stop asking me if i'm AI 😖

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• 🎙️ Why does culture feel so stuck? Well, I explained in a new podcast from The Mix. It’s a good one, which also came with a few incredible comics of me talking about recycling culture and the lack of brands with backbone.

• 👥 I made two cute appearances this week, both on the subject of inspirations and advice, including —

  • I joined AJ LACOUETTE'‘s Ask / Answered to give advice on fostering a curatorial instinct and practice. Read that here!

  • I joined Kel Rakowski’s Popular to give advice on making discoveries in your creative work. Read that here!

• 🫟 A quick stop in Culture Slop that you might have missed: I did a chat in Barcelona on the subject of slop that was ~trilingual~ and very cute. Listen in here!

• 🦿HIP REPLACEMENT🦿 this week features João Rodolfo of SIGNALS, who might be our *first* guest from the southern hemisphere (and definitely the first calling in from South America). He joins Ben Dietz and I to dive into Meta glasses, our desires to quit posting, Olivia Rodrigo’s man in finance, and creating content in multiple languages. Catch the convo on Substack, YouTube, and Spotify!

Huge week for Europe and climate change, as expressed by fires in southwest France and western Spain. It’s hard not to feel doomer about this but…I am trying to keep my eyes on the bright side! One of them being: something has shifted on the subject given the seriousness with which normal people are talking about it now.

The “Europe is being invaded” thing via the mass “immigration” troll in Ceuta, Spain — which is in continental Africa, by the way — is a massive grift designed as a gift to the global right, as we see in the last three items. Note that this territory (Like Melilla!) is considered occupied territory. This is also spiking (Potentially true?) theories that this was orchestrated by perhaps Israel and or the US to have such a migration push en masse. It’s very feasible if we zoom out: 60K people don’t “just immigrate” without some sort of push to do it, particularly given most immigration in the Mediterranean is marked by tragic life-on-the-line boat journeys. This is not that.

These two dictators — and perhaps the real current president of the United States. Perhaps they chatted through Ceuta? (Related and unrelated: this is a great troll.)

AHHHHH!!!!!!!! Maybe this goes the way of Haley Stevens, who is bankrupting AIPAC.

Very tired of this and ready for it all to be done. Despite the gestures in the first story, the others seem to continue outing their (lack of) values and the incoming pop of the space. Mind you: none of these stories are about how companies like Anthropic are destroying rare books and that Claude chats have been exposed via Google search and how OpenAI slides slandered all of Africa. Cooked! That last story is essentially tech/Wall Street gossip — and a window into collapse.

A brilliant development in the Palantir/NHS story: the evil tech has not markedly helped hospitals manage patients and patient discharges, especially when compared to hospitals that did not adopt the tech.

I could give a shit about sports, but this is another example of Trump cronyism run wild as FIFA tries to sell its commercial rights. The response? All of Europe pulling out. Fuck around, find out! This better end this bullshit too.

Three things from the past week or so—

• The latest Big Bang Theory spinoff is called Stuart Fails to Save the Universe. It recently premiered and is getting dog shit reviews. But, to the internet, it already is infamous: SitcomCrave and DiscussingFilm previewed the show’s title sequence which was met with wide condemnation. With a “Don’t skip this!” premise set to a wannabe Weezer theme (by Danny Elfman), it’s a self-narrating meta tour of been-there, done-that concepts like Attack of the 50 Foot Woman and Independence Day. It emphasizes again and again that you should watch not the show but the title sequence while offering insights into the budget and creative thinking behind it, all silly pleas from an HBO/CBS mash-up that wants you to take it seriously by ragebaiting you into a corner. It’s “quirk chungus reddit white guy ideas,” as one person says, that will go “triple platinum on YouTube Shorts.” Then there were other comments: “they’re just blatantly using it,” “really concerning,” “the most soulless shit,” “the audacity,” “legitimately diabolical,” “proudly steals.” What are they talking about? How the whole thing is definitely AI, an irony given it’s from a cash cow franchise that could afford Danny Elfman but not an intro that names its actors. “WHERE WAS THE JOKE?” someone yelled at the source material a decade ago. “HE JUST FUCKING NAMED A BUNCH OF SHIT. HOW IS THIS COMEDY? WHY ARE YOU LAUGHING?” Some things don’t change.

