> Is greatness overrated?
People already feel this way.
> What’s next—Is disease the new health?
People currently are conflating body shaming with pointing out someone is unhealthy
> Is losing the new winning?
Being part of a minority is better than being good at something.
> Is stupid the new smart?
Tell someone you are good at something like computers. Way too many people use this as an opportunity to cope.
I hate to break it to the author of this article but we are already here.
> And now real news photos of Hurricane Helene are getting replaced by AI fantasies.
50% of stuff I read about victims, is about some dogs. The AI generated fantasies are not far from "serious journalism". AI just captures current public sentiment.
Are you saying that because journalism is trash, that AI trash is okay?
No, I am saying it is the same. There is no "AI apocalypse".
AI generated "content" is just fulfilling the demand. Before AI we had army of human copywriters, the same person would write articles about movies and nuclear physics. And lets not forget SEO spam and SEO farms.
AI is just generating slop in a cheaper way, and much faster.
It's true. Photos were staged too, remember the viral news clip of the reporter bracing himself against "hurricane winds" and then in the background someone strolls normally across the picture.
For anyone who wants to see it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tocuyJ1Fu7U
There is a big lie about this mythical low demand.
No, people will demand more of what they really know, if you feed them with better things they will demand more better things.
But the point is, the cheap news are related to junky ads and this is the point where it gets spoiled: selling shit is easier when is tied to spreading shit.
Fix the greed behind the news distribution and you will have better content plus a demand for a better content.
10x more slop for $1 is still 10x more slop, though.
The title reminded me of this article, that claims that the new culture war is weird vs normal: https://studio.ribbonfarm.com/p/the-new-systems-of-survival
Does https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2024/10/10/ribbonfarm-is-retiring... imply Rao has voted with his feet (keyboard?) for the hypernormal?
> As another example, in 2020, I consciously stopped trying to write “viral hit” type posts, and even bent over backwards to try and write anti-viral posts. ... The cozyweb zeitgeist favors a deeper, quieter sort of writerly ambition, with classier, more high-minded aspirations. ... Why can’t anyone see I’m only wearing the Substack Suit ironically!
Imagine telling someone in 2015 that in 2024 almost as many people would choose to erase Twitter from existence than LinkedIn.
The answer will be more exclusivity.
The masses get ignorant dreck, and people in the know get the scoop. When the genx people like me are rocking on the porch in retirement, we’ll be babbling about the golden age we lost.
What golden age? The masses always got the emotionally charged slop. The fallacy is thinking there was a point where they somehow didn’t. The incentives were in fact never aligned for that. Slop is the business.
“To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week’s newspapers.”
Nasim Taleb said that in 2010, and you can find similar sentiments running back a long time. Sensationalism has been the name of the game all along.
Or Bertolt Brecht, first half of the 20th century:
"I am a great opponent of newspapers," said Mr. Muddle. "I don't want any newspapers." Mr. Keuner said, "I am a greater opponent of newspapers: I want different newspapers."
Its called manufacturing consent...
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Back when we were on ARPANET, when using the network for business like that could lead to direct reprimands.
Back before the start of the Eternal September.
Back before there were masses.
Someone from the so called msm complained out loud recently about social media and how they the so called msm used to control information but are subverted by social media. They came to the conclusion we need the government to pass laws to control information.
I don’t know if they are naive, stupid or genuinely are saddened by their loss of control.
The words you’re repeating belie the problem.
Journalism was more of a profession, there were editorial best practices and more factual accuracy. TV media was a loss leader. Social media is a dick measuring contest. Popularity correlates with volume, so the incentive is to shout whatever will get a reaction.
So low-information consumers are spinning about how the government is both completely incompetent, yet capable of using some magic to create hurricanes for some reason. That’s a feature of social media.
Perhaps... to some degree they stuck to facts, but they chose what to talk about and what facts to bring up, but let's say they were even handed... They are not today and they compete with your homebound keyboard warrior when it comes to making stuff up, except they have the imprimatur of being the legacy media and people give them unearned gravitas.
The only through-line for the author's definition of "bogus" (AI generated content; identity performance; rejection of canon) appears to me "cannot be situated in the culture of a few decades ago."
To pick on one example: he writes of the linked NYT essay:
> Is greatness overrated? What’s next—Is disease the new health? Is losing the new winning? Is stupid the new smart?
At risk of sounding uncharitable, this is the kind of reaction one might have to the essay if they read the title and skipped the content. The author is specfically talking about the idea of the Nobel canon and its orthogonality to other reasons you might want to read an author. (I don't think it's a particularly good essay, but it's certainly not saying "bad stuff is good, actually"!)
