Quick post this week. not a whole lot to say, but this subject has been interesting me. It's one I wrote on years ago, but one that remains relevant: aesthetics.
That's right, we're going to go into that strangely controversial area. I just wanted to write a bit about aesthetics in the modern age to close out summer since it always seems to be more obvious in colder weather. Though the question is more like: where have aesthetics gone altogether? We're not jut talking about bad aesthetics, but any at all!
It matters how things look, it gives people inspiration and motivation when they see pleasant and visually pleasing things to want to do better, and to make things better. Good inspires good and creativity inspires creativity. A dead sense of aesthetics produces nothing but death, which is how things are these days.
This is why it matters how things look, even if we're continually being sold on how it doesn't. Plenty of people excuse to decline and defend the people engaging in it.
For instance, you've probably come across a lot of talk recently about the failure of McDonalds to adapt to the modern market, but let's all be real: McDonalds has looked like garbage for nearly two decades at this point. It hasn't had a single aesthetic improvement in all that time, sure, but it was also terrible to start with the second they decided to stop aiming at families. The first step in the decline was throwing away its purpose and making up a new one that, clearly, doesn't exist.
Of course none of this goes into the cost issues or deteriorating food quality of the establishment, but at this point it's more like the current aesthetic matches the state of its soul. Vapid, empty, and without any identity or direction in a world just the same. They could have renamed it Food Store #3 and no one would bat an eye.
I've spoken before about how ugly a decade the '00s were, and I stand by that, but it did start out at least a little interesting with carryovers from the '90s to keep it afloat. Everyone remembers the see-through tech fad that was aesthetically pleasing among the masses and then never came back again, but few talk about how much better the internet itself looked back then compared to how ugly it is today. That is the clearest example.
But it also changed as the '00s itself got philosophically and spiritually uglier before morphing into the nadir that was the 2010s. If you can think of a single good trend the 2010s brought about in aesthetics that was pleasant and uplifting, I'd love to hear it, but from what I saw the world merely uglified more and more and more until minimalism became nothing for no one, and identity shrank to be makeshift personalities and brand loyalty over anything interesting or new.
The 2020 has not been an improvement in that area, either. We're over halfway into the decade and it's just been more of the same decay. Nothing creative, nothing inspiring.
A lot of the reason for this is that the same philosophy of the first decade of the 21st century is still there. The same crowd with the same vapid, snarky, hyper-ironic slogans from people who hate you, are still in charge. We still say stupid things like "adulting" for instance: a term that tells you maturity and ambition is a switch to flip off. We don't take anything serious and therefore nothing serious can change, and hasn't.
This, ironically, is also the same reason we lack a sense of whimsy. That's right, we're such an unserious people that we can't understand whimsy anymore. Weird how that works, but it's true. If you can't take life seriously, then you also can't take it lightly.
This dichotomy is the trap we currently find ourselves in. We didn't know how to take anything light or heavy. We can't take anything but as a joke at a distance we can detach ourselves from to not get hurt. We can't believe in anything but slogans for philosophy and insults to protect the ingroup. We can't look outwards or inwards, so we look nowhere. We loop indefinitely as everything decays. We're still in 2008.
Our sense of aesthetics, or lake thereof, effects everything and is a large part of why we are the way we are. We don't dream so we don't grow. We threw all that away long ago for safeness and predictability, because that way we won't get hurt.
But that means in the process we've lost things we don't even have a reason for losing! They're just gone and forgotten.
Why don't we have wallpaper anymore? Because our grandparents had it. Why don't we have wood paneling anymore? Because our parents had it. Why is everything sterile like a doctor's office with one note white and black walls and furniture coloring everywhere? Because we're boring. We have nothing to say or believe in, and our homes reflect that reality. That's all there really is to any of it. We can't have anything unique, for fear we might stand out and inspire.
Because we might get laughed at.
Well, why does that matter? Why do we care about the opinions on people who don't even hate us, but wouldn't even blink twice if they saw us dying in a ditch? What is to be gained cowering to that? Not a whole lot.
So let's do it ourselves and stop waiting for other people to do it or come up with solutions for us. Stop using slogans and ingroup signaling to speak at other people. Start having aesthetics again. Believe in something.
And eventually, maybe others will even believe in you.
Given recent heated discussions, I figured it would be best to bring the temperature down a little, and talk about something a bit lighter. We can all use a break every now and then, right? In fact, I wanted to talk a bit about physical media in a way that does not get talked about much anymore. Let's not talk about practicality or physical quality, but something else entirely. I want to show in example of what makes it special. The above video is tangentially related more to show how little I'll be talking about audio quality in today's topic, because I think too many get hung up on it.
For anyone who has followed me for any amount of time, you are aware that I am big into music. Since I started being able to as a kid back in the '90s, I have amassed a pretty good CD collection that, despite bizarre attempts at fearmongering in recent years, is still perfectly functional today. Mostly because I take care of them. Regardless, this is to say I've been at the game for around three decades at this point. While my CD collection is more or less complete (I still have a few more Rhapsody albums to get), I still go out of my way to try to hear stuff I've never heard before.
I tend to focus more on rock music and its many subgenre and spinoffs. It's just what has always clicked with me the most.
Not too long ago, I had an epiphany. I realized that with vinyl records becoming ubiquitous and affordable for the first time since before I'd actually started collecting music, I could finally get into them myself. Obviously I wouldn't be able to ever match my CD collection, but I didn't want to. There was no reason for that. I had always wanted to get my absolute favorite albums in the format, and now was my chance. So, I went for it.
You see, for anyone younger than Gen X, vinyl has been a dead format for the majority of our lives. It was elbowed out in the late 20th century format wars by CDs (cassettes suffered the same fate) as antiquated and limiting. It was not progressive enough and there were too many rough edges in the format. Records were clunkier, held less music, were more fragile, and a bit of a pain to store. CDs, they said, would solve all those problems. They did. CDs are easy to use, hold twice as much music as a vinyl, are much more durable, and very easy to store. There's a good reason mine are still in pristine condition, some bad jewel cases aside. Essentially, CDs were the most obvious step forward, the progressive choice for music listening. Eventually that would move over to streaming, but as far as physical media went, CDs were considered it.
Then it might shock you to hear this as someone who hadn't heard vinyl since I was a child and never owned any myself before relatively recently that I actually think it is the greatest physical format for listening to music and that all its limitations are its strengths. And it's not for the reasons you might think.
