Culture

But What Does It Mean?

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

Recently a friend found an AI generated fake trailer for a kind of 1950s-1960’s live Sailor Moon. This, it turned out wasn’t the only fake-retro live Sailor Moon trailer generated by AI. Somehow I feel the infamous failed Saban Sailor Moon has driven people to imagine such things differently (forgetting the rather well done live Sailor Moon from Japan).

Now I find these things amusing, but there was a strange emptiness about them. What, I wondered, was the point? I can imagine these things in my own head, and in fact have – once in the form of a late night discussion of Lucille Ball playing Sailor Moon (I was assuredly sober). Do I need someone to use tetchy AI to illustrate something?

As I contemplated the weird meaninglessness of these things, a friend who’s a talented cosplayer note that there was no point to such creations. What would have been truly amazing would not have been someone tossing prompts to an electricity-devouring toy, but to have rallied cosplayers and shot it live. Suddenly I got why so much of this AI art feels meaningless.

Let us imagine that some cosplayers had gathered to create a Sailor Moon trailer true to the spirit of the 50’s or 60s. They would have done research and studied costume design. They would have sewn, crafted, created, re-created, and perfected their work. Those doing the filming would have figured the angles of the time and how to get the color just right. Voiceovers would have been chosen to fit the period, perhaps finding veteran actors or new talent.

The creation of a few minutes of trailer would have involved people making, learning, researching, bonding. They would have made friendships that lasted a lifetime, spoken at cons, and taken their skills elsewhere. Someone may have used such a creation as a senior thesis, others in a portfolio. One small bit of fun would have impacted many people, echoing through their lives.

Or you can throw things into an AI. Sure there’s some talent in tweaking the prompts, calling the best shots, and so on. The editing of such things definitely requires skill. But so much of it is disconnected or not as connected as it should be. I won’t deny that a person with AI uses talent and inspiration to create a larger creation, but it lacks that big, meaningful picture of an effort without AI.

An artistic creation is a lot more than the time you watch it on screen.

What AI turns out is results with little human connection, history, inspiration, or meaning. It makes “product” in the most empty use of the term – something designed to appeal to someone’s interests, something to sell, a result not a thing with history and meaning. We’ve taken an interesting tool and now people pitch it as a substitute for being human.

This is another reason I’m skeptical on AI creations beyond some more personal and specific uses. Where’s the human connection? The team that learned from making a show? The author you love and get angry at in equal measure? The voice actors to fan over? The choices only a person could make – even if they’re the bad choices of an actual human? Where’s what comes next, with lessons learned and ideas built on?

It’s not there. Just a machine turning out stuff in the rough shape of what we asked. It doesn’t mean anything.

Steven Savage

Nothing Means Anything Anymore

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

There’s a peculiar dissatisfaction in First World modern life. A racing, seeking need is prowling around, so many of us are trying to get something. Whatever we churn out in technologies and media doesn’t quite seem to be enough. Whatever new social media or communities or movies that pop up, people still seem disconnected.

I get that strange, unsettled, need – and that feeling things just “aren’t like they should be.” Even when you remove toxic nostalgia and the human condition, something seems wrong. Lately, contemplating everything from music to politics, a phrase bubbled up in my mind – “Nothing Means Anything Anymore.”

So much doesn’t seem to exist for itself or because it’s just good as it is or even it’s cool or fun. I think that’s part of the dissatisfaction.

The latest new social media product is just a mixture of contrarianism, MLM, and fad so someone makes money. The latest big media sensation is part of a series being milked for money and flattened to the most marketable format. Every book cover looks alike and sells the same stories that went before it – even for indie authors.

How much of our culture is just marketing anymore? Nothing exists for itself, everything is how to get more money into a bank account, so much is “number go up.” How many times have you reviewed a film or a book for friends and caught yourself sounding like a professional reviewer or marketer? We’re so used to nothing being what it its, but being some kind of product rollout or initiative or whatever we start to sound like that.

Or maybe there’s the meaninglessness in politics and the seeking of political power. Carefully-tested bullshit is spewed making claims everyone knows are lies, but people don’t want to admit it so their side “wins.” Pundits spit out catchphrases and newspaper people are just asking questions since they don’t want to do real work. Even the conspiracy theories are recycled and the conspiracy theorists seem to be trying not to meet each other’s gaze as they know they’re full of crap.

Such multi-level meaninglessness even infects supposedly sane politics. Political discussions among friends and enemies sound like any argument held by pundits as we’re all trying to be pundits instead of themselves. Local politics can be amplified by some online influence-seeker who posts about your local town and next thing you know your city council is getting screamed at by people in other states or even countries. Number goes up, votes go up, clicks goes up, but it’s all worse somehow.

