Starving Artists; September 6 2023
I’ve been too busy to blog these past Mondays, which is why I think I’ll change Update Day to Wednesdays, going forth.
September’s going to be a wild one, for me. I’m attempting to get back into the things that make me feel better about both my body and mind – exercise in the mornings, Korean lessons around lunch, and one hour put aside every workday for reading a book. I’m starting a new novel (another horror, this one’s about an otherworldly creature stalking a man’s child). I’ve got doctor’s appointments scattered throughout, and lastly, I’m on-call for my top surgery!
Which, speaking of, I’ve managed to raise a good chunk of the money I need for it, but I still need your help! If you can chip in anything to my GoFundMe (or share it!) I’d be so appreciative! And I want to thank everyone who’s contributed so far, too!
I also don’t know who’s heard or who cares, but ‘X’ (formerly Twitter) is going to be officially opening its doors to AI mining and feeding everyone’s tweets into it, which is awful news for creatives. As of September 28th, you will be forced to either consent to having your tweets mined, or lose access. As such, I’m finally shutting my account down and deleting it by September’s end. I hope you’ll continue to follow me here, or – if you have access to Bluesky – you can start following me there too.
I’m getting more and more disheartened by the AI boom. It had so much potential to be something good. Automating jobs that are exceptionally repetitive or even dangerous should have been the way to go. Instead, they’re trying to replicate human creativity? For what? So that artists don’t have to be fairly compensated for their work?
The ‘starving artist’ archetype came about in the late 18th century, after capitalism had really gotten a foot in the door and started convincing people that no one is entitled to the basic necessities of life, like food and shelter. Before that, the value of entertainment was so prized. Think of classic musicians, or painters who managed to get their work recognized before they wound up passing away. Art was for the rich – which it shouldn’t have been, to be clear! Art enriches everyone, we all need it for our minds to keep flourishing and to open us up to new ideas, new innovations. But what I mean is, it was ‘for the rich’ because they paid their artists well.
As inventions like the printing press or photography were made, art became easier to access. And that’s what doomed artists from a financial standpoint; art wasn’t exclusive, anymore. When it became everybody’s, everyone started treating their artists worse and worse, because if it’s easier to produce art, then surely that lessens the value, right?
So now they think the next logical step is to cut humans out of the creative equation. Why can’t they realize that we’d be taking an enormous step back, as a society? That forcing people into mind-numbing jobs without a creative outlet will do the entire world more harm than good? Without imagination, without feeding the imagination, we stagnate. Apathy, ignorance, these are the fatal symptoms of a world without creativity.
And that’s what they’re after, of course. If people wake up enough to remember that we should be elevating each other, that we should care, then their monopolies will be examined. Their creaky structures built on the backs of underpaid labourers will collapse.
And we need it to collapse, but maybe – just maybe – if we create the proper cushion, the damage won’t be so catastrophic. If we reroute AI learning into figuring out sanitation work, proper engineering, and even flipping burgers and serving coffee, I think we could come out of this okay.
But it’s a big ‘if’. And personally, I don’t want to imagine what’ll happen to this world if we don’t course-correct sooner rather than later.