I agree with you, and the author is being a little lazy by referencing the NYT article. At the same time, if they didn’t use a clickbait headline, they’d force their critics to make slightly better arguments, so it’s the NYT’s fault too.
The culture war has always been real vs bogus. Mass media monopolized the real by constructing in parallel a distribution medium and a culture of authority built on top of it.
The levers of reality building include the ability to mass disseminate ideas. When social media co-oped the public to generate content in order to sell ads for money, it handed over the mechanism of reality construction to the masses - we de-monopolized reality construction for a few trillion dollars in market cap.
It's weird to see reality sold out to the highest bidder, but at the same time, I couldn't see it going any other way. The reptilians have a strange affinity for hording gold. Modern day dragons.
>The London Standard brought back the dead journalist with the help of AI. The newspaper’s CEO said this was part of a plan to be “bold and disruptive.”
This is grotesque. :(
Even the revived AI journalist Brian Sewall thought so, as noted in TFA.
I hate this so much.
Curation will become even more important. Despite social media, we haven't even come close to peak influencer mania yet.
I agree. I can imagine a future where default internet access is highly curated by some local trusted group (at whatever scale, with whatever trust model, maybe state maybe community). While the open internet would be still accessible, access is not the default and perhaps you need some kind of approval or license to go into the wasteland of the open public internet.
The humans consuming AI video/image content and can't help themselves sharing this garbage are simply bots. No better way to describe them. That's going to be the new captcha test for me.
I was a bit cautious of Photoshop adding watermarks into pictures generated by their software but I think it's time LLMs implement this feature. It will be the only way to filter and clean the spam from your feed.
Decent idea but it will be circumvented with ai powered watermark removers. They already exist and will only get better as ai image generation gets better.
They could very well literally be.
That's the real AI revolution. Not in manufacturing content for the masses, but how to sell ads when the vast majority of consumers could be suspected to be bots.
If you think AI spam is bad now, you ain't seen nothing yet. Except for the outliers in the article or the author, the reality is the majority of people do not care or cannot notice if content is ai-generated or human-generated, so to save money we can expect more of the former. I have already seen this in news stories where there are weird typos and other artifacts of AI generation. If you are not paying attention then you would probably not notice.
There’s a supply stream issue, though. AI articles are typically just regurgitating something an actual human reported on by interviewing people, gathering facts on the ground etc.
If AI authors start vacuuming up all the revenue the original journalists will be out of work and AI will, I dunno, start making up even more nonsense than it already does?
The AI will probably start relying more on twitter and instagram videos posted by people allegedly on the scene, trascribing quotes and fabricating a story.
So it'll start consuming fake AI generated video and reporting it as credulous. What could go wrong!
Well yeah. If you needed to have your culture come from Google images or or NYT I think you were always going to have a bad time. AI or not.
I think this is where the author's analysis falls flat at. The fact that these mediums are in any shape barometers of or agents for culture constitute more of a problem than their decay does.
love it
let it burn
As a Danish person the most annoying thing about the American culture war is how it spreads to here. Nowhere near the scale, we still absolutely ridicule people who’d believe in most of the nonsense so that keeps it down. But it’s still here. I think what annoys me the most about it is how a lot of the bogus is very specifically “American”. When Qanon was a thing it was also a thing here. It’s so disappointing that our tinfoil hatters aren’t coming up with their own bogus about our own elite. If Obama was/is a lizard person, then why wouldn’t our Queen (at the time we have a King now) be a Lizard? We have our own rich elites, is Lars Larsen really dead or is he leading a secret shadow government?
I do agree that the “reality vs fiction” battle, which has been raging for years now will get absolutely insane with AI created lies. I don’t think it’ll really continue to be that much of a battle though. We’re already living in a world where people have extremely different perceptions of reality, and it’ll probably be hard to teach critical thinking to the people who are already believing the bogus.
"It’s so disappointing that our tinfoil hatters aren’t coming up with their own bogus about our own elite."
Demographically speaking, most of the people who latch on to conspiracy theories feel lost and want to be a part of a group, even when they don't agree on the same level ads the others. So they are not likely to be generating their own movements. I wouldn't be surprised if many of the movements are information warfare targeted primarily at the US.
America has always tolerated enhanced levels of BS. I remember as a small kid finding US comics at the newsagent that had ads for "x-ray glasses". I thought that's amazing, why don't we have those here? We'll we didn't have them because they don't exist and it was illegal to sell stuff that doesn't exist where I lived.
