His argument was literally that

  • artists, writers, and programmers are "labor aristocracy" and deserve no respect because they're sitting around making art and writing code while other people are toiling and laboring,
  • genAI is a "free resource" ("it's free for me to use at work") that "helps everyone make things" instead of having to rely on skill and expertise and therefore makes everything equal,
  • it's hypocritical of people to be worried about the environmental and societal impact of genAI because "only white people are worried about it now that their hobbies are being threatened and everyone else is catching up".

Pointing out there there are artists and programmers from every race and economic class, as well as perfectly ordinary people in every walk of life who are all actively being harmed both by the theft of ideas and labor and by the physical effects of gigantic data centers ruining communities, was met with much hand-waving and incredibly impenetrable philosophical jargon.

I'm particularly incensed because I'm as leftist and anticapitalist as they come and this felt like the fuckery some conservative cockwomble would try to come up with to parody socialism, except this guy was completely serious.

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[–] 3 points 1 day ago (1 child)

Nah! You see, real workers break their backs at factories, lift weights, sweat, etc. You just sit at a computer and most of the time you don't even type you just stare at the screen. That doesn't even qualify as work!

/s obviously, but I've heard sincere variations of this and I'm sure you too.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago

    Yeah, I've been told something along those lines often enough. Usually by people whom would be permanently broken in twain by three months of pre-E3 crunch time, never to recover.

    Not that it's particularly relevant since they wouldn't be able to do the job in the first place. Then again, I freely admit that I'd make for one hell of a plumber, but not in a good way.

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