I'm coming to COLORADO! Catch me in DENVER on Jan 22 at The Tattered Cover, and in COLORADO SPRINGS from Jan 23–25 where I'm the Guest of Honor at COSine. Then I'll be in OTTAWA on Jan 28 at Perfect Books and in TORONTO with Tim Wu on Jan 30.
To be a billionaire is to be a solipsist – to secretly believe that (most) other people don't really exist – otherwise, how could you live with the knowledge that your farcical wealth and power springs from the agony you have inflicted on whole populations?
This is what it means for Elon Musk to dismiss the people who disagree with him as "NPCs"; in some important sense, he doesn't think other people exist. It's a very ketamine-coded way to move through the world:
Solipsism is a very difficult belief to maintain. No matter how sociopathic you are, there's always going to be a part of you that craves the approval, love and attention of others. That craving is a nagging reminder that other people do, in fact, exist. This creates the very weird insistence on the part of the ultra-rich that they are actually philanthropists. Thus, the very weird spectacle of corporate raiders – responsible for tens of thousands of job losses – describing themselves as "job creators," and funding whole economic subdisciplines dedicated to shoring up this absurd claim ("The search for a superior moral justification for selfishness" -JK Galbraith):
Trying to squeeze this claim through an ever-narrowing credibility aperture forces it into some extremely weird shapes. Take "Effective Altruism," the belief that you should make as much money as possible by working in the most exploitative and destructive fields you can find, in order to fund a program to improve the lives of 53 trillion hypothetical artificial people who will come into existence in 10,000 years:
Effective Altruism, "job creators" (and other claims to billionaireism as a force for good in the world) show just how much work it takes to maintain the belief that other people don't exist. The ruling classes are haunted by this knowledge, and as more and more wealth accumulates in the hands of fewer and fewer people, those eminently guillotineable plutes need to perform increasingly complex mental gymnastics to keep from confronting the reality of other people.
Corporate bosses have near-total control over the lives of their workers, who might number in the hundreds of thousands. But they also know, in their secret hearts, that they don't really control their businesses. If Amazon CEO Andy Jassy stops showing up for work, the company will continue to hum along, not missing a beat. But if all of Amazon's drivers or warehouse workers walk off the job, the company will grind to a halt. If they never come back, the company might never be able to restart, unable to recover the process knowledge that walks out the door with them:
Andy Jassy wants to think that he's in Amazon's driver's seat, but is haunted by the undeniable reality that Amazon is really in the hands of its lowest-paid, most abused workers. Andy Jassy isn't driving Amazon – he's stuck in the back seat, playing with a Fisher Price steering-wheel toy.
Enter AI.
AI can't do your job, but an AI salesman can convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can't do your job:
Your boss is an easy mark for these AI swindlers, because your boss dreams of a world without workers, because that's a world where bosses are driving the bus.
The Hollywood writers' strike was precipitated by studio bosses' fantasy of a world without writers – a world where studio bosses don't have to be satisfied with giving harebrained notes to writers who don't bother to disguise their contempt for their bosses' shitty ideas. In a world of AI scripts, the boss decides what kind of movie to make, and a chatbot shits out a script to order, without ever telling the boss that the idea stinks.
The fact that this is an unshootable turkey of a script is of secondary importance. The most important thing is the boss's all-consuming need to avoid ego-shattering conflicts with people who actually know how to do things, who gain power thanks to that knowledge, and who use that power to imply (or state outright) that you're a fucking dunce.
Same goes for the Hollywood actors' strike, and the continued project of cloning actors in software and puppeteering them via chatbot: it's the fantasy of a movie without actors, actors who tell you that the scenario you've spun is an incoherent mess, who insist that their expertise in an art you don't understand and can't perform yourself entitles them to challenge your ideas.
AI is solipsism, the fantasy of a world without people.
Bosses keep pushing the idea that AI can replace doctors and (especially) nurses. Health bosses – increasingly likely to be a giant private equity fund – want to cut care in order to direct more money to the hospital's shareholders. They want to stop paying exterminators and allow their hospitals to fill up with thousands of bats:
The problem is that nurses and doctors are professionals, and that means – by definition – that they follow a professional code of ethics that requires them to refuse their bosses' orders when those orders are bad for patients.