You can't sell fraudulent things in the US either. The x-ray glasses ads have a clarification in them about not actually using x-rays, but being an optical illusion. I would bet that whatever country you are from probably has some novelty item that requires a cultural understanding or fine print to know what it truly is.
Sometimes it feels like a literal monkey's paw wouldn't be able to be acused of fraud in the US.
It is really frustrating as an American Native (as in I was born here not Native American). Caring about being deceived marks you as a conspiricy theorist. If you get frustrated about "made with real milk" not being precise enough to describe if the milk was used to stir the concoction or if it has any milk in it or if its the only milk like thing in it, then you worry too much.
But companies pull that crap all the time. It's because when people do good faith things we don't correct them on their technical loopholes. We don't ask people to cut the loophole off we just presume that they wouldn't use it.
I saw an ad today that said $999 desktops and PCs. Most people think it's fine. That ad is deceiving you though. It's trying to make you feel like they are giving you information. They aren't though. I can go on Amazon and buy a computer at nearly every conceivable price. They don't say it's a good PC or even what that might mean. They are just saying the will take $999 from you and a lawyer probably wouldn't go to court about the definition of a computer over it.
I see this with Oreos
"Made with real cocoa"
There is no such thing as fake cocoa, that's why. I don't give a shit what's "real" I know I'm eating sugar and palm oil
Well it was obviously an ad for "x-ray glasses," not x-ray glasses.
I mean, doesn't that prove the parents point kind of? Americans tolerate/enable a lot of BS. You could argue there are entire industries built around that (most tend to be multilevel marketing).
That's what I was getting at
Here's my hot take: conspiracy theories and outlandish myths are America's version of Old World superstition and folklore.
Study any European culture and how it was Christianized, and how the local culture, folklore, and mythology melded with religion to become a unique tapestry. Look at Ireland for a really pronounced example. Look at the folktales and revered fables that came out of those cultures for a synthesis of what rural folk really believed and talked about over dinner, and by the hearth in the evening times after work was done.
But the United States has none of that. The New World came of age during the Enlightenment era of reason and rationality. Now we're in a post-Christian society, one rooted in science and empiricism, but we're still yearning for the supernatural, and it's manifesting in unique ways for us. Americans don't have faeries or unicorns or goblins, we've got chemtrails and little green men. Furthermore, as the U.S. and other New World cultures progress, we're making our own mythology and legends. Look at how much of the American Revolution and Civil War is already steeped in pious fairy tales, such as young Washington's cherry tree, Betsy Ross, Paul Revere, or that utterly fictional, feminist chick who supposedly rode horseback like Revere.
Personally, I believe that this fake stuff that people believe is one of two things: either there are kernels of truth and allegory to them, that they're masking a deeper truth that's too dangerous to discuss openly or brazenly reveal; or that they're utter distractions and designed to keep people busy and concerned about utterly irrelevant things. Panem et circenses.
There is tons of American folklore, and even more if you include native Americans. Hell "witchcraft" was more of prominent in early America than Europe, and fairies/fae like things are littered in native american histories.
Conspiracy theories are a 20th century coping mechanism for an oversized, seemingly-omnipotent federal government.
People were indeed afraid of stuff they did not understand and they imagined them to be quite different than what they really were.
Like Greeks inventing Zeus as a coping mechanism for the malevolent, all powerful and vengeful nature.
Hope it will not be another 2000 years until some of today's inexact beliefs get forgotten.
No, that is a profoundly ignorant perspective on the truths and pragmatism of ancient wisdom.
The pagan religions were not merely created to explain the unexplainable. Pagan myths and legends imparted greater truths and wisdom, they encoded history and science, and they explained psychological human behavior and interactions with nature. These truths were conveyed very precisely, intricately, exactly as they were, from the cultural perspective, but they are nonsensical to you who will always be outsiders to that tribe, space, and time. The ancients, even illiterate peasants and slaves, had a marvelous grasp of metaphor, allegory, and allusions even to the "pop-culture" of their day! Some of us still do!
Pagan religion was a unifying force for any tribe or nation. The reason it was supplanted with monotheism was because those tribes were unable to unite, or even interact, trade, and communicate efficiently, while still worshiping multiple pagan gods. Therefore, Abrahamic religions became an even grander unifying force on global scales, while still serving the purposes of those ancient myths and legends. As popular piety and local legend was permitted and absorbed, those monotheistic religions were able to flourish and intertwine with those cultures.
