The Business: The Colony Drop Is Wider Than We Thought

The immediate consequence of the bots hitting that critical threshold at which content generation as a skillset is devalued to zero is not one that indies and small fry want to hear.

The Normies Will Retreat And Retrench Around Big Brands

"But that makes no sense?"

You don't know Normies.

Normies do not want anything to rock the boat. They are Status Quo Enjoyers. They get upset when you push too hard too fast in any direction; wars started over that stuff.

Now what do you think they're going to do when they are deluged by Endless Bot Slop?

They're going to demand that Someone Do Something, and that's going to take the form of the already winning corporate parties seizing the opportunity to cement that dominance by playing off Normie desire for stability via Status Quo and reposition themselves as the Reliable Standard of Quality.

The Big 5 in publishing already do this, as does the Big Two in US Comics, and it does work; being able to throw up your stuff on Amazon, or even have a good website to receive and redirect traffic to storefronts, will not be enough. Big Corpo is already in the Normiesphere; they're going to use that position to tell people that--like McDonald's being the same worldwide (more or less)--they can count on (Brand) to be what they need no matter what.

You better believe it will work.

"But that's terrible slop itself!"

Yep. But it's the slop everyone knows and everyone calibrates their expectations again. In the utter chaos that is now hitting entertainment media, the majority will flee to the apparant safety of (Brand) simply to reduce the cognitive load down to what they find acceptable- especially for any form of entertainment. Normies will not go out of their way for anything, moreso for entertainment; they will not Git Gud if they have any other option.

So who's going to win here? Wizards of the Coast, Games Workshop, Marvel, Star Wars, Bandai, and similar Brands.

But it's not a long-term situation. As the bot-driven content regime becomes normalized, that Wild Frontier will settle down and close off; it is at this point that Normies will become comfortable enough to permit themselves go beyond the Brand Bastions once more.

But what will be there will be a non-commercial field; instead, at best, people will throw money at folks they like--as they do now--in hopes of keeping that specific stuff flowing, but even then the Big Brand and their Network Effects will remain the dominant powers.

That's a scary world for a lot of people, but in reality is a Revertion To The Mean: media creation is an avocation for most, save for a handful allowed to work full-time due to the support of a patron paying the bills, so folks will be creating for ego and status instead of to make a living.

Get used to the end of Industrialized Entertainment.