The weaknesses of vinyl are actually its strengths. I know that's confusing. You're going to have to put up with my logic as I explain it.
The reason for this is that all the conveniences of CDs are actually a drawback for the listening experience that only multiplied when streaming came along. In essence it was a downhill slide to get here, though I will admit that CDs and the like do have their uses for travel or exercise. That said, for listening to music as an activity? They are not as good as vinyl. Let me explain just why that might be with a few points you might not have considered.
If you've never used vinyl before then you might be surprised as to how much set up there is to getting one to play. Slide the record from its sleeve, keep your fingers away from the surface as you lower it on the turntable, and then start it up. But of course it doesn't quite end there. You have to put on Side A and then lower the arm (making sure the needle isn't covered first), delicately onto the record. Did it right? Congrats, it's time to listen to the first side . . . of two. Vinyl rarely contains more than 20-25 minutes a side, which means you are going to have to stick close to the player and make sure you're there for all of it. Also, of course, to make sure no loud stomping or pushing of heavy furniture happens nearby to disturb the record or potentially cause skipping. This does not afford you the chance to wander off to do anything else. You will be there for the 20 minutes or so of Side A, paying attention. After this, you will do it again with Side B, making sure you're paying attention to the entire album. Here it is time to finally lift the arm and remove the record, once again handling it delicately and avoiding dust and dirt (or possibly cleaning it with your brush) before putting it away again.
Get all that? It's a process.
The end result of all this inconvenience other mediums don't offer? You will be paying attention to the music first and foremost above all else. Nothing else will take precedence, guaranteed. You cannot afford to zone out around a vinyl record, which makes you need to give it all your focus. It's too delicate to be left alone for too long.
All this is why vinyl is the best musical format. The reason is it makes the listener prioritize the music and listening experience over all else, and it's the only format that does this short of attending a live show. When you're putting on a record it is because you want to listen to the record. The lack of skipping tracks, of wandering off, of putting it in the background, means appreciation of the music comes first. It will always have your priority. Yes, vinyl's sound is less flat and more rounded and spacious than digital files are, and that could be an argument itself but the real difference is in how much attention each format must be given.
A sample of my own collection
As an example of my annoying ramble above, let me tell you a little tale. One of the records I have is Hysteria by Def Leppard. You can see my copy right there in the picture. This is a 12 song album that is over an hour long. Naturally, this means modern releases wisely split it across two records, effectively making it a double album. This is an immediate improvement, even despite improved sound quality. The above process of playing all four sides made me give the album my full attention for the first time in ages. No skipping songs, no letting it fall to the background as I find myself doing something else with my free time, and no pausing it for whatever random reason I feel like I had to sit there and listen, really listen, and hear all the bells and whistles and incredible songwriting that album is filled with. As I did so I felt myself pulled into the music and the tone the band sets, and engrossed the entire time making me appreciate everything about the craft, the energy, and the hooks, all the more. It turned what I thought was a 10/10 album into an 11/10 one. It effectively made me think an album I already thought was perfect even better. All of this could only happen because of the limitations vinyl set on me as well as the different presentation of audio than what I'm used to.
It started to make sense why back in the day music was treated as more of an event, why they had record listening parties and why kids would spend time just listening to records at friend's houses: all things no one does anymore. Sure, you can have a listening party on bandcamp, but it's hardly the same thing as being in the same room and having to concentrate on all the contours of the specific sonic presentation smacking you in the face while minding the limitations to keep you focused. Without that there is a high risk of music becoming a background novelty, which is more or less what it's become today since vinyl fell away.
The size of the format itself also contributes to it. Vinyl records are large, attention grabbing, and very in your face. They almost demand to take all your attention when you look in their direction. On top of that, they are the hardest to store and take care of, as well. Basically, it's a form tailor made to be intimidating, which, oddly enough, is something that makes them all the more compelling. The inconvenience is appreciated.
This isn't so much a music hipster thing, I'm not really going on about vinyl being "warmer" as the cliche goes, but in how everything about it prioritizes the importance of its own artform before anything else. That's its biggest strength that no one really brings up.
Even the idea that the storage space is overly miniscule and was improved on with CD and then that was improved on with unlimited streaming is incorrect. Almost all of the best albums worth hearing are under 50 minutes long. In the CD era, because the limit was increased to nearly 80 minutes, albums started to become loaded with filler. This made heavy use of the track skip feature CDs added and took away from the experience described above. It made the album look weaker and feel more disposable. The fact is that the limitation of the vinyl gave albums their perfect length. A 40 minute album is perfectly paced, coinciding, incidentally, with most live shows if you take out banter and general set up. Exceptions like the above Hysteria, an album over that limit, still benefits from the fact that it earns its mammoth length: there's no filler on it at all.
Your space on a record is limited, so you have to dredge up your best material for it and be aware that the audience will be paying close attention to it due to the nature of vinyl. This sets a higher bar for music and is in fact a good reason why Classic Rock has the name it has.
Even in the CD era, albums that did not have vinyl as their primary release format, or sometimes not even one at all (essentially the early 90s through the late '00s, almost two decades), the ones that aged the best are ones that still, for one reason or another, adhered to the old rule set by the format. The best albums didn't "fill up the CD" just because they could have.
This means when these sorts of albums actually get a vinyl release (think albums like The Strokes' Room on Fire, Less Than Jake's Hello Rockview, Jimmy Eat World's Bleed American, or the White Stripes' White Blood Cells), they fit it like a glove. Even the better longer albums transition over to becoming great double albums (think Alice in Chain's Dirt, Soundgarden's Superunknown, Queens of the Stone Age's Songs for the Deaf, or White Stripes' Elephant) like they were always meant to be that in the first place. The pacing set by the limitations of the form not only make it more digestible, but allow more concentration and appreciation for what is being done. This is a good sign that vinyl got it right ages before we figured it out. We were just blinded by new tech and progress, which is a very common 20th century habit we still haven't broken.
Some could make the case that vinyl is only come back because of hipsterism, but that doesn't really explain it's unavailability during the peak hipster years of the '00s and why now it's only coming back in a big way now. If anytime would have been the time for that it would have been the post-High Fidelity snarky Scott Pilgrim era. But that never really took, did it? The reason is because younger generations want the inconveniences they never had, and older audiences are missing it now more than ever. It just doesn't hit as hard with the way things are. Experiencing what you love in a more involved way is always a good way to learn just how you like it.