To repeat the tired old canard that religion was perpetuated by ignorant benighted dullards, in order to cope or merely survive, is scurrilious, anthropologically ignorant, and shockingly arrogant. The hierarchies and rulers of the ancient world knew exactly what they were doing in every respect. YOU are afraid of spiritualities and the supernatural which you do not understand, and so you denigrate them. Likewise do President Trump and the wisdom of Qanon know what works. Just because they don't think or act the way you expect, doesn't make them stupid or inferior to your atheism/scientim.
So the part where if you don't make an offer to the (priest) of some god it will strike you with thunder was correct, and I am not understanding the hidden meaning? Maybe I was too optimistic with the 2000 years.
I never claimed religion did not fulfill sometimes good purposes. But it perpetuated many bad, incorrect beliefs based on fear that slowed progress. For example not doing to your peer something that you don't like yourself seems something positive for society. Going to hell if you try to understand astronomy seems quite negative for society.
What a simplistic and reductionist ad absurdum strawman argument you've constructed! Congratulations! Also, congratulations on twisting the Golden Rule into a colloquial and negative formulation! Innovative!
If we obstinately persist in willfully misunderstanding how religion, obedience, and sacrifice operate, then we will always reach the same conclusions and be met with a cold shoulder from people who get it.
As we discussed very recently in another thread, priests and priest-scientists were the original scholars and intellectuals, and they knew astronomy intimately well. The astronomers indeed worked out among themselves how the heavens operated. The reason that ordinary laypersons should not learn this was because it was (1) useless to them, (2) quite complex and error-prone without collaboration and a solid background, and (3) extraordinarily perilous to their own well-being, and to the social order, if they should acquire skills and notoriety with it -- "knowledge is power -- absolute power corrupts absolutely". It was treason to be a heretic or usurp the power of clerics.
Galileo and his ilk weren't condemned for "trying to learn" it. Far from that. That's another red herring and canard that's perpetuated by scientism.
Sorry what does this have to do with the linked article?
The article does not mention a specific location for this "culture" war, and not being specific can lead to inexact ideas (is this restricted to the anglophone sphere?...). Similar to when I see studies like "doing X results in Y" only to read in the actual study that it was made on Australians (or something far away from me with different environment/society/etc.), which means it might not apply at all to my surroundings.
All Humans believe the bogus, doing otherwise is not possible.
I've yet to meet a Human for whom down the curve of their position is not ~idiocy, and up the curve is not ~pedantry (or something invalidating of a more absolute view on things).
As long as the only serious problem is those other people, I think we remain trapped in this local maxima.
I'm not exactly sure what you mean, but maybe when you see someone trying simplify you confuse it for idiocy and when you see someone trying to be specific you confuse it for 'pedantry'.
> the people who are already believing the bogus
This encompasses 100% of people so you would have been better of leaving it off as it downplays the severity of the situation we are in.
> and when you see someone trying to be specific you confuse it for 'pedantry'.
This is what ~smart people typically go for if one includes too much detail or accuracy in the context.
> the people who are already believing the bogus
This encompasses 100% of people so you would have been better of leaving it off as it downplays the severity of the situation we are in.
I didn't say that.
This is what ~smart people typically go for if one includes too much detail or accuracy in the context.
I lost track of what you are trying to say and why, sorry.
> I didn't say that.
That's why I'm complaining.
> I lost track of what you are trying to say and why, sorry.
Well I interpreted your comment as saying that I would accuse someone of pedantry, but it was me who accuses others of doing that (explicitly or implicitly), when someone points out technical errors in their reasoning that are beyond the culturally conditioned thresholds of acceptability.
Extreme detail and attention to correctness when discussing science or computers or software = Good.
Extreme detail and attention to correctness when discussing, say, geopolitics = Bad.
We are taught to think this way, pay attention when reading the newspaper or Internet forums, you can see it everywhere.
Haha they should follow the French music streaming model of taxing foreign stupidity in order to support domestic stupidity.
You joke, but we don’t have to support it. Most of it is already paid for by the Russians. I just think it’s silly how they can get away with recycling the content they created for the US and still be successful with it even though a lot of it makes absolutely no sense in a Danish context.
The genius of America is finding the lowest common denominator, and commercializing it. The world hates everything we produce -- our food, our movies, our culture -- but they end up consuming it in droves. They complain that it has no taste, and they're right. But they underestimate how much everyone wants stuff that is plentiful, vapid, and cheap.
It's no surprise that we similarly export our politics. Conspiracy theories are fast food. They come cheap, are accessible with no effort, and make you feel like you've gotten a lot. We didn't invent any of this but we've got a national genius for optimizing it.
