If the purpose of generating the image was the image itself, the prompt goblin would not care about the judgment of others. They already have the image. What they created the image to do is to make a public statement about the desirability of images - and find belonging with likeminded fellows.
Thank you for explaining why their response to any criticism of their final output is to go into detail about why the tech that made it is actually great and the person criticising it is just a ludite
I just want to remember the phrase "prompt goblin". prompt goblin. prompt goblin. prompt goblin. Such a great label. Right up there with "sex pest".
stealing "prompt goblin'"
The prompt-using goblin What a wonderful phrase The prompt-using goblin Should be a passing craze ...
>If the purpose of generating the image was the image itself, the prompt goblin would not care about the judgment of others. They already have the image. This is the exact reason I think the gooners are the only real ai enthusiasts. They wanted a picture of a lady, they got it, they are happy
Also the D&D gamemasters who are generating images of their NPCs!
oh yah! a token that'll be seen by like 8 people at most for one combat is a great use my party wants to identify the monstrous cob of corn their weirdly specific actions lead to on the battlefield and ai slop is an upgrade from just a circle with the letter 'c' on it
My GM's use case is more along the lines of "You walk into the bar and see THIS GUY" than battlemap tokens but basically the same vibe. He has images of all the major personalities in our home base town, regional nobility, major villains, and such.
Yah, in both cases its a temp image to set a general idea of who you're dealing with My group just like, rips the npcs directly from other properties, so plagiarizing shit for their likeness is really, really easy without ai
I used to just rip off MtG art, it's a massive and entirely searchable library of any kind of fantasy genre
The real goal is to harvest agreement: not just that it's okay to generate this image (a neutral act) but that they were RIGHT to do so, that generating this image is praiseworthy.
Which is why they immediately pivoted from "AI lets anyone generate masterpieces like a skilled artist!" to "Do you even prompt, bro? Learn 2 genAI, loser, only skilled Prompt Designers like me can create good AI art."
Given rightward obsessions with dominance, do they see the adoration of their work/“work” as the extollers submitting themselves to them?
It also removes the need for collaboration. If I'm a good artist but a bad writer, I can find a partner to fill in my weaknesses. The right refuses to admit weaknesses and sees art as a solely individual affair.
You will observe the same in right wing political circles - what they crave is not permission to do the thing (the kind of person doing this - typically ablebodied cishet white male - has precious few restrictions on their behavior) but validation that it is a good thing to have done.
Makes me think of that one Twilight Zone episode.
it's more than that, I think - what they want is not so much validation as unqualified agreement, faling in line - recognition that the man doing it is not merely right but the authority of what's right. they want obedience, not permission
They’re so damned pathetic
A lot of actual artists create slop with no soul, and are fine with doing so, because they - and their customers - aren't looking for soul, they're looking for, well, I'll leave that to the imagination of the reader. But being accused of making slop deeply wounds the prompt goblin.
I think there's a difference between the slop made by artists and the slop made by the prompt goblin. The slop made by artists is junkfood. It's a big fat greasy burger that probably isn't very good for you but will absolutely keep you fed. The prompt goblins are putting out inedible grey paste.
Even the most crass commercial slop is made with human intention. It's still an expression of a human's soul, even if the primary element expressed is "I like paychecks", that's still a human emotion AI can only accidentally regurgitate
For sure. Certain corners of the internet - entire subcultures! - would wither and die without slop. But genAI is an anticulture. It's not load bearing for anything except entitlement.
Real slop artists would be able to answer this question, even if it's "this is what gets people's rocks off."
Getting peoples’ rocks off is an entirely valid artistic goal even.
The difference with real art, regardless of the quality of the art, is that with art there's an entire creative process that carries as much - if not more - meaning and value than just what you see at the end. Prompt goblins are just lazy and don't want to be reminded that they're lazy.
Soylent Green!
This is what comes to mind. But upon reflection, I think Garfield has been embedded in our culture so long, it has become ensouled.
I have far more respect for Garfield Guy - hell, even for Dilbert Guy - than for the greatest of the latent vector space search engine enthusiasts. They created slop but at least they created.
yup
And Garfield guy was *honest* about it. He didn't lie or cover anything up. When asked why he made Garfield, he just said, "Money." Dude was honest and upfront.