• Teasers appeared mid-week for Tyla’s new music video. Called “THAT GIRL,” it was a direct lift of the 1992 movie Cool World. A Tony the Tiger character parades around as a Tyla doppelganger is inspected by the real Tyla, all rendered in a sleek animation style that feels too smooth, requiring a forced aging to look “vintage.” The effect feels akin to taking potato chips out of a plastic bag and putting them in a wooden bowl. Two words summed up the feeling of the video: “is that.” The question — without punctuation and without further comment — opened the door to the flood: “you’re better than this”; “credit the artists QUICKLY”; “I hate this look for you”; “slop.” Tyla’s diehards popped up to save face, dropping green screen behind the scenes shots to dispel the rumors and hate. By the time the video dropped, the dish ran away with the spoon as there were no credits for who made the video. On Instagram, the artist offered background of how the production — but didn’t tag those involved, save for her hair and makeup personnel. Reddit did the digging, confirming the suspicions: it was made by biuro (Olivia Drozdz and Mila Rowyszyn), a “hot girl” AI creative studio. “AI is just a tool, an amplifier and remixer,” they explained in an interview. “For most of our projects we merge AI with many other tools and techniques, always controlling it so that it serves biuro.” And yet: we knew that. Tyla’s six fingers were the tell.

• The new Avengers movie looks like all the other Avengers movies, which I would have guessed was what people who like those movies wanted. But there’s a different texture being expressed, a same-sameness that isn’t about the story but about the “look” of it, the vibe. “I get the sense that audience’s eyes have adjusted to this specific method of filmmaking,” writer Jason Pargin explained. “The ‘Everyone Is Clearly In A Green Room’ method, where this genre is supposed to be all about spectacle…This no longer counts as spectacle.” “Green screen slop” another popular video called it, comparing the effect with the practical charms of Dune. “cash grab slop era” is how another popular video described it. “Avengers slop” another went. Is this movie made with AI? Does it matter, if the resulting feeling is the same?

These three represent an urgent warning for creatives. These three — in television, in music, in movies — reveal less that AI “has been used” or that such a usage is bad but that all artists have been forced into a new age of reception, particularly those in visual media. This is an age of robot witch hunting that is increasingly the norm for anything released: AI tests of Substacks, anyone? Hank Green’s AI statement finger pointing, anyone? The “Rubberz” AI scam, anyone? This comes from the tension between creations and audiences demanding transparency, calling for references and resources and answers about the process. Behind the scenes details are a solution but, as is the case of Tyla, there is growing skepticism around the genre as faked, unreal, or distracting behind the scenes content flood truth — literally, to the point of broken Instagram records. Now, anything referential or repetitive falls into this slop troth, signalling at best creative laziness and, at worst, that you are a recycling center without any original thoughts who is cannibalizing the toolkits of other creatives wholesale. You care not for your audience or the creative process: you care about profiting. You’re not a creative but a business person. You’re not to be taken seriously within the context of art: you are something to be bought and sold. Whether you’re a hot girl or total nerd, whether you are making a sitcom or a thinkpiece, the texture to the problem is the same: newness the bar, process a requirement.

This is all of our creative crisis thanks to the dirty fingers of AI molesting everything it can, which I raise less to bash on the tech (I fucking hate it, by the way.) but to note how far we’ve moved from the simple pointing out that you write “like ChatGPT” and into a space where all creative output by anyone is under the shadow of this tech as the thumb of beholders squeeze them to see if they bleed blood of passion or passé pixels. It increasingly doesn’t matter if something isn’t AI anymore because, like the spiritually Israeli, you can be deemed spiritually slop in an instance and reduced to nothing: the bar is very high now, a great plus for discernment that has an even sharper minus as few will clear the blade.

