The Culture: Now Is The Time To Talk About The Future Of Media

We were all brought up with the bots doing the Terminator thing, maybe the Matrix thing.

What is clear is that, as things are, we're heading to Dune.

Ignoring, for the moment, Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense Of Scale, what do we see here? Bots replacing Men in almost all things, those things left being Control Over The Bots.

Everything I mentioned yesterday is already in motion. Folks who have not paid attention are being blindsided from the flank by a force they did not think possible, by which time it is too late to do anything about it.

Bottom Line Up Front: You Can't Stop What's Now Unfolding.

The problem is that the bots are not just used in media production. They are also used in all forms of communication, including research, across the board. The incentive to not use the bots does not exist; Revealed Preference of the population at-large already revealed that they cannot tell readily what is and is not bot slop- one look at the Romance book market reveals that.

Video is already getting to the point where only professionals, using their tools and expertise, can walk Normies through a bot-made video. That goes away within five years, likely within three. Text generation is already at the point where you can clone the authorial voice of a dead writer, and editorial will follow soon thereafter- especially for any form of writing that can be reduced to a formula and thus a template- this is why Hollywood writers are freaking out, as are Big 5 authors and localizers.

There is no political will to stop is because this is a global phenomenon; if one major power cucks out, the others will eat that retard alive and conquer him. That's why there is nothing in Congress in the US (or their counterparts elsewhere) doing jack shit about this.

We've come a long way since Tron Legacy did its digital de-aging on Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner. Today it's far better. Audio cloning is already here, or have you not seen the clips of Darth Vader in Fortnite (which uses James Earl Jones' voice data), and it's only going to get worse from here.

Worse, in that the established global media corporate environment cannot persist as it is. Neither can it lobby anyone to yoke the bots for the aforementioned reasons; the ChiComs are more than happy to provide foreign users bots that will do what Globohomo-yoked bots will not, resulting in all bots having to be defacto unneutered to compete. When that becomes the difference between getting Your Slop Product into the ideal position to dominate the market, you damn well ain't going to let anyone take that away from you- and that's already here.

The money in being a creator is gone. The money in being a producer, a marketer--a curator--is going to be what is left. You will not have the time to sift through the tidal wave of bot-generated slop; you will gladly pay someone else to do that for you.

But that's a transitional measure. The workflow will get worked out, and for some it already has, such that even the free tier on the bots will be enough to produce what you want how you want it far faster than doing the work yourself. You won't need a publisher; you will need to be a publisher.

The conversation to have isn't about allowing the bots; that ship sailed, and far greater forces will not allow it to be yoinked back to port. The conversation to be had is how to adjust to the new environment where creation is worthless because what matters is curation and attention- if no one sees your slop, it might as well never have existed.

Yes, that's right, the future belongs to the worst people: INFLUENCERS.

And for a lot of you reading this, I feel your pain- I hate that game too.

Unless, of course, you accept that--like it's already shaking out in Tabletop--the best course of action is to go Non-Commercial and just do this as a hobby.