This is why I skew away from the argument to taste, "AI art is BAD art, which is why it must be destroyed!" Humans make bad art too, but quality isn't the problem. The problem is the attempt to establish that humans don't deserve to make art at ALL if a machine can do it passably instead.
It is a targeted bunker buster strike to their shriveled heart because they created the knock off mass effect hentai picture to produce human praise, and instead they got owned. The entire transaction was supposed to be premised on them being a special boy, but nobody else got the memo.
Musk and Zuck and Bezos saw the merest whiff of judgment over their agendas as an unacceptable betrayal because that is how they think as well The deal they made in their heads was that they would have everlasting adoration for their every decision. Turns out they forgot to ask anyone else about it
There's a really good @juliusgoat.bsky.social piece about this - that what supremacists crave most is not being perceived as the kind of person who does the thing that they do. The parallels with prompt goblins should be apparent. The thing they want most is to be seen as producers, not consumers.
Dan Ariely said at least one true thing imo. In a piece about lying, he said everyone -- even someone who's done monstrous things -- wants to be able to look in the mirror and think they're a good person, or at least that they had no other option. Some people need that reassurance externally, too.
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(Honest man)
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You're so spot on. It's not about buying art - they could always buy art - it's about buying the service of being treated like an artist. They've been able to buy whatever they want their whole lives, but they can never buy the right to be Miyazaki, and it's killing them.
A real catch 22, wherein artists are generally viewed as an unnecessary cost instead of added value. Then, trying to be an artist themselves and not receiving the love the desire is confounding.
I mean, it's not an uncommon response to jealousy, to run down and degrade the object of your jealousy. But the second they think they have a chance to take on that role, they jump on it, and are shocked that it has somehow been run down and degraded.
But (and I think @doriantaylor.com gets credit for this phrasing) they are not on the cutting edge of technology, they are retail users of a tool marketed as "doing all of the work for you." And nothing makes them more furious than having that reality pointed out.
There are parallels in fashion. I say this as someone decidedly *not* into fashion: right wing fashion is decidedly derivative, a lot focused on looking the right way (conformity) and like it is expensive (or what a "poor person" thinks looks expensive).
Actual style is often about not looking the "right" in interesting ways and doesn't need to be expensive. Just thoughtful and expressive
I think @dieworkwear.bsky.social wrote something about that recently but I can't find it
Every one of them has pictured themselves as "more of an ideas guy". i.e. "I come up with the ideas, you do all the work, then we split the profits 80/20."
Addendum: there are a fair number of artists who weren't "good" from a conventional craft POV and their "artistic value" comes entirely from the interesting way in which they were uniquely fucked up. But AI slop isn't unique or interesting, which is sort of the whole deal.
I saw an interesting observation that part of why AI images are so immediately recognisable is that they combine a high level of technical detail with a complete lack of compositional understanding. By the time a human artist could paint like that they would have learnt to compose a picture.
With AI "art" I come back over and over to an observation from Roger Ebert: "[bad movie director] knows that better directors tilt their cameras, but he does not know why."
there was actually a really interesting (IMO) thing with the guy who made the sword waifu back on Twitter. he showed off this AI image of a schoolgirl beheading a dragon, some real artists banged out the same concept as a dunk, all very funny the really interesting one was an MSPaint stick figure
📌
From a technical perspective, I naively would have thought that one of the first things you could teach AI is proper composition rules. If you train it on a lot of [illegally acquired] art with proper composition, why hasn't it pick that up?
If you give two A1s the same training, will their output be the same from the same prompt?
Nope. What they generate is non-determinative. If you give a single model the same prompt twice the output will differ. This is why consistent characters are so hard w AI, & part of why AI video is so computationally expensive.
Shit, even the same model won't output the same image from the same prompt
The funny thing is that right wingers, as a rule, do not understand this. Since the days of Hitler's "degenerate art" exhibition the emphasis has been entirely on photorealistic technique. Real computational artists (people doing actual algoritmic art, not just prompting) hate genAI dorks too.
Oh man i had a conversation with a coworker about a year ago how art that isn’t photorealistic is arguably more important because with the advent of cameras we dont need paintings to capture whats “actually” there but to capture what the artist sees/feels and thats way more expressive
Also this
And in my view, if you want photorealistic art, take a photo.
