amount of wealth is enough!
Thank you for the reply, Nishant. I'm particularly jaded since I got laid off from my last two jobs in tech marketing solely because some executive wasn't making enough money. Regardless, they can't take away our art!
As a visual artist both professionally and personally, generative AI is like some sort of invasion into my sacred space.
I agree with your premise and essay 100%. Even the work of great classic artists like Michelangelo and Van Gogh will be reduced to the status of memes when their styles can simply be replicated by anyone.
It’s a sad time. Thank you for articulating it so clearly.
Thank you for reading Lee. 🙏
Agree with you Nishant, im sure your thoughts resonate with a number of artists. What’s making it scarier for me is that I think many people are okay with it. I work in sports cartooning and not only was my timeline on social media filled with football fans using the Ghibli style for fun (and seeing it as harmless) but even clubs and some really big football sites are using AI now instead of illustrators or graphic designers. I’m glad that AI can’t replicate the nonsense thoughts in my head that drive my cartoon work.
Glad to hear from you Keith. This tech is backed up all the money in the world, and hypernormalization is how they wash the crime of it all. By letting everyone do it first, it becomes acceptable, and that is how we manufacture consent. It's startling and disappointing how easy it is.
Thank you for writing this. It’s all so enraging.
Thank you for reading, Anna. I’m glad you resonate with it. (It was written almost entirely in a fit of rage. Had to do spell checks a few hours later.)
Shows you’re human if there are spelling errors though :)
True!
"Context Collapse is the stripping away of reason, and circumstances, and motivations, and process. It is the phenomenon by which you see everything in the same way." That's a pretty good description of what Marcel Duchamp was up to. It was done in a spirit of irreverence and playfulness. Perhaps you wouldn't be so frightened of these new purveyors of ready-mades if you thought of their creators as working in the same spirit of playfulness and irreverence.
Context Collapse is certainly already around us, definitely since Duchamp's time. One of my favourite reads on the subject was The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin.
I do see the sense of playfulness in a lot of people that use AI casually to generate images. But I wish I could ascribe mere playfulness to the people that run social media companies or run these AI companies! We are not so free and independent as artists were a hundred years ago, when our labours are expressed through the medium, and using the specific technologies, of billionaire megalomaniacs.
These new mediums and technologies that distress you didn't erase the old mediums and technologies. You are "free and independent" to work with whatever mediums and technologies you choose. Paint, yodel, garden. Everything's allowed.
The "people that run social media companies or run these AI companies" don't give a damn. Just don't expect to be praised or promoted or paid.
OMG no praise at all?!
My 14yo has filled countless sheets of loose leaf paper and sketchbooks with her drawings. When I ask about whether she would like to sell them, she is appalled. “These are NOT for sale! These are for me!” She finds joy in the creating, and shares by sitting next to me or someone else to highlight and explain her favourite drawings and comics. She loves to witness a person’s reactions to her “risqué” artwork, and snickers about our seeming confusion about what it all means!
That is amazing! 😍 I can't wait for my son to start drawing, and treating his work just like that!
So cool. My kids and I love to collect each other’s art as well.
This put into eloquent words a lot of what is marinating in my brain recently… thank you
I am glad to hear that Shailee, you are most welcome. 🙏
I am usually not optimistic. But this article really makes me re-question everything. I won’t stop wanting to make art, or making art at all, but you ask the good questions. And it scares me.
May the good questions help you find your way, Sirius. Keep making art!
I felt so seen reading this. I remember when music would play on the radio, and sometimes there'd be a song I didn't enjoy at first, but it'd grow on me. I feel like content has become so homogenous because it's tailored to what will keep your eyeballs on the screen that we're no longer being exposed to things we might not like right away or agree with. It creates tunnel vision and as you described it, slop. Thank you for calling this out...it's scary times we're living in.
Ambi, I agree 💯! Accidental discoveries are becoming rarer and our circles are becoming smaller. We are being funneled towards pop culture and pop music and ... Tunnel vision is the right phrase!