The successes and stances of Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve and Guillermo Del Toro represent what walking on the right side of the line looks like — and is a lesson for all creatives in this era of finger pointing: now is not a time for laziness. Anything that feels referential, anything that feels as if it “has been done,” isn’t going to land like it used to. One cannot float by anymore on being mid, at least not if you want to create something memorable or different or that holds anyone’s attention (which, ironically, the projects of the aforementioned directors are all making adaptations versus net-new concepts). There are likely to be parallel economies and mindsets that don’t mind AI in art and those who staunchly oppose it but, as we wander closer toward mass AI unrest, know that a distinction or separation between the two parties will occur, creating economies of the pro-creative and those who don’t care or are clueless. One camp will be pro-book, the other don’t mind fruit Love Island, the difference one that mirrors the wider truth of any manufactured product: Do you care to know where your goods are coming from? Do you want to know who made this thing? Are you content for anything to come into your home, your bed, and your body without a supply chain paper trail? Judging from how many people still use Amazon (and Temu), sloth and poverty may answer the questions. But know this debate will eventually become a debate about one’s personhood and humanity, if it hasn’t already. “I’m not a robot” was once a box that was checked and now it will become a daily test we ask each other online, as if facing Replicants.

This is the current — and next — creative obsession for us all, to prove our work in the face of the machine while pushing for the novel, knowing the new will win out in ways that have always been true but easily ignored. A reference is a trap, an aesthetic a con, a repetition an invitation to interrogate: how can you and I and all of us make something within circumstances where everything feels spiritually slop, where it’s easier to feel like an NPC than yourself? Would it be easier if we cared less, content to steal, exploit, and take advantage of each other? I don’t think so. Until the great bubble bursts, welcome to a time where anything created enters a war for the soul of creation, where the contract between viewer and viewed is always under scrutiny. Credibility will be harder and harder to come by and easier and easier to lose. How will you rise above the status of the spiritually slop?

I really don’t give a shit about people’s affairs! Literally and figuratively: if you’re not hurting me — have at. Plus? “Cheating on someone” isn’t desirable but also is very not-that-bad in the grand scheme of “evils” and I’m tired of Christian puritanical judgement on the subject!! This is getting more press than literal genocides all because our tabloid culture has rotted our brains. (Which was a Q2 Report™ subject!!!) As I said last summer: all cops are bad, especially the one in your head.

This story about a run club is very much a peak at “digital nomad” and modern “expat” culture: a bunch of shitheads who think they can buy the world. Really gross stuff! And a reminder that — even if you are white — you are an immigrant if you “relocate” to another country. Dumbass infant colonialists.

Wanna deep dive into some rich drama? Le Monde dropped a six-part series on billionaire Bernard Arnault, which I got a bit more than halfway through as it’s very interesting and very juicy, tracing his contradictory politics, his hate of fat people, his lack of friends, and general icky rich shit.

One of the queens of all queens, who finally gets an extended interview treatment. She, Sami Landry, and Bailey J. Mills — along with Lushious Massacr — really are the post-modern political future of the art form. Talk about the opposite of spiritually slop!

…and this story isn’t wrong. As I pointed out of Barack Obama’s recent favorite reads, there seems to be a drought in good books for the second year running. Millennial writers are partly to blame!

Will I listen to “Choosing Texas” at some point? I hope not, but the thing about this song being “song of the summer” and the reaction to its success very much reveals how many “worlds” and cultures there are and how the disconnection of these cultures may continue us to spiral toward dissolution.

Faster memory decline from artificial sweeteners. Let me quit my mild gum addiction.

This is exactly why I want my dead body put into the ground, versus embalmed or cremated. These cells within me are gonna give back to the world, baby!!

I do not know Lydia Millet personally, but I’ve met her before and remember being completely awed. Such are the perks of grad school, as Lydia stopped by my program in 2018, as a part of a visiting writers series. This was around when her short story collection Fight No More dropped and immediately before her incredible A Children’s Bible came out, a book so urgent and exciting that I’ve read it twice (and — given our current climate circumstances — I urge you to read it now). Her works poke at the curiosities of modern life, trying to untie the knot that is us and the moment we’re in. More recent works like Dinosaurs and Atavists feel very direct on this, but even rewinding back to her earlier books — George Bush, Dark Prince of Love, How the Dead Dream — that sensation has always been there.