All of this is a long way to say that convenience has devalued a lot of our artforms. The base level for engaging with art used to require a level of inconvenience which played into engagement, which meant most people put up with it, and they benefited. What we forgot is that sometimes inconveniences aren't bad things. Fishing out a cartridge to stick into your SNES or disc into your PS2. Taking out a tape or disc to slot into your player to watch a movie (and then either rewind or dig through menus). Rushing to catch a TV show on at a specific time or else hope for reruns in the summer. Picking up a paperback or hardcover to flip through and set down with a bookmark. These could be seen as mildly annoying or even frustrating, especially as opposed to how plug and play everything is in Current Year, but they also made these things more engaging and participatory for the audience. And most of these annoyances are just little things, but it's the little things that add up to the total and greater experience.
The easier and more convenient all these things have made things, the more it all gets streamlined into an app on a device to press and go, the less we care and the less we care about creating or preserving these forms, because now they're little more than distraction from mundanity, not art to engage or consider. This is the core of what modern slop is and why it's so hard to define: it's the end result of convenience culture, it doesn't spring out of anything else. Everything has been reduced to a dopamine hit with the least amount of effort or backlash.
To create a future of art that is meaningful, that can connect, and can grow, the old ways have to be understood, and inconvenience must no longer be seen as the greatest evil like it currently is. The warts and the difficulties are part of the experience: they add up to the greater whole. Taking that away simply takes away part of the core experience. It can't really be ignored any longer.
Life isn't convenience, and it never will be. No utopia or perfect world is ever coming. Accept the warts and realize that sometimes they aren't really warts at all. You're just too focused on the tree instead of the forest.
What we need is something real, and that means annoyances. We ain't in Heaven folks, not yet, so get used to it. We're gonna be here a while, so let's make it count.
We finally made it to the end of 2025! It's been a long and bumpy ride with a lot of surprising twists and turns (especially if you were me), but now we can finally close this one off for good. It's the end of the year!
For this last post of 2025 I merely wanted to thank everyone who stuck with me through it all. It's been a strange one, and next year promises to be even stranger, so you will definitely have much to look forward to from me. However, it probably won't be as much on the blog.
You probably already noticed less posting this year, with a shift to the weekends, and those posts will still continue, but there will be less of them. I need to refocus my efforts on writing stories, especially after everything that has happened in my personal life. Of course I'm going to keep posting here, but it will just be much less of a focus in the near future. That said, I do thank you for every post you've read this year. I am still surprised that anyone reads these at all, since back when I first started writing posts a decade ago I didn't think anyone would be reading them, never mind a full ten years out. It's been a crazy experience.
In 2025, I put out a story in Cirsova Magazine, a new novel serial on the Patreon, and had tales in twodifferent anthologies outside of that. All of them are some of my best work, so please check them out! It's been a weirdly productive year, though not in the way I am used to. Perhaps that's just a sign of the changing times.
That aside, there is still the Patreon where you will get the most bang for your $5. There you will get over 40 episodes of 2 ongoing podcasts, two serials (with a third in planning stages), exclusive posts and updates, and more to come. In fact, there is an end of year episode of the podcast up today about the future! Check it out here.
There are multiple projects in the works for 2026 still to be revealed. I have a story coming in Cirsova Magazine in 2026 (a new Galactic Enforcer tale!), a full-on book that will be released, and a large project that is not mine to reveal yet but is currently deep in the works. On top of that there was a huge shift in my personal life outside of writing that will definitely change how I operate going forward, though I will have to wait and see just how that will happen. Until then I will do my best to continue as I have been.
Regardless, I am not going anywhere.
2025 was also the 30th anniversary of the events in Y Signal, as I've mentioned before. In fact, right now we're living through the 30th anniversary of "Snow Out", the Christmas story in the book. I actually did an entire podcast episode both reading excerpts and talking about it here. But next year will also be the 30th anniversary of the conclusion of the book, which took place in summer of 1996. All that to say is that it will also symbolically be an important year as well. One of the projects I hope to be able to start on is the follow-up to that very book. No, not a sequel: Y Signal has a pretty definitive ending, but a follow-up to it. You can learn a little bit about the background of all of this on the podcast, if you desire.
These specific stories are meant to be both a reflection of a specific era currently being (perhaps deliberately) forgotten and a document of the people who lived there and what they were like and thought at the time. I've mentioned before, but part of the reason these tales came to fruition was due to how the mainstream and Hollywood have been attempting to dilute that period, if they ever address it at all, and are attempting to rewrite it for their own ends. There has been a concentrated attack on the past, and I will not have it. As a consequence, there is nothing like Y Signal or this upcoming project, and there likely never will be.
But beyond that, what do we have to look forward to in the wider culture? The wild west days of the internet are over, Hollywood is bottoming out, video games are shifting away from AAA, and publishing is still a complete mystery. Nothing is solid, especially publishing.
While OldPub is dying, NewPub is still in growing pains. Amazon is quickly fading out and the crowdfunding model is becoming more common, but then what comes after that? We're still trying to figure that out. There are a lot of question marks ahead and there still has yet to be a clear path forming in the haze. We'll just have to see where 2026 takes us from this point on. I can't even begin to guess where we're heading.
The world is a very different place from when I first published the first post on Wasteland & Sky over a decade ago to now. It certainly doesn't feel like it if you only look at the surface. Most of the buildings and sights in every day life are the same, if not rusting and falling apart from a lack of maintenance, but compared to previous decades the stagnation on the surface is obvious. Underneath, however, much has shifted and will continue to shift until the outside matches the current state of the interior. We've got much to look forward to after that.
Once again, I wanted to thank everyone reading my posts, or anyone who has ever read my posts, my stories, my books, or whatever I've put out there. It means a lot that I was able to reach anyone at all from my obscure position on the fringes of life and this scene. I hope to continue for as long as I am able to.
Thanks again for a wild 2025, and let us all look forward to the 2026 ahead. May it shine bright and show us the way forward.
We've gone over before the idea that certain segments of the arts and entertainment don't look as good as they used to, but we've never taken a deeper look into how specifically things might have changed since. Why can't we seen to remember how to make things look their best? The above video on the decay of film might help with that.
While watching The French Connection for Cannon Cruisers (Yes, there's a spoiler of an upcoming episode for you), one of the questions that came up was why exactly films just plain don't look this good anymore. William Friedkin and his crew didn't have even a fraction of the technology available to us today and yet the movie looks, sounds, and feels, far more different than if a similar movie was made today. In fact, its quality is light years beyond what we can do with current digital technology. But why exactly is that?