The same goes for shrinks of all kinds – psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and counselors. They are legally and professionally required to put patients' mental health ahead of commercial imperatives. That's a big problem for any boss who wants to swap out in-person counseling for dial-a-doc shrink-on-demand services delivered via videoconference that serve up a new therapist every time the patient dials in, chasing the lowest wages around the country or the globe. The mania for "AI therapists" isn't driven by efficiency or by our societal mental health crisis – it's driven by the fantasy of mental health counseling without counselors (who insist on minimum standards for patient care):
This means that capitalism is forever locked in a conflict with professionalism, since professionalism is a system that upholds a code of conduct before all other priorities, including the capital accumulation. Professional ethics are, quite simply, bad for business.
That's why bosses fantasize so furiously about pushing AI into professional situations – it's the fantasy of a profession without professionals. AI schoolteachers mean "education without educators," which means that there's no organized group of trained and trusted professionals telling you that chatbot slop, high-stakes testing, and standardized curriculum will fail students. This is true no matter how much money you stand to make by replacing the skilled craft process of teaching with automation.
Professions are infamously resistant to automation, unlike, say, manufacturing. This means that the cost of professional services steadily increases, relative to the cost of manufactured goods.
The labor, energy, materials and time it took to travel from New York to Vienna have plummeted since the 18th century – but the number of hours it takes a Viennese string quartet to perform Mozart's String Quartet No 1 is the same today as it was in 1773 – about half an hour.
The cost of producing a chalkboard has crashed over the past two centuries – but the number of hours it takes a math teacher to show a classroom full of ten year olds how to do long division has hardly budged.
The cost of producing a scalpel is lower today than at any time in history, but the duration of an appendectomy has only decreased a little over the past century.
Economists have a name for this: they call it "cost disease." The fact that automation makes professional services (proportionally) more expensive over time isn't an indictment of professionalism, it's a testament to the power of automation for manufacturing. Bosses (should) know this, but they constantly bemoan the cost of professional services, as though the numerator (teaching, healthcare, screenwriting) is going up, when it's actually a shrinking denominator (automated manufacturing processes) that's increasing the price.
The AI fantasy is a fantasy of dismantling the professions and replacing them with pliable chatbots who can be optimized for profits and thus cure cost disease for once and for all, and if that comes at the expense of the value that society derives from professional activities, that's a small price to pay for finally clearing the most stubborn barrier to capital accumulation.
Last year, Trump, Elon Musk and DOGE fired or forced out a critical mass of government scientists, even as they gutted funding to research programs at the country's universities. You'd think that this would be a barrier to making scientific breakthroughs in America, but not according to Trump. He's promised that America will produce annual "moonshot"-scale breakthroughs, without scientists, by asking a chatbot to shit out paradigm-shattering scientific leaps on demand:
The problem is that while AIs can shit out sentences that seem to qualify as scientific breakthroughs, they can't actually do science. Take Google's claim that its Deepmind product had advanced material science by 800 years, "discovering 2.2 million structures." It turns out that these "discoveries" are useless – in that they constitute trivial variations on known materials, and/or have no uses, and/or can only exist at absolute zero:
But the fact that a chatbot can't do science isn't important to Trump – or at least, not as important as all the other things a chatbot won't do. A chatbot won't tell Trump not to stare at an eclipse. A chatbot won't tell Trump not to inject bleach. A chatbot won't tell Trump that trans people exist. A chatbot won't tell Trump that the climate emergency is real. A chatbot will agree with Trump when he says that offshore wind kills whales and that Tylenol causes autism.
For Trump, the fantasy of science without scientists is more important than whether any science happens.
America needs science, but for Trump – a billionaire solipsist – America is a country populated by people who mostly don't really exist.
That's true of tech bosses, too. After all, they were the original suckers for Effective Altruism and the fantasy of a world without people. Remember when Mark Zuckerberg announced that the average person has three friends, but wants 15 friends, and that he would solve this with chatbots?
Sure, we all dunked on him for being such an unlikable fucking Martian that he doesn't understand what a "friend" is. But I don't think that's what's actually going on there: it's not that Zuck doesn't understand what friends are; it's that he treats your friendships as problems to be solved.