She’s always stuck out to me as the type of writer I hope to become, given how prolific she is (Seventeen books since 1996, ranging from short stories to non-fiction!) and that she does “all this” while working (She’s a writer and editor at the Center for Biological Diversity — and has been there since 1999.). She is…a superstar. An icon! Truly a generational talent, the sort of person quietly and brilliantly working that I feel everyone should know about given how she “does it all” but also that she continues to balance work-work and art work while racking up accolades, from Pulitzer nominations to National Book Award finals. WWLMD, I think, as a reminder that I have the same amount of hours in my day as she does. This is less a “You can do more!” thing but a reality check of what it actually means to be a working artist. She is an honest example of what success in fiction in the 21st century looks like.

We started messaging last year, as I was hoping to do a more long-form interview but, given scheduling and my own editorial shifts, the story never panned out. Cut to earlier this summer where I figured I’d pick up the idea again and Lydia graciously agreed. She’s typically in Tucson, but wrote her reply from midcoast Maine. Obviously I wanted to know the trends and subjects on her mind, in case we could get a tease of what’s in the works post-Atavists. We discuss Gen Z pressures on us all, loving dogs, and the power of nature in the time of data centers.

Tell me about a trend you’re following that you’re really into.
Oh my God I’m supposed to be following a trend? I delayed answering this thinking maybe I’d eventually come up with one, but nothing happened. My daughter tells me I can’t wear skinny cargo pants anymore. Does that count? She literally forbade me from ever wearing any form of skinny jeans again. It wasn’t personal, she claimed. So I mean, I’m following the anti-skinny-pants trend, I guess? And starting to swish around in those Gen Z pants that drape generally over the bottom half of the body like a weird form-hiding tent. It’s tough to call anything I do trendy, though, since I usually take things up at the wrong time, either decades late or centuries. Such as getting into, for example, Neutral Milk Hotel 20 years after they stopped existing. Or using phrases I learned from my father that were popular circa 1880. Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle! Stop acting the goat!

What’s a trend you hope never dies?
A trend that should never die: dogs.

What’s a trend you are so over?
I am so over...the death of intellectualism? The rise of proud ignorance? Or no wait, autotune.

What has been drawing you to write as of late?
Broadly I guess I aspire to write about now but am finding it almost impossible to do so. Or at least, to do so well. Now is like a freight train bearing down. So yeah, you can write about it, but...

What happenings in the natural world has been most on your mind?
I think we should all be paying attention to the beauty and abundant life being sacrificed right now to greed, to stupidity, and most recently to the grotesque juggernaut of AI and its data centers.

Follow Lydia on Instagram and explore more of her writing here. Don’t miss her latest, a short story in Emergence, now.

I didn’t think any of these would be “that shocking” but the Arby’s one really left me aghast.

The absolute best version of the National Anthem you will hear this summer. It’s like if the Muppets and that one hound going viral collabed. And I thought last year’s falling singer couldn’t be outdone!

I have so many questions for this couple who yell at each other in the middle of the night because they’re confused.

Something about the space between girls and gays right now, a space of comfort and security in these unstable times. A classic winning pair!

I explained the concept of TikTok Piss on Thursday, but discovering the remixes of Backrooms this week was a joy. The masturbation edit halfway through the first one is so great (and is becoming its own trend, as you’ll see it in a few of them).

Big week for clips from strange reality shows about seemingly desperate-for-love people.

Two incredible Gay Guy Tweets™ from this week.

I guarantee you will not guess the name of this yarn.

Best performance of an ad read on a podcast this year goes to KevOnStage.

Did we all really know this? Because I didn’t! I thought her head was in that oven melting!!

And, finally, what I would like to do to any and all AI executives.

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