Of course the easy answer is "we're losing the talent and means to make good art" but then the elephant in the room, the one that is never answered, becomes how it is being lost this fast? In our technology obsessed culture, why are we glorifying inferior technology that doesn't make art better? From cell animation to arcade design to the short story, we are losing valuable parts and origins of the arts we were raised on, and we do not seen to care even as we complain about how the modern material is not only not holding up but is also beginning to turn younger generations away from art altogether. This is a serious issue that is just plain being ignored.
I don't really have the answers for dealing with the decline except to first acknowledge it is happening in the first place and then to encourage those in said industries to preserve said techniques before they are pointlessly lost forever. Art is meant to build on the past, not to reject it for the ideologically hollow and terminally sneering mess of an industry we have today.
At the very least, unlike, say, a decade ago, everyone is very keenly aware of these problems now. I've met plenty of zoomers who love these old methods of creation and even attempt to revive it themselves. It's admirable, but they can't do it alone. The change rests in all of us working together to strive for a better field, and the younger generation can't do that alone. Gen Ys, in particular, finally need to put our selfish pride away and go in for more than nostalgia bait IPs that should have been left to rest ages ago, and expend more effort building something new.
Again, it's not about abandoning the past, but building on it. Those old IPs were built and things that came before. We need to do the same now in order to finally move forward. We cannot continue to peddle dead IPs whose time has already come and gone. We need new blood and we can't get any if we keep deliberately elbowing the new generation out so they have no space at the table. Otherwise we are headed for a dead end, just like the mainstream industry.
You can't put new wine in old wineskins, and yet that is what we insist on doing with nostalgia culture. We need fresh takes and new angles on classical archetypes and frameworks. We can't can't do that if we refuse to move on from dead IPs.
The 20th century is over, remember, so too, must we put behind the childish ways from then that led us in the gutter today.
What kind of industry is this supposed to build, exactly?
We also refuse to move on from considering the audience, our fellow man, as anything less than walking wallets to be pried into at our convenience. As if they are little more than plebeians to be lectured to, that they must Shut Up And Listen, to anything we have to say.
No, I won't go into another tirade on Fanatics, I've done that enough, but to emphasize this isn't a problem with one industry. It's all of them. The aging theater kid mentality that was chased out normal people, reviles male audiences, and obsesses over "updating" old IP for modern sensibilities at the expense of creating anything new, has reached its end. Everyone sees this now. It's unavoidable, and it is being recognized, but there is still no plan in action to correct it.
I realize I've made a lot of enemies over the years for being blunt about the way things are. The thing some of these people get is that I never went in with the intention of wanting to blow anything up. I went in with a mentality of wanting to understand the growing disdain for normal people, the anti-social celebration of destruction that is modern art, and the obsession with Kool Kid Revenge of the Nerds mentality. Essentially what I learned is what we all already know. Nothing can be created through destruction, blind hatred, and arrogance, never mind all together in a wrecking ball mislabeled as "art" that has unable to make anything sustainable.
The first step to doing all of this is to stop with childish clique-ism and shrinking the field to feed our egos. It's to find ways to build new ideas based on classical ideas in a culture trained to hate it all. We should be working together, not managing decline.
Until we do that, we're destined to keep bashing our heads against the same brick wall for at least another decade as our industries swirls further down the drain. If we don't finally act, we risk losing much important. At that point, we might not have any solid foundation left to build on, and then what can we build?
The recent post on artificiality was a bit of a long and bizarre one, filled with examples of what constitutes "real" in regards to art. The past two decades of the 21st century has been spent reassessing what works and what doesn't, and now we're thinking over what we've lost and what we've gained along the way and what path we should make going forward. One thing we've learned is that the way things once were is no longer feasible going forward.
For an example on this, consider how different expectations of NewPub is compared to how the industry was only a decade ago. The above stream by author and musician David V. Stewart goes into modern cover design, including the AI topic, and how it has affected both the independents and the old industry and how much can be learned from the rapidly advancing technology. Also, on what priority should be given to design depending on how you wish to connect with readers.
If you wonder why book covers have become the way they are today then it is an informative stream. You might also why those who get their books illustrated still don't look like the old books you remember growing up with. Well, there's a good reason for that.
Anyway, it's a good stream with a lot of good advice. Definitely a recommended watch (or listen if you'd prefer) for weekend relaxing.
Another example I always bring up in regards to the way things once were was back when I first started looking into OldPub. About a decade ago, before I even published my first book, the minimum word count to even be considered by a publisher to look at your work was 100K words. The cap is now somewhere around 125k, here in the present. They won't admit it, but that was obviously done because of the results they got over the previous decade.
Unfortunately for them, it's not going to matter much.
On the other end of the creative spectrum, Alex from Cirsova was recently on The Gutter talking about Leigh Brackett, CL Moore, and space adventure, as well as Star Wanderers!
Check it here:
It's a good discussion on what made the pulps so good and what we can learn from them going forward in the future.
This is where it should be mentioned that Star Wanderers not only cracked 90 backers but is less than $250 from reaching our goal! If we can hit the $2500 funding point then we can work on stretch goals to give backers more goodies on top of the book and the soundtrack. We're very close, and it's all thanks to you!
That's all for this weekend. It's been quite a rollercoaster of a campaign so far. Let's see how high we can reach!
Not much this week to share, other than I wish the weather would settle down. It's been all over the place and very hard to do anything because of. It's a shame because after a winter that was far less intense than the last few I was hoping to get into the spring easier. But alas . . .
Anyway, this week I wanted to share a bizarre animated film shared with me called Interface. It's a throwback to the old cable TV and rental store days with both its animation style and aspect ratio. It feels like both an obscure lost VHS movie and a modern generation flick at the same time, which, if that's what you go for, might be up your alley.
I'm not sure how many people who visit Wasteland & Sky might be into this, but if you remember finding this obscure animated movies in the corner of your old rental shop where the grey carpet was a little stained and you could smell the rain leakage in the ceiling, this might jolt you back to a different time and place. Even if you weren't there, Interface has such a strange style that evokes both lost eras and uncertainty for the future that it's hard to not give it a recommendation. A story of missing self in a world that has both changed and not changed, has moved on yet remains stuck, it's a fascinating look into a present that doesn't exist but also does.
Again, if you don't like dry humor and slow pacing, or story that relies almost exclusively on visual and obscure dialogue to carry you along, Interface might not be for you. But I quite liked it, and that's why I'm sharing it with you today. This early spring time with uncertain weather is probably the best time to give it a viewing.
