Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fake Fans

wordsfromeliza.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 65 posts

Re: Fake Fans

#11

Post by doctorpangloss »

cobbzilla wrote: post #3

Modern payola. Fascinating but not entirely unpredictable. I’m excited by the focus on hyper-local, authenticity is the scarce resource. Great artists are usually not the best marketers, but nothing beats “I am here, this is real”. No amount of algorithmic magic can create that experience.

Not at all. Saying something like that is the loudest signal for how out of touch you are with how audiences are made.

From the article:

> "...it’s like the first thing that they see or that first comment that they see is their opinion even when they haven’t heard the whole album.”

What is this trying to say? For every 1 person who thinks about truth in some independent way, I don't care if it's spiritual or because they do scientific tests for what the best music is or all of this other stuff; there are 19 people who are, "LIKES = TRUTH".

Are you getting it? That has nothing to do with payola or authenticity or scarcity or whatever. You have no idea anyway, you've never had to make a creative product. Likes = truth. Authenticity is the seeming unlikelihood that social media content authors are bought and sold. It's the OPPOSITE of what you think. It is the OPPOSITE of payola. And look, they're right. The vast majority of opinions on TikTok are not paid for. This is the OPPOSITE of radio.

Re: Fake Fans

#12

Post by mbb70 »

jfengel wrote: post #6
cobbzilla wrote: post #3

Modern payola. Fascinating but not entirely unpredictable. I’m excited by the focus on hyper-local, authenticity is the scarce resource. Great artists are usually not the best marketers, but nothing beats “I am here, this is real”. No amount of algorithmic magic can create that experience.

I have found that the great artists you've heard of tend to also be great marketers, or at the very least found great marketers. I know quite a few extremely talented artists who could never crack the marketing, and so nobody else has ever heard of them. Even local fame requires a fair bit of hustle. Talent alone doesn't get you there.

Reminds me of "a terrible project with a great slide deck might end up decent. A great project with a terrible slide deck won't even exist."

In the real world there is no If You Build It They Will Come, you've got to get the word out

Re: Fake Fans

#13

Post by cobbzilla »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #11
cobbzilla wrote: post #3

Modern payola. Fascinating but not entirely unpredictable. I’m excited by the focus on hyper-local, authenticity is the scarce resource. Great artists are usually not the best marketers, but nothing beats “I am here, this is real”. No amount of algorithmic magic can create that experience.

Not at all. Saying something like that is the loudest signal for how out of touch you are with how audiences are made. From the article: > "...it’s like the first thing that they see or that first comment that they see is their opinion even when they haven’t heard the whole album.” What is this trying to say? For every 1 person who thinks about truth in some independent way, I don't care if it's spiritual or because…

> Likes = truth

sounds like pop culture = art

which is obviously not true

Re: Fake Fans

#14

Post by adamtaylor_13 »

Pieces like this all seem to be written with an unspoken assumption that anyone who wants to make a living wage from being an artist should be able to, as if it's some sort of right.

It would be nice if that were true.

AI has exacerbated this issue. Suddenly we're faced with the uncomfortable truth that much of human artwork is "mid" as the kids would say and people aren't willing to pay for songs, writing, and/or graphics the way they otherwise might.

Anyway, I'm very curious if anyone has a good argument for why anyone who wishes to be an artist is owed a living wage for merely their desire to be recognized as economically valuable.

Re: Fake Fans

#15

Post by palmotea »

adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #14

Pieces like this all seem to be written with an unspoken assumption that anyone who wants to make a living wage from being an artist should be able to, as if it's some sort of right. It would be nice if that were true. AI has exacerbated this issue. Suddenly we're faced with the uncomfortable truth that much of human artwork is "mid" as the kids would say and people aren't willing to pay for songs, writing, and/or gr…

> Pieces like this all seem to be written with an unspoken assumption that anyone who wants to make a living wage from being an artist should be able to, as if it's some sort of right.

Comments like yours seem to be written with the unspoken assumption that everyone's life should be hard unless they can please the market, which technology makes increasingly difficult. It's deeply anti-human.

> AI has exacerbated this issue. Suddenly we're faced with the uncomfortable truth that much of human artwork is "mid" as the kids would say and people aren't willing to pay for songs, writing, and/or graphics the way they otherwise might.

Is that news to anyone? But mid people exist, they worthy people, and they need to eat. AI is leading us to a dystopia where, unless you're in the top 0.1% of talent, the market has no use for you. And guess what happens to you then?

> Anyway, I'm very curious if anyone has a good argument for why anyone who wishes to be an artist is owed a living wage for merely their desire to be recognized as economically valuable.

Because that was the last promise the tech bros made: our tech will replace you, then you get to be an artist, be creative! Now it will take your creative job, and free you up for draining monitoring tasks and manual labor.

Re: Fake Fans

#16

Post by y-curious »

palmotea wrote: post #15
adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #14

Pieces like this all seem to be written with an unspoken assumption that anyone who wants to make a living wage from being an artist should be able to, as if it's some sort of right. It would be nice if that were true. AI has exacerbated this issue. Suddenly we're faced with the uncomfortable truth that much of human artwork is "mid" as the kids would say and people aren't willing to pay for songs, writing, and/or gr…

> Pieces like this all seem to be written with an unspoken assumption that anyone who wants to make a living wage from being an artist should be able to, as if it's some sort of right. Comments like yours seem to be written with the unspoken assumption that everyone's life should be hard unless they can please the market, which technology makes increasingly difficult. It's deeply anti-human. > AI has exacerbated this…

People are only willing to pay for quality, mostly. I can’t just say that I’m a neurosurgeon because I want to be one. There has always been reward for merit and suffering for lack of merit.

