Annoyances with AI Wars

I’ve been spending some time on Reddit, mostly following stuff about puzzle video games and game dev. I also see stuff from a couple subreddits that argue about AI art, namely r/aiwars and r/defendingaiart. I have found these subreddits just barely tolerable that I haven’t blocked them (yet). But they contain a lot of viewpoints that annoy me, so I’m going to talk about them.

Sorry, I’m not going to cite examples, because the purpose isn’t to litigate these particular subreddits. I know the typical reader doesn’t really care about them, and indeed should not care about them. This is just my way to discuss a scattering of AI-related issues that I think people commonly get wrong.

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Hating the artist, hating the art

(Disclaimer: to the extent that this article was inspired by a specific creator, it’s not a creator you’ve heard of, and not one that I mention anywhere in the article! I mention a few authors as examples, but I was not setting out to specifically comment on any of them.)

When a creator falls into disrepute, there tends to be a public re-evaluation of their work. “Oh, I re-read their book, and it’s aged terribly.” “I’ve always thought their work was bad.”

This is reminiscent the story of sour grapes. In the Aesop’s fable, a fox tries to eat some grapes, but cannot reach them. So the fox says the grapes were sour anyway, and he didn’t want them. So when an artist falls from grace, people can no longer wholly enjoy the art. So they say that the art was never good in the first place, and nothing of value was lost.

But there is a major difference between the fox’s re-evaluation of the grapes and the public’s re-evaluation of the art. The “public” is made up of more than one person. There may be some individuals who first liked the art, and then stopped liking it. But more often, what happens is we first hear from individuals who liked the art, and then later we hear from another set of individuals who did not like the art. Perhaps no individual re-evaluation took place, and it’s just a matter of listening more to the haters.

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Popularity is (almost) scale-free

We live in an ecosystem, where everyone is pressured to be a content creator of some sort.

Suppose you want to interact with your friends on the internet. Let’s say they hang out on BlueSky or LiveJournal or whatever. So you go to those platforms, post some stuff you think your friends will like. And you have like 10 friends, so your posts get 10 views. But that’s not very good! You want your posts to be more widely read by strangers on the internet. So you put a bit more effort into being witty, so you can get 100 views, then 1000 views, and so on. And it’s never good enough because you read even wittier posts from other people, with 100 times the views that you get.

I describe internet popularity as “scale-free” because everything is on a logarithmic scale. No matter where you are in terms of popularity, you feel like a small fish in a big pond. You see other people on the internet with 100 times the popularity you have, so you understand your own little corner of the internet to be a backwater.

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I read Raygun’s paper on Olympic Breaking

I mostly ignore the Olympics, but my husband purchased access, and I sat down with him to watch one thing: the women’s breakdancing quarterfinals (see final battle). I didn’t know anything about breaking, but it was impressive to watch nonetheless. It was only later that I heard about the Aussie competitor Rachael Gunn (“Raygun”), whose earlier performance got memeified, and went viral on TikTok.

It’s hard to find publicly available “neutral” clips of her performance, but some options are provided here. Or, if you just want the meme version, I put a couple gifs below.

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More on the purpose of readings

In my previous post (which you may have missed, since FTB was down for a few days), I asked “What is the purpose of a reading?” I discussed a reading of Elden Ring that baffled me. I could not understand the purpose of the reading, other than arguing that it was intended by the authors. And the article didn’t really do anything to convince me of authorial intent.

I wanted to keep things simple, but my thoughts were spiraling outwards from there. So, if you permit, some more scattered discussion.

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It bugs me about Nimona

cn: Lots of spoilers.  Also a suicide mention.

Nimona is a recent animated film taking place in a futuristic medieval setting. Lord Ballister was a commoner who was plucked by the queen to become a knight. Knights are sworn to defend the city from monsters beyond its walls, but they basically function as cops. However, during the knighting ceremony, Ballister is framed for killing the queen, and becomes a fugitive.

He gets adopted by Nimona, who at first appears as a young girl, but is a powerful shapeshifter. She calls him a villain, and insists on being his sidekick.  Although Ballister is initially reluctant, they work together to prove his innocence. But Ballister learns that he needs to go much further, striking at the heart of the city’s corrupt institutions and entire mythos.

Nimona is celebrated as a queer and trans movie, and for good reason. It has a trans creator, overt representation (Ballister having a male love interest and Nimona being fluid in both species and gender), and subversive themes about overthrowing the social and institutional structures that oppress people.

And so, I am very sorry to play the role of media curmudgeon, yet again. I found the themes of the movie to be in conflict with what was being literally portrayed. This gave the impression of a movie that had a point to make, but was ineffective at actually arguing the point.

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Heartstopper season 2

Last year, I gave a lukewarm review of Heartstopper, including the first season of the TV series, and the webcomic up to that point. Today, I will offer a few comments on season 2. Because despite me being fairly critical, you know that I’m into it.

Coming out

If season 2 has any central focus, it’s on coming out. Nick has committed to coming out to people at school at the beginning of the season, and he only gets around to it near the end of the season.

On the one hand, I appreciate the portrayal of coming out as a long and arduous process. In many stories, coming out is portrayed as a single confrontation, usually with parents. But in real life, there are so many people to come out to, way more than you can reasonably fit in a story. When an LGBTQ person is committed to coming out, it really is a long-term commitment, and you never stop.

On the other hand, a huge benefit of coming out for gay/bi men is that you can actually have a relationship in public. There are just so many things you cannot do in a same-sex relationship while closeted because people would find out. But this does not seem to present much of a benefit to Nick and Charlie, because they’re pretty much already doing the things that you can’t actually do while closeted.  They somehow find an endless supply of private spaces.  Quite a number of these private spaces are actually in public, they’re just treated as private for no real reason.  The low-stakes story seems to remove some of the major issues that motivate people to come out.

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