there's this weird thing people fall into online a lot, where people assume that if the [perceived-to-be-inferior] version of [activity] is discouraged then people will, naturally, do [perceived-to-be-superior] version of [activity] instead. When really it's just as (or more) likely that if [perceived-to-be-inferior] version of [activity] is discouraged people just won't do it at all.
audiobook listeners are not necessarily people who would otherwise do a lot of traditional reading if audiobooks did not exist, many are people who simply would experience zero books. Booktok romance readers would not necessarily be reading the classics if booktok did not exist, many of them would simply not read. Fanfiction writers would not necessarily be novelists if fanfic wasn't an option, many would just be people who didn't write. You know?
you make one fucking post where the point is “women are encouraged to develop disordered eating from a very young age and that impacts how we view the ‘natural’ size and shape of women” and too many reblogs later i am being accused of saying short people wouldn’t exist if they ate better growing up. i’m sorry but if you genuinely think i was saying that you are just a buffoon. i cannot and will not sanction your buffoonery.
You wanna log in? What's your username? No. What's your email address? What's your password? What code did we just send to your email address? Now what code did we just text to you? New IP address detected. We sent you an email. Click the link to confirm the new address. Scan your fingerprint. Turn on your camera for age verification. Sign the updated user agreement. Accept all cookies? That feature isn't available on the website. Download the app. Those features are in the app. The app that's really a web browser.
newbie fic authors, shooting themselves in the foot: This fic is bad haha I suck at writing lol I am being mean to myself in the hopes that you will be nice to me but actually am dissuading anyone from even clicking on my fic because all I have done to advertise it is tell you why you shouldn't read it
me: I am King Big Dick of Fanfic Mountain and I have arrived in your fandom with the Express Intention of writing my Very Favorite Fics, which I will generously allow you to read. You're welcome.
Finally completed the cyberpunk mod that I gave up on twice. all i needed was the knowledge wisdom and courage to pester the guy who made one of the big modding framework mods into adding a feature i needed #StartPestering
i legitimately think Christmas music should be regulated. actually i think all radio music should be regulated for the saje of employees everywhere and I'm not joking
there should be designated stations that play the top 10 over and over, for people driving short distances, and designated stations that cannot play the same song more than twice in a 24 hour period, for people working in retail and fast food. and it should be a punishable labor violation for any manager to play a top 10 station for more than an hour in the workplace.
don't remember if i posted this but you know how ai bros think there's an accessibility problem in music that ai can solve. and people are all like no pick up a guitar and bash through it. well there is an accessibility problem in music. and it's the inability to do anything less than bash through a whole song.
It's the fact that "making music" is only fully respected when it's fully original and fully realized. our cultural fetishization of idea ownership - copyright, both legal and social - prevents us from understanding derivative works as worthwhile, and our perception of music as a skill (as opposed to a behavior) creates in us also the perception of a skill floor, and prevents us from understanding works below it as worthwhile.
in short, it's the belief that to make music means to make something good out of nothing. that is the goal, and that is what AI allows* - a straight dome to page transfer of new ideas - and what's more, to the average beginner, that is the way things are. a beginner in our society sees sublime creation and doesn't understand the sheer lack of originality on display, like how a beginner artist might think their favorite artist doesn't use references. and why don't they? because any musician who admits "i got most of this chord progression from this song" is liable to get sued.
good music is not created from nothing.** it's created as part of a conversation, the grand group chat we've had as music-making humans since we grew out of the ground. but the knowledge that all of it is inspired by all the rest is a ladder that's been pulled up by record executives*** in pursuit of sole ownership and profits - and after all, under capitalism, any idea that's genuinely yours is worthless to you unless it has your name on it - and now we as a society have little room to process anything that makes itself clearly a response. remixes go out under the original artist's name, vaporwave is cheating, you know the drill.
that's where the inaccessibility is. and that's the solution, too, to ditch those perceptions of worthiness and originality and sublime creation, and instead just to steal someone else's work and make it your own. i promise you it's worth the time.
my favorite analogy for the whole thing comes from John Oswald. he said that all of our culture, our art, our music, is paraded in front of us every day - that some may join the parade, most of us may not - but that we all at least can take our own little snapshots. John Oswald was the creator of a genre called plunderphonics.
this post definitely got away from me and took forever on mobile but those are essentially my thoughts. footnotes below the cut
*I'm not interested in whether AI music is inherently bad or whatever. that's not what I'm discussing and you're not gonna convince me about it because i don't care. i already don't use the stuff. don't bring it up.
**outsider music exists but is the exception.
***if i may get conspiratorial for a moment, i might hypothesize that the average listener's belief in originality might be deliberately stoked to fuel their resulting belief that they couldn't truly do the same thing that their heroes do, thus keeping them buying. i don't genuinely believe any record exec is evil enough to have thought of this, but i sure doubt they would change their ways to avoid it.
bonus footnote: AI bros are all capitalists anyway and won't respect anything that doesn't put dollar signs in their eyes. i realize this post will not convince them.
