Gregory's ServerContent is corporate.
Don't be corporate.
The only way left to combat the algorithms is being aggressively human.
 89 comments
@Nezchan Sadly it was never an algorithm. It was a person. Sometimes, many persons. People with a bleak, oppressive outlook on art, literature, music, software, and hell, sometimes porn. I'm not content with blaming a concept, personally. I want names, and faces to place those names to.  @hyenatown @Nezchan to me it was part of a process. Many people fell for it: the idea that people should sell themselves as if they were a brand. I wrote about it here: https://minutestomidnight.co.uk/blog/de-brand/ So much validation here for stuff I've said previously. It makes my day! https://odonnellweb.com/pelican/personal-branding-is-bs.html https://odonnellweb.com/pelican/nobody-cares-about-your-content.html  @Nezchan I am a photographer because that is what I do. I am a visual entertainer. I capture the moment as it happens.  @Nezchan Or nonhuman. Not everyone's human and humanity isn't some superior thing.  @Virginicus @Nezchan I have a youtube channel about crochet that is 100% about giving off the feel of your favorite stitch and bitch. It's one of the things I have the most fun doing. This is what I'd love to see more of. People doing stuff that doesn't slavishly follow the algorithm's dictates (usually for "beginner tutorial" content when it comes to arts and crafts) and just noodle around and talk about whatever the hell they want. I've found a couple of channels like that, but they can be hard to find. @andytiedye @Nezchan please don't, because that messes with people with blindness or low vision using screen readers and they have no fault on the AI crap.  @Nezchan 1000%. The word content means fungible filler. It’s a dangerous dehumanising exonym calculated to commodify culture because commodities are the only thing these undead execs can comprehend. I appreciate artists may feel like impostors claiming they are artists but let me say there have been some truly awful artists that were still artists. The title is no guarantee of quality, just humanity, and you are entitled and allowed and required to use it. @Nezchan To help out, the following terms were not in the screenshot but should be at the tip of people's tongue:  @Nezchan Totally agree. "Content" is term coined from the perspective of the user. It is the amorphous stuff that fills the <content> place holder in the business model, the stuff that goes between the ads so that Google recommends the site. You create works. They might be used as content, but that is not what defines them. I think of it as less the perspective of the user and more of the people who profit from the traffic. Which itself is generally not the creator of the work. @Nezchan You are creating content if your intent/goal is to produce the lorem ipsum needed to sell adds or subscriptions. If you have a different goal (like producing art) follow the advise :-) @Nezchan I feel you'll appreciate this from @pluralistic "the real ai was the corporations that we fought along the way"  I agree with this one -- for a while I dismissed it, thinking that I was just being middle aged and language was changing, but there has been a real shift towards artists of various types just being servants of the algorhythm. And here's the thing: artists of all types have always had patrons, but da Vinci wasn't a Content Creator for the Medicis, he was Leonardo da Vinci. We need to take back the definition of what we do.  @Nezchan Art is the process of giving form to feeling, it is not a tool for generating capital. Art is useless in the utilitarian sense, but allows for a transcendence outside of the machine. When art becomes content it no long does this, instead art ceases to be and our experience of what it is to be human goes with it.  Don't make content, because you aren't. Make discontent. Make malcontent! Raise some hell with your art! @Nezchan I am a corporate marketer, and I am also a writer. The stuff I do for my day job is content. The stuff I write at night is art. (Although I'll probably also produce some content to market the art, to be honest.) @Nezchan I'm really happy to see how much resonance your post is getting. You put something into words that I've been feeling so long but never put into words myself. At least not out loud to anybody else. I felt weird and a little pedantic thinking it, but you just made me stick to it loud and clear. Well, my words are only expanding on what the person on Tumblr said. But it's a sentiment that's been running around in my head for quite a while now. @Nezchan @wrenegade I fucking hate the word content so much. It makes everything sound like grey slurry poured in to fill gaps. That's what the corporations and tech bros actually think it is, far as I can see. The "AI" art and writing generation programs are designed with that assumption at their heart, that "content" is just generic raw material to be processed. @Nezchan Saw this at the store and I wanted to buy it just to keep it away from some poor child. I would have ritually destroyed it of course. @Nezchan I've always found the trend disturbing and I'm shocked that people do it willingly... so weird.  @Nezchan im trying to snap out of it. I feel like its even easier for us that are not native english speakers to get stuck calling things "content" since thats what we see others doing. Idk. Just musing But anyhow im a gamedev code slinger and i like it @Nezchan It took me 20 years to finally accept that my job title is, in fact, 'artist'. @Nezchan I always disliked the phrase “content creator”. This explains it way better than I ever could.  @Nezchan AGREE. So THAT'S why that term has always made me want to puke. All makes sense now. @Nezchan We should be obtuse about it too. Call art an apple one week and call it a metal bar the next. Break any attempt to feed our data to an algorithm with tons of bad data. @Nezchan I’m a musician. I mostly play ukulele and bill myself as a “Ukulele Ace.” but that leaves out the songwriting (so I’m a writer too), the drumming and washboard playing (I’m also a percussionist) and... well, you get the idea. what drives me mad is that the “content creators” get a bazillion followers, with the accompanying massive remuneration, and I can’t make ends meet. hell, I can’t get ‘em to wave to each other. wish I could be a “sellout” but that’s not in the cards. @Nezchan Boosting, both for the post and the illuminating thread above. I didn't notice, until now, how naming art works "content" is demeaning to art works. @Nezchan There’s a certain soulless quality to the way the word “content” thrown around, isn’t there? Just stuff, production things. Bo Burnam illustrates it pretty well in this song - the ironic push for upbeat creative output, even when feeling down: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQvrap19Eng I suspect that's part of the point. It's certainly a handy way to think about the output of people's souls when you want to use them as input for an "AI" generated slurry. @Nezchan I love the sentiment, but it’s kind of ironic that you’ve shared this as a screenshot thus blocking any engagement with the original author. Makes it feel like… “content”. The author's name is *literally right there* and I state it and the site in the alt text. You can easily go interact with them. You're not being prevented from doing so. @Nezchan I’ll admit I did not look at the alt text. When I do I see it was Tumblr, I can understand why you might be reluctant to link to it… ;-) I find linking to Tumblr can be hit or miss sometimes. Sometimes you end up with a reply of a reply of a reply without meaning to.  @Nezchan thank you for this, we have to fight back at the corporate un-culture and it's attempt to turn anything beautiful into something to be monetized @Nezchan 2. I just imagined that content is a little bit like "container". You can put anything in it. The word hides what is inside. It is standardized. @Nezchan If "content" becomes the term for media generated by an AI, that's an improvement in the world. @Nezchan @slackadelic This was the toot I was trying (badly) to describe on stream yesterday!  @Nezchan Aggressively human. I like that turn of phrase. Also, I hate the term "consumer" it gives off the impression that we're just a category on the food chain. Content producers are grass eaten by consumers who feed the "apex predators" at the top, or the 1%. What a miserable way of interpreting human interaction.   Whenever I hear someone say they're making 'content' it gives me the ick as when I hear musicians saying they have 'product' coming. No. To hear an artist so thoroughly colonised by the brainrot of capitalism is terrifying. LEGIONS OF ZOMBIE CONTENT CREATORS! PLEASE HIT LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE! @Nezchan for me, content is an umbrella term for anything posted and in games. i don't really associate the word with corporations. honestly, looking at corporate websites nowadays i notice more a LACK of content than, well, content. they're all so empty. what i really miss is these text-overloaded old websites which are still findable on neocities. for me, that's content. i call my writing writing and my essays essays, but all my stuff TOGETHER is content.... sorry if that's evil  @Nezchan Ha. Yes. My brother-in-law is a "content" person and we secretly mock him for it. Sure it was cool he got to travel the world for that job, but it was in service of photographing far flung hotels for the company  @Nezchan I feel like "art" necessarily carries value, as in everyone can be a content creator but not everyone can be an artist |
@Nezchan I've been saying this shit for years and it's bringing me to tears that there's at least one person out there saying this too.