His toot has been living rent-free in my head ever since.
I had ranted a few times before how "content" is a corporate-y way to devalue art. How "user-generated content" is a term designed to make it easier to deny the significance (not just monetary) of the amazing stuff people create online.
Contrasting this with "AI art" is jarring, and spot-on. 👀
"It's art only if it was auto-generated by a stochastic black box controlled by a multi billion dollar corporation; otherwise it's just sparkling content." 🧐
@rysiek It’s essentially the core premise of neoliberalism: that all value that is real is convertible into, and canonically expressed in, hard currencies.
@rysiek@ward I stumbled onto a good video essay on the term "content" a couple months back, it was what made me rename the "Curated content" section to "Curated art" on my new site:
@xarvos no, I should not. This is "contents", as in "table of contents". Not "content" as in "amorphous blob of commercially exploitable creative output".
@rysiek@ward To add upon everything you've already said, it also baffles me when someone describes their own work as "content". It always reminds me of this programming concept: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covariance_and_contravariance_(computer_science)>. It only makes sense to call it a generic name like "content" when we're a platform with various types of it (think: Youtube). Reviews, guides, you name it. But when we're the ones creating it, surely we know what it is! Is it a review? Good, we're a reviewer then, not a "content creator"!
@rysiek@ward Technically "user-generated content" is stuff submitted by people who don't own the site, ie users.
But I accept that the term is moving on from there :(
@leadegroot why is it user generatedcontent and not user madeart, though?
A lot of stuff that gets called "user-generated content" is truly art. And it was not "generated", it was created, often with a lot of love and attention.
@rysiek@leadegroot it's all from the Bill Gates take on what would rule the Internet: content is king. Which is true when it comes to ad revenue... Just cranking out junk will make you more AdSense revenue, but it won't guarantee it's value. But all the money people focused on the content grind. YouTube changed the creators dashboard from "videos," to, "content." Netflix executives call their shows, "content." This wasn't exactly a calculated thing. It's basically just how they see art. They can not make art, but the can monetize content.
But suddenly there's ai... And now the think they are making something so they just ignorantly call it, "ai art." I think it's all part of their twisted psyche. They are patronizing to real artists because they see them as content cannons who create stuff for them to monetize... They do not see value in the art though... But if they generate stuff from a prompt, they think it's magical and valuable art because they "created" it.
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