Your friends' behavior determines how much money Zuck can make. When your friends arrange their interactions with you in a way that increases how much time you spend on his platforms, Zuckerberg maximizes the number of ads he gets to show you and thus how much money he can make. The fact that your friends stubbornly refuse to help him maximize his capital accumulation is a problem, and the solution to that problem is chatbots, which can be instructed to relate to you in ways that are optimized for increasing Zuck's wealth.
For Zuck, chatbots are a fantasy of a social network without socializing.
It's not just users that tech bosses fantasize about replacing with AI, though – they really want to get rid of coders. Computer programmers aren't (formally) a profession, but they are quite powerful, and have a cultural norm of criticizing their bosses' stupid ideas:
Tech bosses are completely dependent on coders, who know how to do things they don't know how to do, and aren't shy about letting them know it. That's why tech bosses are so quick to equate "writing code" with "software engineering" (the latter being a discipline that requires consideration of upstream, downstream and adjacent processes while prioritizing legibility and maintainability by future generations of engineers). A chatbot can produce software routines that perform some well-scoped task, but one thing they can't do is maintain the wide, deep "context window" at the heart of software engineering – a linear increase in a chatbot's context window results in a geometric increase in the amount of computation the chatbot has to perform:
But the fact that chatbots will produce technical debt at scale is less important to tech bosses than the fact that a chatbot will do what you tell it without giving the boss any lip. For tech bosses, chatbots are the fantasy of a coding shop without any coders.
This is a bad joke, literally. When I worked in a shop, we used to sarcastically say, "Retail would be great if it wasn't for the fucking customers." We were unknowingly reprising Brecht, whose "Die Lösung" contains the immortal line, "Would it not be simpler if the government simply dissolved the people and elected another?"
Billionaires don't see the humor. For them, AI is a chance to wire the toy steering wheel directly into the firm's drive-train, and make movies without writers or actors, factories without workers, hospitals without nurses, schools without teachers, science without scientists, code shops without coders, social media without socializing, and yes, even retail without the fucking customers.
Billionaires love the idea of "Universal Basic Income." For them, this is the apotheosis of the AI fantasy of a world without people. In this fantasy, the boss's toy steering wheel is steering the firm. Business consists of a boss and a computer that turns the boss's ideas into products. Who will consume these products? You will, thanks to UBI – the government will continue to exist in this fantasy, but for the sole purpose of creating new money and dispersing it to you, so that you can turn it over to billionaires who singlehandedly direct all of society's functions.
Billionaires love UBI for the same reason they love charter schools. In the AI UBI fantasy, everyone who's not a billionaire has been replaced with a chatbot, and our only job is to receive government vouchers that we hand over to billionaire grifters who run the institutions that used to be under democratic control. We no longer vote with our ballots – only with our wallets, and in the wallet election, we only get the ballots that billionaires decide we deserve, and can only direct them between choices that are as meaningless as "Mac vs Windows" or "Coke vs Pepsi."
A world optimized for capital accumulation.
It's a world without people.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Hey, y’all remember in P1 when GLaDOS’ Morality Core fell off and then she laughed and said “good news” and her whole tone of voice just switched and it was super chilling and a little gay and it absolutely fucking reverberated down your spine?
Man, when I was like 16 I got so sick of being made fun of for being the fat kid that I took an axe down inna woods, chopped down a tree, and started doing log-lifts all the time. I got strong as fuck, but I didn’t lose no weight. I actually got bigger.
Same thing happened when I got into fighting. I got even stronger, and I got *fast*, man, and nimble, like a cat. Still chubby.
Body-building culture is a bunch of crap, my dude. Functional muscle is not necessarily toned or lean. You can be swole as hell and still be heavy. And that’s cool.
Embrace your inner barbarian. And when fatphobic little gym twinks try to body shame you, you should DESTROY THEM with your MIGHTY AXE
You know, I train with (martial arts) a bunch of dudes, and a few bodybuilders have showed up over the years.
And every damn one of those huge shredded motherfuckers has the endurance of a fucking newborn puppy. Fifteen minutes into warmups and they’re panting for air like like they’re about to die. I’ve sparred them and every one of them telegraphs their moves about two weeks in advance, and are slower than my dead grandpa because their huge useless muscles get in the damn way.
