that users could prefer a generated simulation to actual old clips for nostalgia purposes clarifies how nostalgia is about consuming "decontextualization" in itself — nostalgia negates history under the auspices of longing for it
YouTube has a legit library of recordings from quotidian settings (which are interesting, mostly as historical markers) but instead of promoting that social media pushes soulless facsimiles solely meant to associate a feeling with a moment sans the immediate, substantive context
This is doing numbers on social media right now and it's so depressing how people truly yearn for this shit and want to preserve that feeling indefinitely like a mausoleum of false memories.
social platforms are the last place one should go to try to find out "what people are saying" (though they may give hints on what your data suggests companies think you should believe to make you most manipulatable)
any "social platform" seems likely to be overrun by generated text that enacts "new conspiracism"/parasocial participation in ideas that carry a libidinal charge
"new conspiracism" doesn't explain anything but is a means for isolated individuals to experience "social validation" on demand, in the absence of a verifiable public — a way to intensify the gratification of parasociality www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/pol...
it's perhaps self-evident that generative video makes the world more boring, but one could hope it would re-enchant those forms of visual experience that resist simulation
the idea that some videos are intrinsically interesting to watch (regardless of whether they have any reference to events or things in themselves, any kind of auratic appeal) feels like it can't survive generative models, which makes all forms of mere seeing trivial
but it seems like there is something too naked about it; how does ideology work when it has not even a flimsy alibi? How do people enjoy overt simulations? What makes Disneyland fun?
generated video allows consumers to inoculate themselves against events and representations that don't conform to their schema by instantly offering alternatives that soothe them and match their expectations: They can enjoy their own ideological interpellation as a movie, or an endless feed
to some extent, all media does this — pattern reality ideologically and make some kinds of events seem normal and others unrepresentable; make some explanations for why things happen seem obvious and others inconceivable
this from Yves Citton's Mythocracy is maybe useful for thinking about Sora 2 and other slop feeds: Generated video constitutes an "imaginary of power" that gives consumers pictures of how they've been trained to believe things are "supposed to be"
wonder if the ease and rapidity with which "AI" can generate right-wing fantasy images and propaganda makes them more convincing for their consumers — as though one shouldn't have to use their own imagination to manifest the bigotry they insist on www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/se...
agree, just think some find this kind of text reassuring—confirmation that they are right not to care about reading, writing, or any conventional sort of literacy
LLMs mean that no one has to write anything they don't care about, but they also mean that "writing anything" will get equated with "not caring" for most people. (If you really cared, you would video yourself talking about it on your phone.)
you can help generate so much slop that "the ear" would be deafened forever, and no one could ever call your own into question, and you can make all your necessary "discoveries" elsewhere, through some other means, in some realm of only right and wrong answers that makes "discovery" moribund anyway
if all writing can be made merely functional and perfunctory, then the aesthetic quality that seemed inherent to it (what it takes an "ear" to appreciate) could be eradicated; no more écriture, just code
if you don't experience "writing as discovery," LLMs allow you to experience the negation of that, and possibly even take joy in seeing others chagrined by the apparent invalidation of that cliche
many people are not interested in "writing to discover what they are thinking," or to refine their thinking, etc. because they are not interested in making such discoveries or taking on the burden and the narcissism of having them
not bad advice, but presumes that most people read and write to experience "charm, surprise, and strangeness" when the opposite may be the case www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/the...
What does it mean to "optimize" for this condition — to train users to enjoy it? Why is it most profitable for companies to train us in wanting to pay attention as a way of avoiding rather than seeking meaning? www.noemamag.com/the-last-day...
seems indicative of how stagnant the ideas behind "AI" are that Baudrillard could write a critique of them in 1995 (The Perfect Crime) and none of it seems dated
Why is AI so shit? Its shoddy outputs reflect the brittleness of an epistemology that relies fully on abstraction & reduction and actively eliminates relationality and adaptivity. As such, it doesn’t replace human activity but acts as its violent suppression.
