at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"
like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.
"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."
... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.
and i'd still keep writing.
i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.
i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley
"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"
and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.
it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.
you create because you're greedy.
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okay i still think about wembley all of the time, but like, they OBVIOUSLY had so many storylines set up that were hastily scrapped because of injury. hayter, saraya, pac, nigel vs bryan. they just keep fucking over their biggest events and culmination of storylines because they can't keep their roster safe, and they can't write long-running stories with pay-offs months away because with this track record they Know people will be injured by then. not to mention all of the workhorses that shoulder the belts for a week or two just to drop it to someone "important", needing to cover for everyone who's injured over and over. the way they'll give the belt to someone for a cheap pop not caring that it fucks up most ongoing storylines, and then resort to them dropping the belt immediately afterward. it's insane to me that they don't do more about it because at this point it's actively hurting business - why get invested in the set-up of a new story, why buy tickets to the biggest event of the year, when it'll fizzle out like the outcasts, the devil and literally everything else
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Will you be leaving Tumblr?
Most likely.
From the looks of it, our data has already been compiled and will be handed over tomorrow (I don't have details, the article is locked behind an account creation pop-up) so there's little that can be done for what's already been posted.
I have very little faith that asking those giants to take out our data is going to lead anywhere. There is no obligation in the contract for them to do so.
And even if I were to opt-out, (if that's even going to work at all, remember how well "opting-out" of Tumblr Live worked?) do I really want to keep giving my engagement to a website that feels free to do that kind of scummy shit behind the backs of their userbase? No warning, no talks, no transparency at all? This sits really wrong with me.
So, unfortunately, I most likely will leave Tumblr.
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