> The world hates everything we produce -- our food, our movies, our culture -- but they end up consuming it in droves.
How can you honestly believe this with a straight face?
People consume American culture abroad because they enjoy it. It’s not like they are colonies.
They do indeed enjoy it. And yet they also decide it as being classless, flavorless, and otherwise gross.
The contrast between what they say they like, and what they actually seem to want, is striking.
> The world hates everything we produce -- our food, our movies, our culture -- but they end up consuming it in droves.
The US has for the most part produced the best movies since... The beginning of movies I'd assume.
I don't know about the best movies, but certainly the most popular ones. Worldwide box office is dominated by American films.
The “world” doesn’t consume US-produced media “in droves” anymore, there are still some locations where that probably still happens (like Denmark, probably, I’ve never been there so maybe I’m wrong), but at the same time there are also places where US media used to dominate but it doesn’t anymore. For example in Romania, where I live, the Spotify year-end charts for 2023 had the first US artist (not Taylor Swift, mind you) in about 15th or 16th place, and Spotify is a platform generally used by the more Westernized cohort, /trending on YT is absolutely dominated by Romanian-only songs and media.
I’d go even further and say that (some) Americans’ mistaken belief that their culture/media still dominates stuff at the global level, unencumbered, is a good explanation for many of the US’s geo-political missteps from the last 10-15 years or so. The age of Rocky/Rambo and Michael Jackson is long gone.
Glad to hear you've got a great music scene. Americans still dominate the box office:
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/2023/?area=RO&sort=rank&s...
Though it looks like there were a few extremely popular Romanian films in the top ten.
Thing is, nobody goes to the movies anymore, it’s like saying the Americans still dominate the bingo scene, technically true but inconsequential. It’s all TikTok and YT now for the younger people. And sports betting, had forgotten about that.
> The world hates everything we produce -- our food, our movies, our culture -- but they end up consuming it in droves. They complain that it has no taste, and they're right
I think it is even worse for people who live in US.
"American" food is different outside of US. For example there are norms in most countries for meat, so the "beef" burger has more meat. We have less limitations on allergens, so we can add peanuts for a taste. Also foreign Coca-Cola has proper sugar, not corn based fructose (Mexicoke). I can never eat in US, even chocolate tastes like vomit!
As for cinema, only good stuff is released outside of US. There is no oligopoly in cinema, you get way more diversity in movies. Some countries have censorship that removes some type of scenes. And garbage TV shows, are never released on foreign markets.
Those are all complaints about bottom-tier American food. A good cheeseburger from a local place is mindblowing. I had one with peanut butter on it last week; we still eat allergens but they have to be labeled. Mexican Coke is way better, true. You're talking about Hershey's chocolate bars which no one considers to be "the good stuff".
If you're looking at McDonald's and saying American food sucks, you're missing a whole hell of a lot.
Yup, like complaining about Budweiser and Lipton tea. The 70s/80s called and want their argument back.
Solid analogy. Yes, we know there are better options and we use them. Also yes, the cheap and “good enough” options will always be popular for good reason. That doesn’t mean they’re the only ones.
And therefore, we need censorship. Right?
Where we'll be told the "correct" way to think. I'd rather see it all and decide for myself. And end up watching PBS but never, never pledging in their interminable pledge drives. Somehow, they still manage to stay on the air.
By the way, in Hell they have PBS pledge drivers on the TV, 24x7, for all eternity. You can't mute the sound.
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> we still absolutely ridicule people who’d believe in most of the nonsense so that keeps it down
I think that's a major source of the problem here in the US. We have gotten away from outright calling stupid people stupid. The morons spouting the conspiracy theories, the emotionally charged stories, and the anti-intellectual nonsense do not deserve time or consideration. Yet we continue to be sensitive to their screeching about censorship and bias. Let them screech all they want. Their opinions don't matter.
We do have the advantage of being a very small country by comparison. Social Media made it worse because the village idiots suddenly had a place to form communities with other village idiots. None of us live far from each other though, you can drive from one end of our country to the other in around 5 hours. So it’s almost impossible to not be mixed up with all sorts of people. I think the “ghettos” we have that are the most isolated are actually the rich people. The rest of us are all mixed in together.
We don’t really have a “rural” area as such. In the way you will have in huge countries like America. We obviously the the same urbanisation everyone else has, and the issues which comes with it. Even if you live in the parts of the country which are “left behind” or however it’s described you’re still very likely to have neighbours who work in a large city that just wanted a “country side” home. Which is possible because 95% of our rural non island areas are typically less than an hour in car from one of our major cities.
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