We’ve somehow managed to build a complex, high-tech First World where we know a lot of it is bullshit.

Yet when I do things like read punk mags (hey, I’m not as dull as I seem) or go to local zine fests I see meaning. There’s some meaning in these handcrafted, not-market-tested, weird, personal things. There’s satisfaction to be had out there, from weird streaming services to someone’s photocopied jokes on cactuses (really, I have it). Meaning is there to have.

I’m not proposing a solution or a diagnosis of cause right now. I’m just recognizing this right now. I do suspect some of it is that we’ve built very complex, profit-driven societies and created a lot of technologies and media we’re promoting that we may not need or want. At some point everything became so abstract nothing means anything.

But now I can ask myself what does it mean when I look at a book, a movie, etc. I can ask why I do something and what really matters to me. I can also act less like a marketer . . . at least when I’m not marketing.

Steven Savage

The Unaccountability Machine: Political Madness By The Numbers

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

I just read “The Unaccountability Machine” by Dan Davies. If you know me and when I get obsessed, be aware I’m about to become insufferable for awhile.

The core of the book is that our institutions have seemed to go mad, and the author finds explanations in the oft-ignored realm of business cybernetics. This isn’t science fiction, it’s cybernetics in the feedbacks/system sense, and how it relates to organizations. A core element is that members and parts of organizations become unaccountable in ways that lead to bad and mad decisions.

The financial crash of 2008. Any number of organizational meltdown. And of course, politics.

One of his points – and believe me, I’ll be dissecting this book on and off for a time – is that when your goal is a single measurement, an organization will go insane. When “line go up” is your only goal, problems occur – if not for you, everyone in your path. People are held unaccountabile for bad choices when “line go up.”

You may be thinking about any number of corporations and stock prices. But also I thought about American politics in light of (checks his calendar) about seventy percent of my life. Now I have my own quite pronounced political beliefs, but I’m going to set them aside to discuss a number.

The amount of votes.

Votes are the goal of democratic politics. It elects people. It gets people power and benefits and determines policy. Everything is about getting someone, often anyone, into office. Politics is a team thing, so as long as one of “Your Team” is in office, you can reach your goals.

This means politics in modern times isn’t just the old repression/gotv routines and campaigning and winning people. It means calculations and triangulations, test-marketing, lawsuits, etc. Anything to Just Get Enough Votes.

Anything for Line Goes Up, sometimes just a bit. Even if it makes you do some crazy things.

I remarked once about a certain political activist organization that it was a “winning machine” – and that wasn’t a compliment. Said organization later got itself entangled almost suicidally in various legal troubles and scandals. I wasn’t sure that they didn’t get the mission, but that they got it too well.

Their goal was Line Goes Up, vote-wise, and they’d do anything.

But also let’s say that you’ve made certain decisions to get votes that, perhaps like this organization, aren’t legal or ethical. Then you want to win no matter what to cover your backside or to soothe your conscience or whatever. Line goes up becomes an imperative, and you’ll deal with the bad things later or maybe you just ignore them or hand-wave them away.

Or maybe your opponent(s) are bad people – or you’re told they are. You want to win to protect yourself! Also anyway telling people those folks are threats makes the voting Line Go Up. Keep telling, keep talking, keep escalating, what’ll go wrong.

Kinda seems like politics, if you’re not careful, doesn’t become about helpful results. It takes a lot of effort to make it meaningful not “what three things can I say to get 0.5% more votes?” It’s so much easier to find what buttons to push – and hey, you’re a good person, right? What could go wrong.

Lots of things. Like many of my columns I want to mention the Latest Thing, but each week is a new Latest Thing. All in the name of Line Go Up.

So as we look at the 2024 election where my prediction is that I don’t know what the hell is going on anymore (look at France and the UK in 2024), I wonder if we’re in the political equivalent of a financial meltdown like 2008. My own (obviously correct) political views aside, it seems like Line Go Up is so important, any and all fallout is ignored, and the most batshit things are tried – and sometimes work.

But the batshittery, the triangulation, all of that might be hitting a breaking point. I’m certainly seeing that as I write this in July 2024.

As for a solution, well we’d have to step back from Line Go Up and ask what we want as society, as people. We’d have to make the Line a tool, one of many. But in this current state, I’m not holding my breath.

Well managed to do that without leaning into my own beliefs. Perhaps those will come later, maybe in the rebuilding.

Steven Savage