Now. I also work with a couple of guys who are not weightlifters. They do, however, do very physical jobs and are Big Dudes. Picture this sort of build.
No abs to speak of, a bit of a tummy, and those motherfuckers can pick up one of the weightlifters and throw them.
And they’re fast. Like, unfair fast.
Bodybuilding culture is bullshit. Embrace your status as a giant barbarian and if anyone gives you crap throw them off a mountain.
>First, we’ve discovered that about a quarter of all the internet connection in or out of the house were ad related. In a few hours, that’s about 10,000 out of 40,000 processed.
>We also discovered that every link on Twitter was blocked. This was solved by whitelisting the https://t.co domain.
>Once out browsing the Web, everything is loading pretty much instantly. It turns out most of that Page Loading malarkey we’ve been accustomed to is related to sites running auctions to sell Ad space to show you before the page loads. All gone now.
>We then found that the Samsung TV (which I really like) is very fond of yapping all about itself to Samsung HQ. All stopped now. No sign of any breakages in its function, so I’m happy enough with that.
>The primary source of distress came from the habitual Lemmings player in the house, who found they could no longer watch ads to build up their in-app gold. A workaround is being considered for this.
>The next ambition is to advance the Ad blocking so that it seamlessly removed YouTube Ads. This is the subject of ongoing research, and tinkering continues. All in all, a very successful experiment.
>Certainly this exceeds my equivalent childhood project of disassembling and assembling our rotary dial telephone. A project whose only utility was finding out how to make the phone ring when nobody was calling.
>Update: All4 on the telly appears not to have any ads any more. Goodbye Arnold Clarke!
>Lemmings problem now solved.
>Can confirm, after small tests, that RTÉ Player ads are now gone and the player on the phone is now just delivering swift, ad free streams at first click.
>Some queries along the lines of “Are you not stealing the internet?” Firstly, this is my network, so I may set it up as I please (or, you know, my son can do it and I can give him a stupid thumbs up in response). But there is a wider question, based on the ads=internet model.
>I’m afraid I passed the You Wouldn’t Download A Car point back when I first installed ad-blocking plug-ins on a browser. But consider my chatty TV. Individual consumer choice is not the method of addressing pervasive commercial surveillance.
>Should I feel morally obliged not to mute the TV when the ads come on? No, this is a standing tension- a clash of interests. But I think my interest in my family not being under intrusive or covert surveillance at home is superior to the ad company’s wish to profile them.
>Aside: 24 hours of Pi Hole stats suggests that Samsung TVs are very chatty. 14,170 chats a day.
>YouTube blocking seems difficult, as the ads usually come from the same domain as the videos. Haven’t tried it, but all of the content can also be delivered from a no-cookies version of the YouTube domain, which doesn’t have the ads. I have asked my son to poke at that idea.
Seriously, get and run PiHole if you can. It changes your internet experience so much for the better. I get shocked when I visit a website when I'm someone else's network, by just how many ads the internet is flooded with now. Take back control.
URGH. Emmerich Holyblade and I just went to The Ceremony to receive our RPG Job Titles, and he OBVIOUSLY got Chosen Hero Sword Saint. So now he's gonna set out to kill the Demon Lord of Darkness.
Me? I just got Dark Mage. Honestly, it's pretty rare, but the job opportunities are also limited. You either get into covert assassination or dungeon raiding.
God, just because we're the only two kids in The Village, Emmerich Holyblade automatically assumes this makes us friends. He doesn't even realize I hate him and his stupid smug swordsman ass.
URGGHHHH he just asked me to join his Grand Hero's Party. fuck. I can't just say no if the Grand Holy King himself is gonna payroll us to do this shit. Whatever man. Let's rock till the Demon Lord of Darkness is dead, and then I can retire and never see Emmerich Holyblade again.
Help me. I've been trying to quit the Grand Hero's Party but Emmerich keeps introducing me as his childhood friend to all the new fucking party members. I hate them all.
The tank Ferron Shieldson gives me bro fists hard enough to bruise. Sister Savantha Healier has tripped over her habit ten times in the past hour.