Nothing “anti human” about social Darwinism

Re: Fake Fans

#17

Post by conception »

adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #14

Pieces like this all seem to be written with an unspoken assumption that anyone who wants to make a living wage from being an artist should be able to, as if it's some sort of right. It would be nice if that were true. AI has exacerbated this issue. Suddenly we're faced with the uncomfortable truth that much of human artwork is "mid" as the kids would say and people aren't willing to pay for songs, writing, and/or gr…

Software engineers should be asking themselves that same question day in and out. All know workers actually. The cost to produce art has dropped to zero. The cost to get knowledge on a topic - effectively zero. The cost to write basic software - effectively zero. The cost to produce today’s software will never be higher than today. In six months the chances that it’s significantly cheaper to do so are very high.

Re: Fake Fans

#18

Post by onion2k »

conception wrote: post #17
adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #14

Pieces like this all seem to be written with an unspoken assumption that anyone who wants to make a living wage from being an artist should be able to, as if it's some sort of right. It would be nice if that were true. AI has exacerbated this issue. Suddenly we're faced with the uncomfortable truth that much of human artwork is "mid" as the kids would say and people aren't willing to pay for songs, writing, and/or gr…

Software engineers should be asking themselves that same question day in and out. All know workers actually. The cost to produce art has dropped to zero. The cost to get knowledge on a topic - effectively zero. The cost to write basic software - effectively zero. The cost to produce today’s software will never be higher than today. In six months the chances that it’s significantly cheaper to do so are very high.

The cost to produce art has dropped to zero.

The cost to produce an image has dropped to pretty much zero, but whether an image is 'art' is a question people have been struggling with for a long, long time. Art is usually considered to be the expression of something more meaningful than just making a picture, and in order to express something as a work of art you need to live, feel, and experience that thing (or a proxy of that thing.) There's a reason why we have entire art movements called things like "impressionism"; that's the artist creating what they believe impressed something on themselves, and trying to transfer some of that feeling on to the viewer of their artwork.

That is entirely missing in AI generated artwork.

The problem for artists is that very few people care about that aspect of art, and just want something nice to hang on a wall.

Re: Fake Fans

#19

Post by jemmyw »

adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #14

Pieces like this all seem to be written with an unspoken assumption that anyone who wants to make a living wage from being an artist should be able to, as if it's some sort of right. It would be nice if that were true. AI has exacerbated this issue. Suddenly we're faced with the uncomfortable truth that much of human artwork is "mid" as the kids would say and people aren't willing to pay for songs, writing, and/or gr…

I think that AI isn't the only thing exacerbating this issue. More people are doing artistic like things as hobbies. The internet makes it easier to learn and the cost of entry has gone down - paints, canvases, brushes, guitars, pianos, film equipment, the low end has gone up in quality and down in price.

I do some painting and I've met quite a few local artists. Some are amazing and some not so much. I haven't met anyone making a living from it though, not the creative stuff anyway. A couple of them do make a living by doing commercial work. One friend, who seems to try the hardest, does book illustrations, runs classes, prints and sells her own work, and makes a loss every year so is supported by her partner, who is a builder.

There are two art galleries in town. I go to both regularly. The work has never been flying off the shelves. And some of it deserves to.

None of the above has anything to do with AI. It was the same before AI, and AI doesn't paint physical pictures anyway. I've seen some digital art prints but they're really not popular for whatever reason.

To answer your question then: my argument is that most artists don't expect to earn a living from it at all. And if more people are engaged in creation (not a bad thing) then it would logically follow that there is less chance of making money.

Probably the most tragic thing in my opinion is that if I visit the art exhibition for my local town, the artwork on display is wonderfully varied in quality, style and imagination, and when I visited a national gallery recently displaying the works of modern artists who have "made it" to that level, it was all absolute shite. Actual technical ability seems to be being relegated to poverty artists.

Re: Fake Fans

#20

Post by wolvesechoes »

y-curious wrote: post #16
palmotea wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pieces like this all seem to be written with an unspoken assumption that anyone who wants to make a living wage from being an artist should be able to, as if it's some sort of right. Comments like yours seem to be written with the unspoken assumption that everyone's life should be hard unless they can please the market, which technology makes increasingly difficult. It's deeply anti-human. > AI has exacerbated this…

People are only willing to pay for quality, mostly. I can’t just say that I’m a neurosurgeon because I want to be one. There has always been reward for merit and suffering for lack of merit. Nothing “anti human” about social Darwinism

> There has always been reward for merit and suffering for lack of merit.

But conflating merit with economical value is very recent invention.

> Nothing “anti human” about social Darwinism

It didn't arise until rise of capitalism and bourgeoise (lack of) morality. For most of human history, and among countless cultures, social Darwinism wasn't the case.

Peak ideology, btw.

Post reply on HN