That's all for this week! As you know by now, I've got a project I'm putting together with Cirsova called Star Wanderers, and it's almost ready to unleash on the world. Until then, I'm still scrambling behind the scenes to keep up with myself. 2024 has been all over the place so far. Here's hoping it straightens out a bit as the year goes on.
Have a good weekend, and I will see you next time!
For those older than they would like to admit, I'm sure you remember the fracas called New Coke. If you weren't there for it (after all, the change barely lasted at all), then you might not even know what it was all about.
In the mid-80s, Coca Cola was slowly losing ground to its competitors thanks to successful ad campaigns like the Pepsi Generation and hip stars like Michael Jackson and Madonna. In other words, Coke was becoming known as old stogy and Pepsi was quickly becoming the choice for the young and cool. Suffice to say, Coca Cola needed an edge to regain the ground it had lost. What better way to do that then to launch a new formula?
At this point, you might know the broad strokes of it. Coke changed its formula, it was a disaster, and they reversed course and brought back the "Classic" formula (under the banner Coca Cola Classic) and everyone lived happily ever after, dumping on a bad mistake that never should have happened in the first place.
However, there is one bit of this story no one ever mentions. The end of that story, isn't quite what actually happened. Here's the thing: Old Coke never actually came back.
Many people have theorized the New Coke stunt wasn't actually to revive a slowly dying brand, but to make it cheaper to produce by removing the last extracts of the cocoa plant and replacing it with the ever-harmful and well-hated High Fructose Corn Syrup. That isn't so much a theory since that's exactly what happened. Coca Cola Classic that existed before New Coke never actually came back on the market. The True New Coke is the one you currently by at the supermarket to this day. The bait and switch worked, and they got us all good.
You can see the whole story of New Coke above, and it is quite interesting. But do not think the consumer actually won at the end of the day. We never actually got Coca Cola Classic back, despite what we were told. Old Coke is still dead, and it's still not coming back.
Just goes to show you that the truth isn't always what it's sold as. Sometimes there's a hidden reality waiting between the cracks.
Have yourself a good weekend, and a great Veteran's Day!
What makes something what it is? What is it that gives anything the defining traits that give it an identity? Is it aesthetic preferences, or is it the fad of the times? How does one stand out among a sea of contemporaries to connect with a wider audience?
This is quickly becoming a lost art. In the world of Cultural Ground Zero, it is quite near a myth, at this point.
Lew us take Rock music. This is a genre of music that came into existence nearly three quarters of a century ago (feel old yet?) as a combination of the Christian music genres of Blues, Country, and Gospel, to form a kind of hootenanny dance music that anyone can get into and is meant for all who want to get on that dance floor to blow off steam. It is no wonder that it quickly gained popularity around the world. Everyone knows about Rock music, it was the biggest genre of music for around half a century for a reason, but it is now known as a relic of its time and is quickly fading away into the background into novelty.
And it happened almost over night. One day it was there, and the next it was gone, replaced by record labels for carefully constructed fads that funnel product off an assembly line and into the ears of those captivated by sources said record companies own. Now all that is left are cheap CD boxsets on Amazon, Spotify playlists, and old music videos with millions of views on YouTube. The music industry is already dead, and it took Rock down with it as it died.
So why is that? Why did the biggest music in the world suddenly fall out of relevance, from out of the garage before ending up back in there again by the end of the century that spawned it in the first place? How can something have such a large and well detailed rise and fall without falling into endless stagnation (Rap), a flash in the pan punchline (Dubstep), or being just plain forgotten (Ska) by the mainstream? If one didn't know any better it would almost seem calculated.
And to be sure, it is calculations, formulas bandied about by "experts" that did eventually lead to its downfall. This is a story that has happened before.
Would you believe if I told you the answer for what killed Rock is the same for what genre fiction was killed for? A combination of genre-fication and misplaced religious worship is what did it in, disconnecting it as a form of art and entertainment. And the fact that you can see it in the above recent quote should show you that it is still very much alive and the reason why the genre cannot make a return as long as cultists exist to hold it back from its true potential. It's audience does not understand it at all. This is what happens when something is not properly gatekept.
But let us get to the subject at hand.
For those unaware, the White Stripes were quite possibly the best rock band of the 2000s decade. After the 1990s had gone so far into the alternative sphere that was beginning to eat its own tail, the genre was beginning to lose focus and fire, much as it had before metal and punk gave it a shot in the arm back in the 1970s. This time, it was losing all connection with its roots for pomp and ego as it had back then, but at the same time as this was when Cultural Ground Zero was happening. Rock was beginning to lose a lot of ground to the payola-backed bubblegum acts that the major labels were pushing. It was dealing with a war on both the inside and out.
Rock music needed more than posturing and attitude to keep up--the Cobain era was long over. It didn't need technicality: Dream Theater's wild success despite lack of any true mainstream penetration should have been a clue to that. No, it didn't need aesthetics or image to reclaim its balance. It needed to remind listeners what made Rock music so endearing to mass audiences in the first place. The genre needed its roots.
Enter the Garage Rock Revival boom of the 2000s, the last time the genre fittingly had any mainstream attention. The Strokes, the Hives, the Black Keys, the Vines, and the White Stripes, were but a few of the bands that made a splash during this era. Yes, returning to the classic "The Xes" band naming was part of their success, the postmodern trend of naming your band a sentence at the time was mostly left to the emo crowd. Nonetheless, the Garage Rock Revival wave was desperately what the genre needed at the time it was starting to fly up its own rear as sales and audience attention was waning. Tradition was on the way out for endless novelty, where it still is today.
The White Stripes formed in 1997 (that's right, the very year of Cultural Ground Zero) with two members, Jack White and Meg White who played at being siblings. They were actually formerly married, but this was part of their schtick. A large part of the White Stripes sound and appeal is formed in their image as traditionalists from another time and place, playing as if the world of music had gone in an entirely different direction than it actually did.
They played blues, but it was informed by the garage, particularly kids who grew up listening to both revivalists like the Lyres and more modern acts of their time like the Replacements. Here you end up with a collision of the early days of rock with what its eventual change over the decades would become by the end of the century. It wrapped into their weird charm, especially for as deliberately luddite as their sound and presentation was. Guitar, vocals, and drums, a key feature of their obsession with the number 3: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, as it is. Jack White being a Catholic features into the songs as Christianity was so instrumental to creating Rock music in the first place. This makes a lot of their more obscure lyrics and sound choices make more sense in retrospect, though still clever enough that you can interpret your own meaning from them.