I... Did the Al prompter actually compare himself to... Steven Spielberg?!? 😳
not only the ways in which they were fucked up but bc it came from human hands which is why generative art is interesting if the code was crafted by the artist, and not if it isn’t if you code a generative art (not “AI”) tool and you use it, that’s art. if i copy it, & run it again, it’s not.
people don’t consider greeting cards made from commercially bought stamps art but if you carve your own stamp from a block, that’s another story
The Ramones, "four great guys, three great chords."
Case in point: Anthony Kiedis. To a lesser extent: Will Ferrell. Coming in with that spice/
They can’t explain why the AI chose the style that it did or the color selection it made which a real artist would have no trouble with.
The only variants of generative visual ML that I found interesting when all this was new was the stuff that was essentially interactive, requiring the user to steer the process. Stuff like controlnet, tools that reorient / blend objects in images, style transfer, etc
This is why nothing AI can make will ever hold a candle to The Room or Troll 2.
I imagine there's a similar explanation behind Elon's embarrassing video game streams
Keeping this close to remind myself: "But being accused of making slop deeply wounds the prompt goblin."
Pretty sure this is on page 25 of the Monster Manual.
"being accused of making slop deeply wounds the prompt goblin" is the best sentence I read all week, also a fantastic opening for a short story.
As was so famously summed up in “it is not enough that the thing be done, the doing of it must also be praised to the heavens to avoid pissy little babies whining everywhere”
I don't remember where I read it but I've seen stories about how, despite all his wealth and fame, Trump was never actually accepted by the upper crust in New York, and it killed him
Oh yeah, the slumlord from Queens? Of course they didn't
Yes, I feel like this conversation has cycled around for my whole life: you can’t say anything any more/ well you can, it’s just that other people can criticise it
Right Winger: . I'm allowed to say that bc of the 1st amendment. In fact, I should be praised for being brave enough to say something so shitty. Trans Person: The Same Right Winger: Well obviously we need to censor that.
Mmm-hmmmm
They want to compel under penalty of law that we all agree their flatulence actually smells like toasty pancakes.
That's basically it yeah
It also highlights their need to be “proven” as creative and intelligent as acknowledged artists and geniuses without ever putting in the hard work to learn
The day after the election, a Trump voter called into Howard Stern He started in hot, complaining about how hard his life was and that's why he voted for Trump Howard was like, you won. You got what you wanted and I hope you're right about everything it still wasn't enough. It's never enough
He was absolutely incensed that Howard wasn’t praising him or publicly saying that Trump voters were the best and brightest and correct all along It was fascinating to listen to
I hate that so much of the time it's the exact thing Lincoln's Cooper Union speech talks about.
Which is why we must always withhold the approval they crave
I mean, with AI is sucking up all the fresh water, generating that image is not a neutral act either.
Yeah I don't mean it's neutral to generate it, just that "leave me alone" is not the extent of their desire
which doesn't detract from your original point, because rightwingers hate the environment too, see it as a resource for them to plunder and nothing more.
Eh i don't think AI is neutral, it's more gross than anything else.
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Ah, thanks for clearing that up.
I will also say: they crave this because generating the image is so easy and straightforward — a mind-numbingly boring process of refreshing the page until you get convincing attempts — that they take even less satisfaction in the final image than actual artists.
‘Not being ignored’ seems to drive a lot of behaviour nowadays. The grinding fear of being unappreciated.
They're so close to understanding that art is about connecting with other people, yet still so far.
Another issue is when they keep reusing those Paint meme drawings that are mostly associated with a certain group of antisocial forums and online platforms. Choice of meme pictures tells more about people sharing it than about the topic they are commenting on.
I hate the wojacks a lot less than the rage comics they replaced, but yeah
I have to disagree. The MS Painted rage faces were ugly, but each of them was different. Wojaks are stamped out at a factory and have no soul.
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Soyjacks on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched npc-beams glitter in the dark near Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like memes in the rain.
Yep. I mean, say what you will about Megalopolis, at a fundamental level I have to admire Francis Ford Coppola’s response to his Razzie nominations and victory, roughly paraphrased: “Fuck the haters, I made the movie I wanted to make.”