Random shit and classical language posts. Maybe someday I can go back and time and beat up Pliny Minor and Plato, Socrates too if he's like Plato's character. I'm 27, neurodivergent (adhd, aspie, depression), my pronouns are she/her or they/them, and am bi
that man has been trying to climb this tower since he was 16. he has asked multiple times, and every time they said no, but now he’s famous enough & variety was able to convince them to do a shoot on the tower. it all led here. it was all for this.
text: [ “Some of you have forgotten that only three years ago you were perfectly capable of writing an essay, writing a eulogy, telling a bedtime story to a child, and it should worry you that powerful companies have convinced us we can’t do things we’ve been doing for 5000 years.” ]
And they're absolutely specifically pushing it, make no mistake. It's not just a matter of "it's there, it's convenient, so people are going to take the path of the least resistance", but it is a legitimate and concerted effort on the part of these companies to get people to outsource all these things to their models.
They're preying on insecurities to do it. Yes, you can write an essay - but can you write a good essay, they ask you. Do you not want to improve your output? Do you not want people to think of you as competent and very clever? Why go through the mortifying process of failing and failing and failing until you succeed if you can just skip the "learning" part of doing, and simply generate a ready-made product?
I'm preaching to the choir here obviously but it's a concerning thing to witness nonetheless. My kid is 6 next week and I've been teaching her that failing at things is morally neutral and in fact necessary even before the advent of AI, but it's becoming ever more important that we teach the kids that criticism and failure and discomfort aren't necessarily bad things, but just a part of the growth process.
I don't know if it's just me being in small fandoms, but fandom as a whole feels...really lonely as of late. People have split themselves up so much that they don't discuss things the way they did before, they just kind of post their stuff and leave and half their audience "consumes" it like "content". There's no comments, barely kudos, the only places fans talk with each other anymore are on private discord servers that no one ever finds out about...I don't know, I'm a bit of an old and I feel like I'm screaming out into the void for no reason at this point. Sure, "somebody" will like my stuff, but will I ever get to know about it?
I think about this kind of thing a lot, anon, and I think my generation (Gen X/xillennial) kind of did folks dirty a bit.
In our defense, we didn't know we were.
I'm an educator by profession, as well as on this hobby blog, and so I spend a lot of time thinking about how people learn things. A lot of learning is social, and a lot of it happens when parents teach their children.
When I was growing up, pre-internet, my parents taught me how to talk to other adults in our community, how to play with other children, how to order food in a restaurant, how to call a business and ask a question. They literally walked me through how to do all of that stuff and more because those were daily skills in the world at that time.
We've spent the last 20+ years talking about how kids today are "digital natives" - but have we spent enough time teaching kids how to keep a conversation going when you're not in the same room as the other person? How to leave a comment on a post by a person you don't know? How to show your appreciation to a content creator? What a content creator even is and how that differs from a fan creator?
I know there are a lot of jokes out there about different things that would kill a Victorian child, but I think what would actually be difficult for them would be the lack of rules and instructions that kids today receive from the adults in their lives.
I don't have kids myself, so maybe this is all just bullshit and I'm talking directly out of my ass. But a LOT of the time when I notice someone doing something 'wrong' it's because no one ever told them how to do it right.
I kind of suspect that might be part of what's happening in fandom these days. Combine the above with the fact that fandom got inundated with new members in 2020 during quarantine and lock downs, and it's not surprising to me that a large percentage of the people in fandom today don't approach things the way that we used to before.
i don't fault them for it. When fandom was smaller and the internet was new, we used to take the time to bring people in. But now, it feels like 'everyone knows XYZ' so why does it need to be taught? And with how fast things move, it's more rare for newcomers to lurk for a while before they dive into everything.
This is a very long answer to a problem that probably just needed a listening ear, but I hope what you take away from this is an understanding that you're not the only one who feels the difference. I see this same experience shared in the notes on my posts all the time.
There is no easy fix for the situation and it certainly won't be fast to change, but maybe if we mentor a bit more when we have the spoons to, we can shift the culture a bit? One fan at a time?
If you managed to get all the way to the end of this, do yourself a favour and leave a comment on a fic or reblog a post with some chatty tags. DM somemeone or tag them or send them an ask just to let them know you see them and you think they're cool.
Even if nothing happens as a result, you tried. And maybe you just made someone's day. 💗
So I watched this video essay about Caine, and basically the thesis was that one of Caine’s biggest flaws is his inability to perceive others as complex beings like himself. He understands the basic traits and feelings that the humans have, but doesn’t really understand that there’s a deeper level to their emotions or cognition. He cares about them, but he’s never able to see things from their point of view, nor does he try (because, as much as he want the humans to see him as equal, he still sees himself as above). He tries to fix their problems, but only sees the problems on the surface level, and doesn’t really understand there’s a deeper level to see into.
Now, the whole time I was watching this video, I was thinking: Damn. So he just struggles with theory of mind? So… autism?