Elfdame Woodsworth the beautiful elf archer huntress keeps dragging deer carcasses to camp. I'm so tired of venison.
I've been trying to have the Grand Hero's Party kick me out, but instead of undervaluing my Super Secret Invisible Debuff Technique (which looks like I'm just standing there) Emmerich Holyblade figured out it stacks with his Five Phoenix Absolution to hit the damage cap.
Outside of combat, I've done a lot of very invisible low-tier work nobody really needs, such as managing all of our finances and inventory, yet they keep fucking including me and praising my efforts when they're having a drink at the tavern.
Emmerich Holyblade spilled some beer on my shadowy cloak when he slung an arm around my shoulder. His breath stinks.
I'm so tired of camping, honestly. Random Farmers and Shit keep inviting us to stay with them for the night, but their beds suck and I hate the food.
Our reputation really soared when we stopped one of the Four Demonic Kings of the East North South and West from destroying Capital City of the Holy Church Kingdom Nation.
Emmerich Holyblade insists my 70% Paralysis Debuff clutched the entire encounter despite dealing the Super Cool Omega Finisher, so everyone's asking me for autographs.
Shouldn't he know I hate social interaction if he claims to be my "childhood friend"?? LEAVE ME ALONE.
At least Princess Dowed Verily only has eyes for Emmerich Holyblade and his stupidly sculpted biceps. Weird he insists on ignoring her advances, though. Dude, you could be King. What the hell.
Emmerich Holyblade truly is the worst. Princess Dowed Verily tried to have me exiled before the whole court, saying I'm just a leech on the Grand Hero's Party besmirching my "childhood friend"'s good name and status, but Emmerich Holyblade fucking defended me!!!
He said I'm invaluable to this party both as part of our battle plans, our day-to-day tasks, and as his "dearest companion". GROSS!!!
Doesn't he realize this was the PERFECT chance for me to disappear to another country???
Why did I think this Demon Lord of Darkness-slaying shit was a good idea in the first place?? Surely Emmerich Holyblade's boundless enthusiasm to be a do-gooder can't be an infectious disease??
Another day, another trial. We journeyed to the Yggdrasil Holy Nature Origin Forest because it's said the Elves of the Yggrasil Holy Nature Origin Worldtree have the sacred sword Swordexcaliburn, the only weapon capable of permanently killing the Demon Lord of Darkness for good.
Except Elfsdame Woodsworth might be the Holy Nature Origin Princess, or something. I wasn't really paying attention to her dramatic backstory.
After we killed the Holy Nature Origin King (who was really one of the Four Demonic Kings of the East North South and West in disguise), Elfsdame Woodsworth the beautiful elf archer huntress just kinda gave us the sword.
It's sunset right now, and I climbed a tree to just overlook the forest in peace, ALONE, except Emmerich Holyblade "knew I'd do something like this", so now he's HERE. HE ALWAYS DOES THIS!!!!
Blergh. Now we're watching the sun set over the whole Holy Kingdom Church Nation. It's pretty, but that dumbass Emmerich Holyblade isn't even looking at it. Idiot.
By the way, we beat up the other two Four Demonic Kings of the East North South and West, because we don't really have the time to show all this onscreen, you know? Nobody really cares about them anyways.
We've reached the Demon Lord of Darkness's Dark Demonic Castle Keep now, and we're striking tomorrow.
It's my last chance to quit if I don't want to beef it tomorrow (I do not trust Ferron Shieldson to shield me), but Emmerich Holyblade said he can't do it without me. HE, singular?? So everybody else can do it without me??
And to make matters worse, he said he'd tell me something after we beat the Demon Lord of Darkness. Why the hell tell me you're gonna tell me something??? Just tell me in the first place so I can ditch.
And besides, as if anyone could actually kill the goddamn Chosen Hero Sword Saint. At the very least, he's gonna survive tomorrow. Doesn't he realize how stupidly contrived his powerset is?? Dude, as IF.
I told him that, and he ran off. I'm never going to understand him.
One more day, and I'm leaving forever. Grand Holy King better pay up good, or I'm covert assassinating his ass.
