The Thing About Social Media, Part 2—Thank you, but no.

Thank you for your offer, but no. I quit. 

The AI revolution is here, and it will not go away …

… I still believe that artificial stupidity would be a better term. AI can be useful—I use ChatGPT for my paid work and for my creative business, mainly to create meaningless blurbs that both demand more and more. 

ChatGPT is superb at creating meaningless blurbs. It is also quite good as a relentless critic for my posts … it had a look at this one and found it lacking. Fair enough. 

Knowing a thing is bad for you and not doing it are two different things.

I have wasted so much time creating content for social media … I knew better and ran into the trap with open eyes. It’s the old carrot and stick dynamic and it sucked me in and drowned me. Meta’s decision to change their privacy policies around AI training was the bucket of cold water I needed. Thank you. 

One last word about the past.

Imagine being an artist, writer, or maker ten years ago and receiving a job offer with the following job description: You will create curated text, image, video, and audio content acting as screenwriter, videographer, photographer, editor, presenter and stylist. You will bring your own equipment. You will dedicate a good part of your creating time to our product and deliver said content at least three times a week at our preferred times and in our preferred formats. Your content should be autobiographical, and next to your art feature you, your studio, your house, and friends. 

You will lose all rights to your content as soon as you deliver it. In return, random people with a preference for pictures of cats and memes with captions in Comic Sans will judge your content within the first seconds of uploading. If they are in your favour, we will arrange for your content to be seen or not seen by people who may or may not be interested in it for a few minutes. Our content distribution process works like a pyramid scheme—the more popular a creator is, the more screen or feed time they get. You are not, but we need your content as potential filler between ads. 

Of course, we own all customer or fan relationships you will create on our product. When you switch to another product, you may not inform or invite your fanbase to follow you. 

The first word about the future

Thank you for your offer, but no. I quit. 

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Other news

The first locally printed New Zealand edition of The Fragments is be available on my website. It looks amazing … if I say so myself.