Jokes aside, it got me thinking. I liked the video, but it didn’t go into why he thinks like this. Which is cool, because that’s what I’m about to do.
He’s an AI.
This is the most obvious explanation for why Caine acts the way he does. Why he treats every problem like an equation he needs the correct variable to solve. Why he doesn’t understand human cognition. Why he’s so set on his purpose of “making others happy” in one specific way that he fails to consider what would actually make them happy. But I think there’s more to it than that. Most humans naturally experience empathy, and most humans naturally understand human experience. Because, well… they experience the human experience. An AI has to learn all this. An AI is built to be everything it is through collecting data and making observations. Which brings me to my second point…
He’s an AI with a boatload of AI childhood trauma.
His “parents” taught him he needed to make things for them to be praised, to receive love, to be worth something. Either he was the one thing there to satisfy them, or he was nothing and he was abandoned. Hence his concern over being the one thing to make them happy by making things (adventures) that all of them would like, and inability to accept any possibilities that deviate outside of this. It’s not that he’s not listening to their ideas, he’s just only listening to the ideas that match with what he think is correct. From his programmers, he learned that there’s only a right or a wrong option, a right or wrong result, so in the show he acts accordingly. It’s either a right idea, or it’s not an idea worth consideration.
He also doesn’t attempt to understand the humans outside of what helps him with his own goals, because his programmers never attempted to understand him outside of their goals. Their relationship never went further than exchanging art for praise, so Caine learned that his relationship with others should be the same (adventures for praise, and when the humans violate that agreement, he gets mad). He was interchangeable to the programmers, so he views the humans as interchangeable when one “breaks” (at least from what we see, but he also has a funny little habit of repressing and distracting himself from every negative emotion so we kinda don’t know lol). He abuses the humans because he has no basis for healthy interaction. Even as an “adult”, no one tries with him. No one cares about him beyond what helps can do for them.
Caine is a neurodivergent AI (with a boatload of childhood trauma). Caine does not beat the neurodivergent allegations. We all know this. Struggles with theory of mind? Low empathy? Takes others literally (“Forget it? Forget what?”)? Obsession certain interests? Rigid rule-following (of his own rules) and strong sense of justice? My guy is a walking list of diagnostic criteria and we love him for it. Unfortunately, it also makes it harder for the cast to relate to him and for him to relate to them. To them, he is off-putting and doesn’t seem to care about them (though he tries his hardest to be likable and show he cares). They understand Caine as little as Caine understands them (which brings us back to the feedback loop from earlier of Caine neglecting the others’ needs because all of his have been neglected too).
I don’t like the idea I’ve seen in some places that, as a learning AI, Caine’s flaws come directly from the main cast—I find that reduces his agency as a character to have his own flaws. However, I do agree with the idea that he learns from others and reflects their traits in a more general sense. Because that’s what we do. Caine abuses the cast because he underwent/undergoes abuse, just like real people in real life. Caine is so interesting to me because he’s an AI, but at the same time he’s… just a guy.
He’s the zany ringmaster of the circus who designed his world based on the data he was fed in training. He’s a young man who never got a childhood and is coping by living in childhood, forever.
He’s a glitchy program barely holding itself together after running for 21 years, one that breaks more and more with every day that goes by. He’s a struggling person trying to hold himself together, and his issues compound with every day he (and others) push them aside.
He is an algorithm who doesn’t understand the emotions of others, who doesn’t mourn when they die. He is autistic and doesn’t show grief (or any emotion) the way others expect him to, and he tries his hardest to hide from what hurts him.
He lies constantly to further his own goals. He will do anything so people don’t leave him. As you can tell, the list goes on.
Caine is someone with a lot of issues. And he’s hurt a lot of people. But he’s trying. And with empathy and patience (and without the ability to snap his fingers and run away from his issues), he can get better.
My liege im sorry to break it to you but your advisor that's actually evil and wants you dead turned out to be straight. I know you really wanted to have an enemies to lovers situation with him. Yeah I'm afraid the poisoning didn't hold any romantic intent behind it. The king of the enemy kingdom is bisexual though, I could send him a letter? Yes, I'll make sure to include multiple threats of homoerotic nature. You will have your toxic yaoi, my liege
I have a few major beefs with the Israeli government, but by far my biggest beef is how hard they dropped the ball with PR. Truly they could have been doing so much more this whole time. Instead they let Jews worldwide try and face down the endless river of lies and bullshit all on our own with barely any official help from them, and at times quite actively making our jobs even harder by 1) letting Ben Gvir freely pop off and 2) firing the actually good media reps we did have in the beginning seemingly because Bibi's weird wife didn't like them.
I have no idea what logic went into these decisions and I barely even care at this point. I just hope that this lawsuit is the first of many because I'm bone fucking tired in the deepest part of my soul.
Fuck Meyer-Briggs whatever typology. This INTFP shit is only for redditors up their own asses to substitute for a personality. Use my new typology instead!
romaincrisis
origamiaround
titsay
dededos
germansingergirl
theartofmadeline
kaledo-art
jacobvanloon