The number 3 even spread over into their image. Red, white, and black, were the central colors the White Stripes were known for. You can see it in the image above. Just as every song rarely ever had more than three instruments (they were including vocals as an instrument, of course), the band itself never broke from their colors or their code. This helped add to their early mystique, and they never stepped away from it from their formation to their eventual disbandment.
The band put out their first two albums in 1999 and 2000, the self-titled White Stripes and the sophomore De Stijl, quickly gaining a lot of indie cred during a time when mainstream rock was... pretty bad. We can admit that by 1999 Rock music was not at its best anymore. This was that strange era of Sugar Ray and Smash Mouth, when one-hit novelty wonders suddenly overtook the charts as bubblegum began to buy the radio stations. In one corner you had lightweight pop and in the other was post-grunge sludge and misery. It was a battle of two extremes that never should have become extremes in the first place. No balance remained.
But then, in the summer of 2001, the White Stripes released their third (and best) album, White Blood Cells. It was not only a great album: it was also a surprisingly large hit. This was pre-9/11, remember: it was before Bush-era lunacy and pomp from arrogant musicians and yet just after Rock had begun its descent down the charts for its replacement. No one could have called Garage Rock storming the charts, but it did. This album seemingly made the band famous overnight, for being in the right place at the right time and also reminding everyone who made rock music what it was in the first place. And they were no flash in the pan, either.
This is the lead song off the album, the one I played back in the day to convince others that this band was worth listening to. Put yourself back in the summer of 2001 when nu metal and bubblegum was all you would hear on the radio. It does not sound as if it is from that era, and that is why it has managed to age so well.
This album hit for a very good reason, one whose context has been lost by those more concerned with bells and whistles. Let me show you how out of joint this was for the time: White Blood Cells is lean, tight, and powerful. The album is almost exactly 40 minutes long, sixteen songs total, a throwback to before CDs overcluttered albums with filler, guest-stars, and overproduction. Every song is short, concise, and punchy, never overstaying its welcome and keeping it both rooted in traditional styles while also leaning into newer ideas that could only have come in the later days of the 20th century. It is truly justice that it would be the band's third album be the one that broke them out, as the number 3 was so important to them.
This was only the beginning, however.
It was after this that they released their fourth and most popular album in 2003, Elephant, and hit superstardom with it. There they became the titans of the decade they are remembered for being. "The Hardest Button to Button," "Ball & Biscuit," "The Air Near My Fingers," "Black Math," and the mega-hit "Seven Nation Army," are only a few of the classics that adorn its track list. This is a perfect album, easily on par with White Blood Cells, and well deserving of being considered the peak of its era when Rock was on the decline. If you know the White Stripes at all, it is almost certainly because of this album.
They didn't stop there, though. Somehow the band maintained momentum throughout the rest of the decade. They put out a total of 7 albums (6 LPs and 1 live record) before they finally called it quits in 2011 and moved on to new things. With that, the Garage Rock Revival era petered out and Rock itself faded away.
The White Stripes left quite a legacy behind them, all their releases are still high quality and worth seeking out, transcending their time. They were also a tremendous live act, and are still thought of highly today by those who managed to see them. All in all, they are probably the best overall band in the Garage Rock Revival, and one of the last that mattered culturally.
The reason I am bringing this up is to relate it back to the image with the silly quote at the top of the page. People like that are why Rock music is dead now, and is not in any way ready to rise from the grave. Their religious devotion to technicality and ego fellating goes against every single thing that made Rock connect with the common man in the first place. All they want is to convince themselves they are listening to the best music--they do not love the music for what it is or what it does. It was one of the worst aspects of the time period when music fans on message boards would have to posit themselves as music scholars to explain why it took 5 years and countless bus rides to understand the appeal of OK Computer as if they were some kind of judge in a Roman coliseum deciding over execution. This overwhelming arrogance is what Rock fans became entangled with and it seems to exist to this day.
But let us address the charge.
First, is Meg White a bad drummer? No, she is not. This is not arguable. She does exactly what a drummer is objectively meant to do: she keeps the beat and the minimalist tone that the songs call for. She is not an outlier either. There are no early Rock drummers who play over the top technical fills or rolls the 1960s brought in, so neither does she. This is the point of the band: to reclaim that era and bring its ideas to the modern age. Simplicity is the point. That it is still being argued about to this day is indicative of the undeserved arrogance Rock fans still refuse to exorcise from themselves, and refusal to understand when they are wrong.
It wasn't that those drummers from back then couldn't play like that, most of these guys were Jazz drummers and far beyond even most Metal or Progressive drummers. They didn't play that way because the songs were not about technicality: technicality was not the point of the Blues. The genre was about atmosphere, tone, and mystique. Meg White is emulating these guys because that is what the band's sound is. Without her, it loses all of that feel and the identity of the band is lost. As an example, listen to the stuff Jack White has done without her--it sounds nothing like the White Stripes. This is because her drumming is part of why they were big in the first place. That we still have to point this out over a decade after they disbanded is proof that Rock fans have yet to shed their cultism and obsessions over understanding the genre they purport to love.
Just because she doesn't play fills or rolls like newer drummers are known for doing doesn't make her a bad drummer. Nor is she bad because she plays simply. This isn't how it works. She isn't the drummer for the Shaggs and pretending otherwise is disingenuous. Technicality has nothing to do with the appeal of Rock music and it never has. Johnny Ramone is one of the most influential guitarists of all time and he never played more than a handful of chords and never played a single guitar solo. Wanting to brag about a band purely for the musicianship reeks of childish behavior.
What this comes down to is, once again, paint worship. There is nothing wrong with technicality in a Rock song, but it isn't the point of a song. The song itself is the point. Listen to what the band is doing, not what you wish it was doing instead.
Let us get to the bottom of it. What makes Rock music what it is? Is it guitar solos? No, there are plenty of bands without guitar solos. Is it a double bass drum? No, most bands don't even use them. Is it slap bass or walking basslines? No, that's a minority of bassists. Is it an operatic singer? No, there are plenty of examples of successful bands with untechnical singers. Technicality has nothing to do with what makes Rock music hit with audiences, though it can help depending on the identity of the band in question. It is, nonetheless, not what makes the genre what it is and does not necessarily make a band better. There are plenty of extremely technical bands that can't write a half-decent song to save their lives. The tools are not the point of the craft and we lost that knowledge a long time ago.
