My take on AI and social media
You have probably noticed that I don't sell online. Why? Several reasons. Chiefly because we lose so much of the haptic, visceral sensations received through touch, smell, taste and sound when we choose to experience the world through the artifice of digital media, using only our sense of sight to navigate. It's a close as you can get to a dead experience.
But now we have AI on the scene...
"Get on board with AI or be left behind."
I see and hear that sentiment everywhere lately, and increasingly so, but I've looked up to see the road ahead and the destination isn't one I wish to go to.
Yes, when AI first appeared in 2023 I used it to see what this novel thing was all about, and even naively fed AI my own work at one point. I wasn't overly impressed with what it did.
More recently so many people, especially artists that I've heard from or seen on social media in the last 7 or so months of using it have had worked 'scraped', i.e. stolen, by AI in some way and turned into AI slop which ends up on cr@p from Temu or wherever.
Social Media
I've noticed in my short time on Instagram that we are very quickly moving into AI driven, algorithmically based social media experiences, something else I don't particularly want to be part of.
Why?
Because I don't want my experience of the world to be mediated through digital platforms belonging to American tech trillionaires and billionaires, via a hand held black rectangular tracking device they call a smartphone.
I don't want to channel my identity through the corporate cloak of Meta or anyone else for that matter.
I currently have Instagram, and only because everyone said when I first began this venture "you need a social media presence". My 7 months or so on Instagram has been a real lesson in just how things have changed since I last used any social media over a decade ago.
I don't post there much because 'online' is not my home world; it's not my native natural environment as a human being, and my visibility and survival - both business and personal - in the REAL tangible physical world is not and should not be contingent on the algorithm-based 'performance' metrics of my 'presence' in the digital spaces owned by aforementioned TechBro™ billionaires.
I'll probably end up nuking my instagram and whatever else is necessary before the introduction of ID being required to access it. I've been against digital ID and the surveillance state for as long as I can remember and I have a strong feeling that being offline will be the new desired 'luxury' lifestyle, with nobody knowing what you're doing 24/7.
This offline way of living might also be forced upon us in the not too distant future, hence my creation of the Post Electric Society.