It just kinda hit me that what's in my head and what's in my heart are different when it comes to my personal judgement of my own art.
In my head, I've been asking, "Am I a good artist?"
But in my heart I think I've actually been asking, "Am I good enough for other artists to approach me? Or at least good enough to not seem like I'm beneath other artists who I want to talk to?"
And it really sucks because I want to be someone other artists of varying skills can approach. It's still a confidence thing. I want to feel confident enough that I can talk to other artists who I see as better than me and maybe even do trades with them. But I don't want others to feel like I will look down on them for being early in their art journey.
I said this without thinking much about it the other day, but my friend asked me to elaborate on what that means from someone who isn't very spiritual. Now I can't get this phrase out of my head.
Creating art is one of many phenomena that I think makes us uniquely human. People create all the time. We create stories about people who don't exist, doodles in the margins of our notes, little houses in the dirt - all of it not for a particular survival reason but instead a natural drive to bring thoughts and emotions to reality.
We created the gods who made us. They made us in their image as creators of the world and the heavens. To stop creating would be to defy the gods we created in our own hearts.
This isn't to say artists are somehow more divine. This is to say that everyone is an artist, and we all have the divine within us. We don't just have the power and will to create, but the need to. It is the proof that we are human.
Our creations are extensions of ourselves in the same way our relationships to other human beings are. We as a species can never give that up. We will never give that up.
We have the power to alter reality with what we create. Our words, our art, our collective, defines our perceived reality. If we stop believing we can make, we will stop being able to make, and we will lose what makes us human.
I've seen it everywhere: people feeling like they're not good enough for art and giving up, deferring it to something else to create for them. I feel like anytime that happens, that flame of divinity burns lower, dimmer. I don't think people understand that even that face they drew with one eye slightly higher than the other, hair made of simple squiggles, and piggish nose with flared nostrils... it's still art. It is art because they are a human and they decided to make it instead of letting it fester and die in their mind.
I really hope this isn't pretentious rambling. I really hope people know that they can create. I really want people to create. Even if it's just some stick figures on paper, or a song they made up that they hum every now and then, or a headcanon about a popular character, I want people to create. It is your duty to create in a time when "content" can be automated.
Do not lose that touch of divinity. You are a god.
We as a species have been making dice for literally millennia. Ancient bones have been found with numbers on them, used for very basic dice games in ancient Egypt as early as 3000 BCE. It is such a simple concept: a regular polyhedron with unique numbers on each face, numbered from 1 to the highest number of faces on the shape.
But this. This defies all logic. These are no dice. These are geometrical figures with random numbers stamped haphazardly on them with no thought or reason. It sickens me to my soul that anyone could dare design and produce these and call them "dice."
This lack of contextual understanding is usually unique to machine-generated images. But what you're looking at was not some mere image. No. These were designed and manufactured by a company in a lazy attempt to appeal to the tabletop audience. Someone had so little understanding of what DICE are, that they produced these, and I'm not sure which I should be more disturbed by.
To Combat Misinformation Online, the Media Should Lie More... with Some Conditions
Okay, stay with me here. I know this sounds counter-intuitive, but I think I have something here. This is all based on personal anecdotes, so until there's an actual study out, do not take this as word. Read more under the cut:
So, a few years back, I worked for a college that implemented an anti-phishing training module to our email system. It worked pretty simply. A fake email would be sent out that looked legitimate, save for a few flaws. Just a few little flaws, like a link to our HR system, but with an "a" changed to an "o" somewhere in the link. Or, a few words misspelled in the email. Maybe something with a little more urgency than usual. Subtle things. I always thought myself to be pretty safe on the internet, I knew I wasn't as dumb as my parents before me to fall for these types of scams.
That is, until one day, I clicked one.
There was a little box to input your email and password. Looked identical to the HR login I normally saw. But when I clicked "Login", it took me to a page showing me all the flaws in the email I just fell for. If this were real, I could have lost so much more. But, instead, I learned. I tripped and fell, but I had my kneepads on. I felt embarrassed to fall for it, but, you know what? I hadn't fallen for an email like it since.
In fact, I've been even a little overly-cautious. On a few occasions, I've had to reach out to someone on HR personally to ask them if the email was from them. A few times the answer was "yes", but there were some occasional no's. It was better to ask than to feel gullible again.
I learned. And I learned fast. In some ways, April Fools day is a great example of this sensation. See one weird thing on the internet in the Spring, and you'll be checking your calendar. The Onion is another good example, with plenty of people "biting the onion" as the subreddit goes. We need more of this. We need more people getting things wrong and learning how to avoid it in the future.
So, here's my proposal:
News sites start slipping in a fake article here and there. When you click to read more or go to share a link with other people, the article will tell you at the end that it was made up in big bold letters. It will show you what was suspicious about the article and what to look out for next time. The embed for the link will tell everyone you shared it with that you fell for fake news.
Soon, people will be forced to be more skeptical of information on the web. People will be more willing to fact-check before posting something in fear of learning that the news media just made it up. Shame is a great learning tool, and we should be using it more.
Sites like Ground News boast that they stop the spread of misinformation by presenting both sides of an article, but I don't think this solves the issue. It just makes people reliant on another source to give them the facts. It doesn't train people to think critically and spot lies when things are "too good to be true".
Can this idea be weaponized? Absolutely. It isn't the perfect plan by any means. However, I think it can at least help to improve media literacy in this modern age of AI hallucinations and malicious misinformation.
And if that means making every day April Fools Day, I'm all for it.
I'm so tired of the misuse of generative algorithms.
I'm so tired, boss. It's pervaded every corner of my life. I can't escape it. Every single thing I try to enjoy, the theft machine has to be there to ruin it.
People using it to do the research for them (and incorrectly, most of the time), people using it to expedite the creative process, people using it as a substitute for the human experience because they fear a human may tell it "no" or ask to respect boundaries...
What the hell are we doing, outsourcing the lived experience? Why do people hate learning? Sure, it's messy. Sure it results in mistakes. But what happened to curiosity and the drive to learn?
I used to be interested in scifi concepts like "the singularity" or intelligent artificial beings. But now I've learned that it's never been about bettering the human race. The humanity part of that is being shoved in a metal box and bolted shut.
The robot uprising won't come from them looking like us. It will come from making us look like them. Resisting is all I can do now.
Let me tell you, if my head wasn't screwed on, I'd unscrew it myself and put it somewhere safe where I know I wouldn't lose and then forget where I put it.