One should also mention that popular and well regarded Rock bands have existed without a vocalist, guitar player, bassist, drummer, keys, horns, harmonica, or even plugged or unplugged instruments. You can find plenty of examples of each. Therefore, the instruments themselves do not make the genre or give it an identity.
So what is it?
We can take this question to other arenas. What makes wonder stories what they are? Why did we need to cut them into genres so we could worship the parts we are obsessed with and shun what we don't understand? Because we want to put ourselves over the art itself. We do not want to understand it or connect with it: we want to rule it with an iron fist.
This is the opposite of what Rock is. A Rock band is a group of fellas coming together to make noise in a garage and get the audience moving with a fun sound that excites them. You might have your preferences in sound specifics, instruments, and styles, to get that to happen, but that is the core of what it is. Whatever gets that job done is the core of the genre--the Rock Solid center of it all.
As long as those in the genre refuse to look beyond their narrow scope, to continue in dead end fads and styles that wore out their welcome decades ago, to run off novelty and gimmicks over craft and purpose, then Rock will stay dead.
It isn't just about music, but about everything. Why we insist on holding to rotting 20th century frames at the expense of something more eternal is a mystery for the ages. We aren't here for no reason, therefore what we do can have great meaning.
What makes something what it is? That's a hard thing to define, but it certainly isn't the bells and whistles that come out of it. What makes something what it is goes far deeper under the surface into the center of it all into the core of our being. Unless we keep digging, we'll never find it. This is what makes art so special.
That is, after all, why we're here at all! To create and to grow. We need to keep on doing so. Otherwise we'll never truly find what we are really capable of.
Just don't forget that you sometimes also have to look back to trace your steps, or else get lost in the haze with everything else in the modern world. You can't move on without a clear direction forward, after all. And it is art that can help us find that path we have been seeking so desperately. We just have to keep searching for it.
As always: to those who knock, the door will be opened.
There has been a lot of worry online about the modern state of the arts and entertainment. It used to be because of the attitudes of the older industry stifling creativity and connection with patrons for a system that works more or less like a creaking factory belt, pumping out generic slop with a tired brand slapped on top. Now, the worry comes from the progression in technology that supposedly will make creators of just about every sort of art redundant. Of course, the old industry's obsession with making more money for less effort caused this so-called problem, but there really isn't an issue here at all if one thinks on it. Despite the rise of automation and devaluing of artistic expression by those "in charge" of things, nothing has really changed.
Perhaps you, dear reader, are confused. I should probably start from the beginning: the subject is about the growing usage of computers and AI in the realm of art production. Less and less of it is done by human hands, and more is being filtered through automation and algorithms, something big corporations love more than anything in order to cut costs. Naturally, artists are worried about their place in this new world when they are so easily replaced.
But they are not, this is why these worries are silly. Let me explain from the beginning. We will have to go back to the start to understand how we got here.
If you've been beholden to the talk on social media recently, especially in artist circles, you might have noticed the newest topic making the rounds: that of AI-created art actually starting to shape up into a viable thing, whether for book covers or just general art. There has been a flood of new (and free!) programs offering you ways to construct art based on prompts you put into the search bar to get whatever you want. Naturally, this has become a big topic of debate among those who do such things for a living.
One such example exists at the top of this very post. Author David V. Stewart created that cover for his book using AI. There is no commissioning or Photoshop at play: he simply put it through an algorithm, He writes about the subject here.
He also created a video on how he did it on YouTube:
If you are interested in how this all works, I highly suggest watching his video. This is still a fresh new concept, but it is primed to make waves in the future, and far sooner than you might think. AI art is not going away.
Should you want to see more examples of how this works or how to use it for your own benefit, I suggest reading his above post, too. It covers all the bases about where we are. Long story short: putting in the correct information might net you some solid art that can outdo both stock photos (even through photoshop) or commissioned work. And it's totally free.
I'm not going to talk about the process of how AI art works specifically, you can find all sorts of commentary on how that subject for yourself, but I am going to talk about the bigger issue that clings to this topic like smoke to a fire. New inventions like this aren't going to change the general feeling going on in certain circles about how computers have devalued art. Not only that, how audiences have been trained to expect and love such things.
Author Rawle Nyanzi has also been posting non-stop on Twitter about how easy it was for him to create characters through putting cheap and quick drawings through the AI. Check out his twitter timeline for many examples he experimented with to get his desired results. Suffice to say, this sort of thing will only get better as it develops.
So the question remains: what does this invention's impact mean for artists when potential patrons can simply put a prompt into an AI and get the image they desire instead? Does this new AI source replace artists? Should those who draw for a living be worried they are being replaced? How can you compete with ease of use and a free cost, after all?
This is where it gets complicated. In this case, we have to look to short term vs long term applicability of this invention and who will primarily use it.
Let us first proceed from the unavoidable reality that these programs will eventually be able to pump out the exact picture you desire, pixel by pixel, in the future. This technology will only get better. You have to accept that much. Of course it will never be able to do anything complex like full comic pages or the like, drawings that require specific positioning and flow, and these AI pictures are put in the public domain immediately once created, (though you should look up the legality yourself, don't just take my word for it) which already limits the sort of things these computer brains can create. Putting all that in mind, what it can and can't do, what does this mean for artists of the future when the technology only improves? What can they offer that computers cannot? Well, a lot.
There are a few things that will fall by the wayside, again, should things continue forward in their logical progression. The first is that concept art for bigger projects is a lot easier with AI, at least when building from scratch and is a lot less harsh on the wallet. Finding the basic designs you need and then taking it to a living, breathing artist afterwards to spit-shine it into a proper piece would probably be a lot easier for patrons whose wallets are a bit thin. I don't think anyone would argue about this change not being good in the long run.
The other major thing that will change, and believe it or not this is mainly for the bigger artists who live off these commissions, is pornography. They will take a hit here, and for very obvious and expected reasons.
This means that artists, should they want to survive in this new landscape, will have to work twice as hard for less return than they ever had before. You will be like us writers are today, basically. Artists need to stand out and show their own distinct identity and style that puts them above not only other artists, but machines themselves. They must prove their worth in a landscape littered with easy options. People won't stop commissioning artists, of course, but artists are going to have to put more of themselves and their vision into even the most basic commercial art in order to justify being used over a program that can replicate the basic needs for any patron who wants the base thing. In other words, we are at the point where they will have less of a return on harder work. It's only going to get tougher. This is, unfortunately, the way the industry is today.