Inside the Dark Demon Castle Keep, we had to fight through so many waves of enemies, like Sister Savantha Healier's Evil Twin, who worships the Demon Lord of Darkness instead of the Goddess of Good Stuff.
But mainly I was just standing in the back. Debuffing is a crazy magic drain, so I did get super tired, but the most exciting thing I was involved with was when Sister Savantha Healier's Evil Twin threw her weapon at me in a last ditch attempt to take at least one of us down, but Emmerich Holyblade intercepted it. With his body.
Sister Savantha Healier just healed him after, though, so it's fine. I might've been mincemeat had that hit my squishy self. I'm a proud backliner, okay. But it was still pretty stupid and unnecessary, considering we have Phoenix Blessing Revival Potion Stones.
Demon Lord of Darkness up ahead... Just one more boss and we're doooooone.
Anyways, the Demon Lord of Darkness wasn't even that cool. The orchestra was great though. I gotta see if the piano player survived the Dark Demon Castle Keep's collapse.
Everybody weakened the Demon Lord of Darkness with their own strikes, so Emmerich Holyblade could finish him off properly with the holy sword Swordexcaliburn.
Before he did, he looked at me with these fucking... star-filled eyes and bright smile, which made everybody else also look at me, which made the Demon Lord of Darkness laugh, so I just nodded at Emmerich Holyblade to go kill the fucking Demon Lord of Darkness already.
God, that took so long. I'm taking a vacation. I'm disappearing into a forest without any elves in it and never talking to another person ever again.
At least now I get to know whatever Emmerich Holyblade wants to tell me. It better be good, because it's the last thing he'll ever tell me.
JUNE. JUNE WHEN I GET YOU!!!! aurgh i love these. thank you so much. how did you know i kept imagining emmerich as blonde. AND THE PIANO PLAYER IN THE BACK RHRGH
- superglue heats up when in contact with fiber, your craft can start smoking or even catch on fire
- you can wash clothing painted with acrylic paint in the washing machine if you turn it inside out and use the lowest temperature
- don't put painted clothes in the dryer.
- you can wash clothes with metal bits in the washing machine but use the handwashing setting, dry the metal bits with a paper towel before hanging them to dry, and know that it WILL be loud
- synthetic dye is needed to dye synthetic fibers and requires a long time simmering in a boiling pot. This WILL stink up the house and you NEVER want to make food in that pot again
- faux leather is vinyl not leather. Get vinyl paint to paint on it
- don't use your teeth as tools, they don't regenerate. Reconstructing enamel costs a small fortune (ask me how I know.)
- when handsewing a lot through thick fabric get thin needles, it will require less force and be less taxing on your wrists. When machine sewing get a higher grade needle (~130 for jean)
- embroidery floss is overpriced and not as strong as it looks. For sewing on heavy stuff get denim thread, it will last forever
- don't feed a 60$ home sewing machine ten layers of denim before you learn how much a servicing fee costs, these things are dellicate
- spray paint is best applied from 30-40cm away, in swift movements. Putting too much or applying from too close will cause drips. You can sand them down and apply a new layer of paint AFTER they dry. Wipe the can nozzle after painting if it's messy, you don't want it to clog and become unusable
- water based markers on fabric will bleed, if not instantly then with time, alcohol markers will fade with time
- most fabric glues are machine washable up to a certain temperature. modgepodge is not waterproof, hitack is handwash only. Check the instructions
- the flatter the surface the easier hot glue will peel off. Faux leather stands no chance, fibers like yarn will hold it best, but is impossible to remove the glue from them in the future
- rivets are a thing that exists, only require a hammer to install and can be used as permanent fabric attachment
- studs, gromets and other metal junk at small fabric stores are laughably overspriced
- acetone (found in nail polish remover) will remove acrylic stains out of furniture, flooring and faux leather, if used in excess can damage the laquer. Can also be used to remove prints and glue off of plastic (do a small test before commiting, might melt the plastic it it's grade is low)
- residue from stickers (and k-tape) can be removed with oil
- acrylic stains cannot be removed out of clothing or carpet so protect your area before painting and don't wear clothes you care about
- if your thread keeps getting tangled or snagging while handsewing try waxing it
- you can lock in screw-in spikes with screw lock glue if you're scared of them falling off because they unscrew
- you can add washers to screw-in spikes if you're scared of them falling through flimsy fabric or too big of a hole
- if you're making anything out of soda cans have a metal file on hand, they are deceptively sharp and will hurt you and rip through fabric you're installing them in
- bleach can be found in mold killing spray (don't touch that shit with bare hands. chemical burn.)
