small thoughts IV: content, echo chambers, AI, monetization
In âsmall thoughtsâ posts, Iâm posting a collection of short thoughts and opinions that donât warrant their own post.
Something icks me about the word âcontentâ used for personal, private, small things nowadays. If youâre a content creator as a job or hobby, sure. But your own, private, non-commercial art and projects? It almost feels like an insult to me. Content. Ew. Itâs been ruined as a term. Feels like itâs downplaying the effort or personal meaning, as if it was just optimized slop to be consumed by the masses and monetized. Same with saying youâre ârebrandingâ for getting into new media, new hobbies, getting a new style or changing how your online presence looks as a private person not working as an online persona, singer etc. I donât wanna see myself as a brand, as something Iâm marketing myself as.. and the connotations! Rebranding tends to happen after a change of management, financial struggles or a scandal. I donât wanna evoke that image.
Another ick I have, at this point, is how "echo chamber" is used1. It seems to be used for any space that has similar topics all the time now, and it immediately paints that as a bad thing. I usually think the argument is pretty lazy - something just gets labeled an echo chamber, without explaining why, or how that's bad. I understand that political echo chambers are bad and a breeding ground for negative, dangerous radicalization, and I understand that diversity of voices is important. But when this concept gets applied to anything now, it is watered down. Is a basketball club an echo chamber, because it doesn't discuss or offer other sports? Is a book club an echo chamber, because it will focus on books and not the movie adaptations? Are people engaging in echo chambers for having a favorite magazine or author?
I just don't think each supposed "echo chamber" is alike, or per se bad, and doesn't necessarily deserve the term. Echo chambers become bad when you have nothing else in your life and just surround yourself with things that adhere to your view, but the most criticism always seem to come from extremely online people, which I guess makes sense; if you spend most of your life online on very specific servers, instances and groups of people, you think everyone does and that it's dangerous. But it assumes that the people you see in your online space have nothing else but this very space you share, instead of recognizing they are autonomous, living and breathing beings that are active in other groups, servers, and instances as well, read other websites and meet different viewpoints in real life due to their coworkers, family and friends. Plus, I just fail to see the supposed damage of only reading about sports, or only about tech, or only about history online (just to name a few examples); hobbies and special interests have always existed. I guess I just never really understand the underlying criticism that any focus on a topic is bad. I am not going to enter a restaurant for italian food and call it an italian food echo chamber, but people do that online, for some reason.
I dislike how AI furthers this internet era of distrust. Sure, lying was always possible, Photoshop has been around for a while. But itâs annoying me how often I see the distrust, and even more so how often that distrust is weaponized to denigrate someoneâs work, whether on purpose (as a targeted attack against something) or not.
Cool game? Someone comments accusing it of AI art or AI assets when the game doesnât even use any or they at least must be so good itâs undetectable visually. Someone writing a long thoughtful text? Thatâs just AI generated, they say. It lacks the language markers for AI? Oh, they must have edited those out, but surely the rest is all AI. Nice art skills? Thatâs probably just AI. Honestly, artists might have it the worst here because itâs evident that laypeople cannot spot certain signs of skill and human flaw in art and will just accuse any artwork they couldnât draw as AI.
But itâs news, facts, resources too. That video you donât like - just fake and AI generated, that political fact that makes you uncomfortable - made up by AI, that proof you delivered allegedly worthless because âeverything can be faked nowadaysâ. Seems like we went from grandma being taught bullshit on Facebook and believing it even when itâs clearly fake to everyone becoming a radical skepticist. The goal posts keep being moved in conversation and everything is a conspiracy now, even to completely average people not believing in QAnon shit. What a great time for insecure people who think everyone better at something than them is just cheating with undisclosed AI use.
Whenever I see people talk about blogging commercially as a job or to generate passive income at least, I always wonder if itâs some sort of MLM-esque grift. I mean in the way how one unsuccessful MLM hun will try to get others into it to gain at least something from it. Because I swear, there seem to be a lot of the blogs on all kinds of blogging services who make these posts as if blogging has these rigid rules, and it looks like a setup for their 130$ class theyâre going to sell you on how to make money with your blog⌠but their own blog isnât even successful, and the only way it tries to generate income is pretending it has a secret formula to success. Donât use these words, only write about that, you need to do this⌠honestly, every time I see those posts I click on them for fun, just to see what bullshit it is this time and how much of it I donât even follow and still manage to have a wider reach than those poor souls. They donât even have any credentials, no example like âxyz blog is mine and I grew it to 100k subscribers and earn 5k a monthâ, just nothing. Who is that for? Who is supposed to believe that? It has to be a grift, right?
On a sidenote, good for anyone who monetizes their blog; at this point, anyone can use all the money streams they can get. But I just cannot imagine monetizing something that Iâve seen people around me do for free since I was 12 and that I did since my mid-teens. I look at paid Substacks and think: This stuff is just available on Tumblr for free? What this person wrote is basically just what some 14 year old wrote 10 years ago on that platform. I cannot imagine monetizing my blog posts. Thatâs just publishing the things I talk about at the dinner table or in DMs anyway!
Published 20 Dec, 2024
When I wrote this, it wasn't being beaten to death on the trending page yet, I swear!! :D↩