AI isn’t stealing jobs any more than cheap clip art has. The only people who would resort to AI for illustration stopped hiring actual artists ages ago, they buy from shutterstock and the like instead.

The reason artists are pissed id because they used our art to train the AI without our permission. And no, its not the same thing as an artist learning from others, first because of the scale, and second because a student who is learning from other artists isn’t looking to copy an existing style, they’re learning and developing their own. AI just regurgitates what it already knows and attempts to imitate the style of an actual person. It was developed specifically to do that.

If a human being copies the style of another artist rather than develop their own, they’ll be called out too. No one has ever been okay with that, ever.

I know nature vs nurture is a huge debate and all but I have to wonder what the hell went wrong in this kid’s upbringing for him to do something so vile to a little baby. Jesus Christ she’s one year old! What the FUCK.

Existence is very scary. The randomness of it all, the indifference of the universe, how little we matter, the finality of death… not everyone can cope with this stuff. Religion provides hope and comfort to them.

I mean I wish we’d move past religion, but I don’t think it’ll ever happen. Being alive is fucking terrifying.

UFOlogy is huge in Brazil. They have a lot of famous “incidents”, google Varginha alien and you’ll see what I mean.

I’m not a believer at all, I just happen to know about it cause I lived there for a while and one of my coworkers was a UFO nut.

What you’re missing is the fact that it would be a huge risk and we have mouths to feed and bills to pay. Who’s to say the other people in the mutual aid group will stick around? Without a job I have no health insurance, what happens if I get cancer? Who pays for that? How do I know that I’ll be able to pay rent every month? With whose money? What happens if my dog needs surgery, who pays for that? Where do I get money for groceries?

Also as one of the working poor I have never relied on charity for anything because I live in a shit hole that doesn’t really even offer anything. Only churches do charity work here and my gay ass is not welcome there.

That’s not even taking into account the fact that you’d have to get people to agree to help each other. Do you think all the racist white assholes in my town will join up with black and Mexican families? lmao

I was talking about social media specifically.

There aren’t nearly as many right wingers and fascists as social media makes you believe. Speaking as a Mastodon instance admin, every single time we’ve had huge waves of bot and/or troll signups they’ve been very clearly right wing accounts (almost all had similar bios) that almost immediately started interacting with and boosting each other as well as harassing trans and queer people.

The thing about the fediverse is that it can’t be manipulated the way centralized social media can. So what happens is that it gets handled very quickly. They get banned and their instances get defederated so all they can do is shout into the void. They’re not, nor have they ever been, the majority by any stretch of the imagination, and most people have absolutely no desire to hear what they have to say at all.

On top of that, a huge number of them are grifters, and they won’t get any engagement here. They can’t get the kind of viral outrage they need because most people aren’t even seeing their posts.

USA here. Only reason I have WhatsApp is to stay in touch with friends in Europe and South America. Not a single one of my American friends or relatives uses it.

Jesus Christ I don’t even let my dog bark during the day. I always bring him inside. What the hell is wrong with people?

I legitimately can’t imagine how awful it must be to be trans in Russia. Well, pretty much anywhere really, now that I think of it. Trans people just can’t catch a break. I feel so bad for them.

I can’t imagine going through life thinking that everything I love and/or desire will send me to hell or whatever. Imagine living in fear because you think someone is watching and judging you. No thanks.

I don’t see any advantage to having any kind of religious faith. Seems like it just limits your options and gives you nothing in return.

RIGHT? It’s fucking insane that no one seems to be talking about this. I’ve been trying for years and people just roll their eyes or ignore me. What the fuck.

And it’s completely because people don’t think about it and/or don’t understand how this stuff works. The app says “share your contacts to find your friends!” and people just go “cool ok”.

Here’s a not-cool story: Facebook showed my friend a photo of her rapist under “people you may know”. Fucking hell.

Doesn’t matter if you’re using an iPhone or android. They have your number, email, etc. (either given by you or by someone else when they uploaded their contacts to Facebook/instagram/whatsapp) and everything you do is tracked and logged.

That’s the thing about Meta. They gather info from literally billions of people, it doesn’t matter if you personally handed it over or not. Everyone who has your info — name, phone number, email, work number, etc. has probably already shared all or some of it with Meta. The moment you sign up and give them any info at all that matches your info in someone’s contacts, they’ll know it’s you.

If you don’t want them tracking you, your only option is to not use their services and block all their trackers. They’ll have your info anyway, but at least they won’t be able to track your activity.

Edit: a lot of people don’t grasp how bad the situation is with Meta. They trick people into uploading their contacts by requesting access to “help you find your friends” across their services, and they match that info and create a shadow profile for everyone. As soon as you sign up to any of their services, they’ll match that shadow profile to you. That’s why you immediately see people you know even though you just created an account. You’re in their contacts. Facebook has outed countless gay and trans people, as well as sex workers. They will also recommend your therapist’s clients to you as “people you may know” because you all have the therapist’s phone number.

It’s a nightmare. I’ve been trying to make people aware of it for like a decade or something like that. No one listens.