- fabric paints are no different from slightly dilluted acrylic. You can make it yourself by adding a bit of fabric softener to acrylic or honestly even water
- if you are setting anything with an iron use parchment paper or a pressing cloth to pervent your stuff from sticking to your iron and ruining it
- if you want a safety pin somewhere permanently pinch it shut with pliers
- as much as you can, avoid putting glue on clothing, it makes it really hard to change your decisions later on and upcycle the project in the future
Way back when Ready Player One (the book) came out, I was recommended it by a friend and I read it and I was so fucking pissed off at how bad it was that my immediate response was to rewrite it into something passable. I got 110k words in and got bored. I just found my rough draft of about a third of a Ready Player One rewrite.
#the world ended and this resulted in slums and everybody being homophobic and sexist in a precisely mid-'90s sort of way#in 2050
Yeah that always really ticked me off. "Art3mis was a rare female gunter" why are female gunters rare. "She Wasn't Like The Other Girls, her avatar was realistic and "rubenesque", not a perfect digital hourglass figure (and I'm so enlightened and special for finding that more attractive than those silly fake girls)." "Somehow it's majorly surprising that my online friend whose public face looks like a white guy is actually a black woman. Nobody on the internet would ever choose to represent themselves in a way that isn't their real body, this is so shocking, look at how cool the author is for knowing what racism is (this whole RV scene isn't a mashup of the two characters in the only scene from Snow Crash the author actually understood)." Why are your two Japanese characters shallow stereotypes with no personalities. Did you get halfway through the book and suddenly panic and remember countries that aren't the USA exist and have significant influence over US 80's media. Why is everyone in this world except Parzival and Aech a shallow stereotype designed to show off exactly how secretly cool and/or enlightened Parzival and his nerd trivia is or what a great guy he is for being attracted to nerdy women who aren't thin. Why is Wil Wheaton the President of the Internet.
#just finished reading whats there of the rewrite and HOLY FUCK its so much better#absolutly adore your version of art3mis#Also the chemistry between all of the characters is amazing!
I tried this weird niche writer trick called "giving the main characters actual personalities and motivations that allow them to act as challenges and foils to the main character instead of set dressing for a main character's monotonous one-note point of view". It's kind of esoteric so it's understandable that Ernest Cline somehow never heard of it.
#I love the world of ready player one#but holy hell the main character sucks ass#saving this for later
You've gotta read Snow Crash, Ready Player One is an attempt by someone to put a Vidya Game Competition into Snow Crash written by somebody who didn't understand Snow Crash. I guarantee whatever you like about the world of Ready Player One, Snow Crash did it better and put a cooler mystery in it. (Although their metaverse is somewhat smaller and not the focus of the entire world, so if that's the part you liked then I have nothing for you. It's also not full of random disconnected references to other media, so again, if that's the part you liked, I'm coming up empty.)
ernest cline wishes he could write something one millionth as cool as the first chapter of snow crash, which features a chase between a mafia pizza delivery driver and the teenage techno-punk skater who is being pulled behind him
But didn't you see Parzival's virtual car man. It had SO MANY references to 80s media on it. That makes him driving it around really cool right. That gives him depth and makes him interesting right.
The saddest thing is not when there is a boring story. The saddest thing is when there is an expansive lore setting with unique aesthetics but it’s tied to a behemoth of a corporate product so that they can never risk exploring it to its full potential.
No we can’t make any of the characters we want people to buy too morally ambiguous or kill them off. Better play it safe.
No we can’t try new art direction when there is potentially millions of dollars riding on each character’s popularity.
No the story has to revolve around how we release the next update and never have a finish line in sight.
Yeah you know that amazing tidbit of lore. Well it might not be marketable according to complaints on social media so after going in that direction for a bit we axed it so people won’t ever get to experience it.
titsay
baratheonpilled
vaporwave
theartofmadeline
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izzy806
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