And all this is why this is the best instance on Lemmy!

This is awesome! thank you!

I’m going to fedex to print these out biz card size and hand out at my city’s gathering. But I doubt if even 10 people show up here. People around my parts don’t do shit. lol

Way better! Thank you!

I’d like to laugh, but when I was really new I probably would have asked the same question. I remember back in the day, it was fucking hard for me to even figure out how to work with torrents.

Wait till you get to be super old like me. The shit my brain makes up aren’t even plausible memories!

Yea, I actualy am not bright enough to have a solution. I just see that Lemmy is just becoming more and more toxic because of how people are using their votes to control narratives lately.

It seems Lemmy overcomplicates this by letting people see votes, though like I said, I haven’t gone about finding out how.

Yeah. There’s a very active Lemmy poster who actually screenshots people’s history of how many downvotes their comments have. He posts it to make his point. Bad form and he only does it to try to shame people and says variations of “See? We can’t take this person seriously, look how many downvotes he has on his record. Obviously people disagree with him! So you should too!”

That right there is how downvoting is getting weaponized. He’s done it to me. Several times. And the posts are still up. The fact that that guy, and several others, will look up how many of your comments have been downvoted, screenshot it, post it, and tell everyone how much you are unliked, is pure bullying. And he takes so much glee in it.

Another reason that I think voting should be done away with. If “views” wanna be tallied it up but we can’t vote up or down, so we know how active something is, that’s fine. But too many people weaponize downvoting/upvoting here.

Yeah, opponents of AI do, it’s making that worse for everyone.

But that’s any tech advancement. Friend, I was a professional artist for a living for 35 years. I’m not gonna cry about someones writing and art gig disappearing. They are no more special than anyone who has to work at a job they aren’t passionate about.

You AREN’T going to change anything. Brah, the vast majority of the population doesn’t even care.

Do you think that Jeremiah Boondock, working at a gas station in Missouri, while doing tile jobs on the weekends, trying to make sure he can pay rent, cares if his box of macaroni and cheese has AI picture on the cover!?

Do you think he gives a fuck that you suspect some pokemon art wasn’t drawn by hand?

Not only doesn’t he care, he’s not even aware of it.

Working a job you love?! The fuck? Most people have no idea what that is even like. It’s not an option for the majority of the world. Never has been.

I’m not saying any of that is good. But crying about ai art is the most blatant variation I’ve seen of the saying, “first world problems.”

Oh my God! LemmyFurryCyberpunkEatMyAssForPopcorn can’t draw some anime for a living like he has wanted to since he was 10 years old!! What. The. Fuck.

Yeah, ok, sucks. But you boycotting on Lemmy isn’t even going to make an echo of an impression. You can push your downvote button as hard as you can, stop buying the DnD guides that you suspect used AI for the Elf in the background.

No one will care. Nothing is going to happen. In fact, you’ll stop the boycotting because there is AI so good you don’t even know it’s ai. You can only tell ai when it’s bad. Good ai isn’t noticed. Brah, your video game ad already used AI and you didn’t know.

Friend, things are gonna get way worse, before they get better. So what I’m doing is just preparing for it. You cry, I’ll prepare and adapt.

But yeah, you be sure to hit that downvote arrow as hard as you can whenever you see something AI on Lemmy. That’ll show 'em! Right?!

Obviously many of us have it better in the US than most of the world, that doesn’t mean we can’t complain if it’s actively getting worse and harder to live.

Of course not. Yes, homelessness, rent, etc, those are real issues! And likely to get worse. For sure. And worth working on solutions.

Being mad because SkateboardCyberpunkFurry999 can’t pursue art as a passion and draw naked anime all day because ai slop is posted on dbzer0, seems like an inane thing to cry about. And I am seeing a lot of crying about it. lmao

I don’t know what that means.

see a comment you disagree with. You downvote it.

That’s much different than see a comment you disagree with, then go to every single post and comment the person has made and downvote it. Then create a fucking bot to downvote it. Which has happened and been documented plenty of times on Lemmy.

I’ve been banned from communities I never even heard of, much less visited. Seem like places i don’t wanna be anyway then.

It’s why I dislike the entire voting system. Too many people abuse it and try to generate narratives.

On the other hand, I’m not THAT passionate about it. It’s fucking Lemmy. No one has even heard of Lemmy, few people are here, and internet points don’t mean anything in the real world. People take all of this way too seriously. They can change the voting system or not, I’m not that invested in it either way. We’re already starting to stagment, and I think we are actually going to start getting smaller or start growing way slower.

It’s too much for normies to figure out when it comes to joining. So only the nerdiest of nerds and many with compulsive/society issues join here. So it gets overly political and and overly passionate about the smallest things.

Sometimes the rollout can have avoidable harmful impacts though

I would say most times it’s harmful in the beginning. But it happens and continue to happens. My rant is mostly about Lemmy’s who are saying, “Ohhhh woe!!! Think of the artists!!! Oh Nooooooooo! My last Pokemon card looked like it has some AI on it! REEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!”

I’m saying we should think of the millions of people who barely survive every fucking day because of inequality and classism. Not just some fucking artist who can’t illustrate their fav DnD wizards for a living!

the fact that it is becoming less and less viable of a career path is depressing. Far less people will pursue art even as a hobby in a society that requires working and won’t pay for art.