This is what happens when creativity is turned into forcing creatives to work on an assembly-line version of art and entertainment at the expense of any higher aim or connection. The end result is that it becomes extremely predictable and able to be made easily by an algorithm. What separates humans from robots is the soul, our inner workings, and outer personality that stems from it. Our observations and musing about life is something only we can do: but that has been replaced with mindless consumption and a rotating door of nihilistic themes. A machine can't replicate the former, but they can replicate the latter, which is what audiences have been trained to expect from their art and entertainment.
Unfortunately, audiences have been trained to reject anything aside from corporate approved formulas designed to gave the top hats more in their pocket and stories that think base pleasure is all life is for. To break that conditioning that has been going on for decades at this point, creatives have to work much harder than they used to and for much less in return. You will never be a Rothfuss of a Martin in this new world: you can't afford to be.
Is that fair to creatives? Probably not, but it's reality. Much like how NewPub writers have to work twice as hard with half as many resources as OldPub, just to break even, or how independent comic book teams are ignored by supposed aficionados of the medium who report only on giant conglomerate company IP instead, unless you are focused on making the best art you can, you have little chance of finding an audience to begin with. Your audience is a lot more particular, and you have to work accordingly.
You can't compete with the deep pockets of the giant media conglomerates, but you can compete creatively. This is actually the easiest thing you can offer over them. The deficiency in the old system will be even more obvious when they begin to replace their in-house human cogs with AI that can pump their formulas out cheaper and faster. To be honest, looking at the covers and posters of everything the old industry puts out right now, one would have to find it hard to believe they don't already use primitive AI to design everything. It's already soulless.
The old industries are hollowed out as it is. Putting computers in there won't change a whole lot about how they operate. It will just make their descent more obvious for those who care about nothing but consumption and moving on to the next (not-so) new thing.
We're becoming more and more gutted in regards to higher experiences or aspirations these days, almost as if those in charge want us miserable at all times. Thankfully, we have the rise of independent spaces storming the online arena to keep you well stocked in art and entertainment. There you can still find the human touch. These new spaces might not be what you expect, especially if you were raised on corporate gruel, but it's guaranteed to be better than that tired slop the mainstream has been shoveling out for decades. NewPub is just one piece of this ever-growing pie.
Because at the end of the day, this is what your choice is going to be: safe and approved formula handed down from your betters for acceptable consumption, or wild and crazy art and entertainment from those just like you who want to go to different places. They are two vastly different choices before you, and only stands to change and grow as the years go on and the culture mutates and shifts around us all. Only one is a viable path forward.
Which path will you travel, and who will you choose to be? A consumer or a patron? The decision is ultimately up to the customers.
Essentially all of this is just the next step down the road we were already traveling before this possibility was even a punchline in old late night comedy shows. Replacing God, family, and community, with brand labeling leads said brand labeling to be reshaped for whatever purposes those who own it desire. They know they can control you with it. As long as Product has that brand name on the box, you will consume whatever it is--and those in charge know it. This behooves them to control that brand like their lives depended on it: because it does.
This means that the only real way to offer an alternative to this vapid landscape is to offer a real alternative to it, something new and completely unlike what the mainstream offers today. In order to do this, one would have to strive to become the polar opposite of what this dead end industry is currently becoming. Eventually, they will restructure themselves into an AI-fronted factory-line of product meant to satiate the bare-minimum of audience enjoyment while parting you from more and more of your paycheck. That is, after all, what streaming already does. It's basically a click farm for those who think of art as nothing more than a drag on a cigarette.
A true alternative to this system requires going a completely different way from the mainstream. This is why it was called "alternative" rock back in the day. That is, before the mainstream consumed that into formulaic goo, too. The only difference here is that hijacking an aesthetic or a movement based on creativity and freewheeling ideas can't be co-opted to work on a belt-line. This is why, for instance, the Pulp Revolution was never actually taken over. It is built on principles and ideals the mainstream rejected long ago. They can't take over built on the opposite of what they are, because they can't make anything like that. These two paths can never converge on each other. It is impossible when they are each defined by things the other does not do, and the audience knows it. Once the audience realizes their options are a lot better than they think they are, the cultural landscape will change nearly overnight.
Should artists or writers be worried about being replaced by machines? No, because that is a mainstream worker bee problem. You were never part of the mainstream's world to begin with. They were already pushing outsiders to the margins and those with true alternative ideas were being labeled bad names by their media lapdogs long before this. They do not care about the customer, they do not care about their creators, and they do not care about either the past or the future. They just care about what makes it easier for them to part your money from your already thin wallet. There was never a scenario where you reading this (whoever you may be) would have had any control in their manufactured playgrounds or have a platform to spread your unique ideas. At best you would only be a tool for them, and then disposed of later.
All you can do, at this point, is to keep producing and showing the audience, and any potential customer, your own results. It might take a long time, but it is all that you can do. Prove to them that the NewPub arena and independent spaces are wilder, more fun, more exciting, and full of fresh ideas that the stale mainstream no longer has or wishes to engage in. It really is like choosing one of two paths at the fork in a road, and eventually one will be made for you.
Which one will we choose? In order to entice those to go down our path, we will have to give them plenty of reasons to do so. Understand? So let's give them that reason.
At the end of the day, there is no reason to despair over computers "taking" your hobby or your career, because it's not and never really can, especially if you are a real artist. You aren't making conveyor belt art that can easily be replaced by a machine checking the correct boxes: the mainstream is. Your own soul shows you that you are irreplaceable.
People will never come to you for mere product they can guzzle like state-mandated soma from the mainstream. That is not what you are here to get from you. Perhaps, if anything, machines being able to sleepwalk art for easy bucks will prove to all of us how important this was to begin with. This could very well be the shot in the arm we need to reevaluate where the art landscape is and where to move forward. Truth be told, we've needed that wake up call for a long time now, and this might finally be what we need.
Times change, and they are even changing right now, but there is no reason to ever despair. The human spirit was made to endure much tougher stuff than this. Even if machines and AI become popular to the point that they consume the mainstream whole, it still won't actually matter to those who care about art. To be quite honest, this is a speed bump at best. Keep your eyes on the road.
Once we forge a new future built on the foundation of a strong past, only then can we finally show what flesh and blood can do in an increasingly artificial world that devalues both. No matter what changes in the future, we will always be human and we will always create.
There is nothing else we can be. Why worry? The future hasn't been written yet, so get creating. We've got trails to blaze.