But that is true about anything. Wood working, farming, furniture making, clothes making, soap making, journalists. Even before AI,people stopped paying well for journalism. And yes, some midwest people DID love their job. I know, because I grew up there in the 80’s when it all happened. I watched ENTIRE TOWNS die because of job loss. That’s way worse and more impactful that some dude not being able to draw comics like he dreamed of.

I’m not saying loss of jobs should be celebrated, I’m saying it’s no different that what has happened before. And I was also around in the 90’s and 00’s when mass layoff happened and white-color people shrugged and smugly said, “Learn to code.” To fucking farmers.

Now those same people are crying about “coding” jobs on the horizon of being eliminated.

The vast majority of people work jobs they don’t love and they aren’t passionate about. Artists are not more special than anyone else. People who are truly passionate and want to create, will keep creating. Just less will be able to do it as a sole source of income. But MOST people have never gotten to do their passion as a sole source of income.

Especially worldwide. Peopl are fucking spoiled. “Oh the UA is so hard now.” “So scary.” “Art jobs are going away!”

Ya’ll need to fucking go live in the real world and see how good we have it compared to everyone else. There are people that work their fingers to the bone, every day all day, just to survive. And do it all their lives.

And you people are crying about art jobs going away. Give me a fucking break!

Again, I’m not celebrating it. But that’s not where your “sad” should be aimed. Your “sad” should be aimed at the class warfare that happens everwhere.

This isn’t the first career to get steamrolled by new tech. That’s just how society works: new tools replace old jobs.

Did you feel this bad when factory workers in the Midwest lost jobs to robots and outsourcing? What about when textile machines wiped out jobs in Alabama? Or when electric streetlights put out-of-work the guys who used to light lamps by hand?

Did anyone mourn the bank tellers who lost their jobs to ATMs?

My point is, artists aren’t more special than the folks who came before. Tech changes things. It always has.

I was a professional artist for 35 years, I did design, illustration, layouts for marketing companies. Now AI can do all of that faster and better. A company would be crazy to pay me what I used to make. And you know what? I’m fine with that. I embraced it. I love new tech.

People who still want to paint/illustrate by hand can. People who still wanna buy their stuff can. Probably not full time job doing it anymore. Just like anything else. They are not special. MOST people work at jobs they don’t like to pay the bills, then do their passion on the side.

If ya have a family to feed, you don’t cry about not getting a job to illustrate the latest Flash comic book or your favorite DnD dungeon guide. You go get a job and put food on the table. And draw on the weekends.

Welcome to life. And we still have it way easier than the generations before us did. I know. Because I’m old. As bad as you think things are now, it’s better than when I was coming up.

Until we get UBI, we gotta deal with what we have. But the idiot capitalist duopoly here in the US that Lemmy worships, is very much against UBI, so that’s gonna take a while.

Meh, I love AI, so…

But I’ve also spent the last few years watching dozens of friends and former coworkers lose their careers and their livelihoods en masse for no reason other than naked greed.

But that’s not going to change. At all. No amount of boycotting or yelling about it on Lemmy is going to change it. Guess what, before artists, factory workers got taken over by new tech. Textile workers got taken over by new tech. Candle lighters got taken over by new tech. Horse and buggy makers got taken over by new tech.

Artists aren’t any more special than any other industry. I was a professional artist for 35 years. Worked in marketing depts almost my entire career.

Adapt or die. But being upset about it doesn’t change the tide. I jumped right in and I love AI art. Even tho it took over my industry. :)

What do people on Lemmy think their outrage is gonna do? It’s already here. It’s already in the vid games you all play. It’s already in the DnD manuals you all read.

The Luddites here amaze me. If you feel so “sad” for those people, well then be sure to buy some of their original artwork. Nothing is making them stop. They just will have to do something else for a living. MOST people don’t love what they do for a living. Artists are some precious group that needs to be protected. They can still do their craft.

Fair, but this happens in EVERY profession. Happened with people who sewed clothes, weavers, photographers (once a camera was on every single phone), now coders, etc. Also very few artists made money anyway. People who like to do art for personal and fun reason, still can.

Source: I used to be a professional artist/graphic artist for a living. I was able to do it for 35 years before I retired last year. It was always a grind, and very few could make it. Even though I was good enough for it to be my only paycheck for most of my career, I still love AI artwork. :)

World changes. People crying about it and “boycotting” lemmy communities because they don’t like it won’t change anything at all. Not even a little bit.

AI isn’t going anywhere, regardless of how mad people on Lemmy are about it. Not only that, but a lot of nerdy stuff they do now like vid games, DnD, etc, already incorporate AI and will continue to do so. I still have contacts in the industry, I know what the marketing departments are doing. Lemmy won’t even know what is AI and what isn’t.

There are still people here who say “Oh just look at the hands!” Friends, there are lots of ai models that have figured that out.

Marketing teams aren’t using ai that looks ai. Most food photos you see are ai. Most graphics you are seeing on vid game covers and ads are ai. Funiture ads are ai. You are already being duped because you think you “know AI” when you see it. Actually, no you don’t. You know BAD ai when you see it. Good ai is something that you don’t even realize is ai. And it’s already everywhere. lmao

I think of that every single time someone goes off on me on Lemmy. Which is every day! Lemmy def seems to attract people with certain kind of personality trait that means they get obsessed and upset over the tinest things and can’t understand context.

Yep, I agree with you.

I like it. That’s the thing about art. Some people like it. Some people don’t. You don’t get to define what is or isn’t art for me. I get to define it for me. That’s what’s so awesome about it.

Also, get used to it. AI isn’t ever ever going away. This is just the beginning. So pace your hate.