I browsed some music on youtube on a fresh, logged out device a few days ago and it was so refreshing to get recommendations based the video I'm currently watching. Like 15 years ago. Now, if I'm logged in, the recommendations next to the playing video are the same ones as on the landing page, utterly useless.

You can go into your yt history and delete videos and it will fix the recommendations

Pro tip for YouTube: don't use the main feed. Instead, look at the recommendations under an interesting video for other ones that catch the eye, and save them into ‘watch later’ playlists by topic.

Also, don't watch random videos under the main account, open an incognito tab for that. With these two approaches combined, YouTube gives me some great recs, especially for music.

Yeah they are sure pushing some things really hard, while I have to reclick on videos I have already seen so that theme doesn't vanish, like some stupid algorithm.

Get FreeTube and never sign in again. Only get served videos from channels you subscribe to (in the app, not on your account)

I think what it pushes on me is bad, but then occasionally I look at it with a fresh account or an account I never use. The suggestions it gives for new accounts is awful. Mostly it's just absolute brain rot content. It's stuff that makes "Ow My Balls!" look thoughtful.

Even if I'm not interested in 95% of what the YouTube algorithm suggests, at least with my actual account it tends not to suggest things that are actually offensive to me.

It seems to me like there's a lot of "engagement bait" in the suggestions it gives. Sometimes that's good, in that it's stuff you'll engage with because you actually find it interesting. Other times it's stuff that keeps you engaged because it makes you angry or something. It doesn't distinguish between "You'll love this video!" and "You'll hate this video, but you'll watch the whole thing!"

But, I don't think we can discount that a lot of people who watch YouTube are absolute idiots who have 2 living brain cells remaining. Any time your feed gets a suggestion based on what other people are engaging with, it's inevitably going to be terrible.

just being in a certain demographic will do that

Many if them couldn't before AI, which is why it's so crazy good un their view.

My goal all through junior high and high school was to become a comic book artist. I'm still sad I never made it because I missed out on the opportunity to help Stan Lee achieve a net worth of $70 million.

More like, it favors giving the money all the people who make a living off of what the artist produces.

Its like a factory. The artists are the workers at the bottom who actually produce and make the art work. Then there are the managers who promote the art and their bosses who sit at the top, running the factory. It is always those who benefit off of other people's hard work who get to enjoy the fruits of other people's labor.

Artists are why publishing houses exist and the reason why editors have a job in the first place, but it is the editors who drive nice cars and live in nice houses while the artists who draw and write the very books the publishers sell, get to enjoy getting paid so little that they can't make a living off of it.

If you look in places like the animation industry, you can point to any of the big animators who helped make Disney big in the 90s and you will see that none of them can get work. None. New animators have no chance. Artists who have been in the business for 20 or 30 years, who are responsible for the movies that defined a generation are jobless and if they get a job, it is the kind of entry level gig that you'd normally only give to a recent graduate.

Illustration had been fucked for decades. They are getting paid the same as in the 80s, but not adjusted for inflation. More often than npt they get offered jobs for exposure and when they land gigs that pays, it will be two months work for one week's pay. Asking for more money is not an option. There are no unions. All they can do is work faster to maybe make the low pay worth it. Meanwhile their editors live in gleaming mansions.

You might end up being one of the lucky few scammers in fine art who become rich people's favourite, but that is a completely different world from the commercial art industry. People work themselves into early graves. There's a reason why Berserk's crestor died in his 50s.

Back problems, wrist problems, eye problems, weight problems. And these are passionate souls, which is why it is so easy to take advantage of them and their skills. Most people in the animation industry burn out before they're 40. You don't see many middle aged artists in the industry today. Some end up teaching. Most leave the industry all together when those who benefit from their hard work has sucked every bone dry.

The higher ups get fat bonuses. They live the great life. Not a creative bone in their body, but they make a living on the piles and piles of passionate souls who will be eaten up and spit out with nothing to show for it.

That is the life of the artist.

The very, very few ones who rise to the top are often those who have a rich family member or spouse to finance their artistic endeavors. Illusteators, painters, authors, animators, you name it. More often than not, the ones who do well and are successful, have no real financial problems in their lives because their loved ones got them covered.

It's easy to make an amazing piece of art when you don't have to worry about money.

Yeah, like the Renaissance before capitalism! Let me check my notes, oh, uh, looks like "all the money to a few big artists" was the thing then as well.

this_engine_is_a_capitalist.jpg

I hate Matisse but apparently just because they use his trash to money laund he's some sort of genius.

a few big artists, who ironically aren't necessarily even that good.

I get your point and all, but I just had to ask - how do you define and separate 'good' from 'bad' art, though?

I agree with you though, the traditional art world is no different from any other industry under capitalism. It's filled with sharks, ass kissing and networking. Most either come from fame, and/or from a wealthy family who's willing to support them. It's more important to be a driven entrepreneur with good social skills and the right connections, than an artist.

60 km2 square radius

Dude here lives in a 6D space.

People who make one kind of art can undervalue another kind.

This came up back on Reddit in the "what's that book?" sub. Someone posted asking about a book; they had 6 lines of preamble about why they wanted to reread this, and 55 lines that were an excerpt from the book. This is normally a slam dunk--it's pretty trivial to search for literal text. But nobody could find it. Discussion with the user led to the revelation that they'd asked AI about a book and described a scene they remembered, and the AI had responded with a title and "excerpt" matching what the user described. But then the user still couldn't find the book, so they posted the "excerpt" to the subreddit. I.e., they were asking for a book containing an AI hallucination, rather than just describing the book to us the way they had to the AI. In fact the story they were searching for was "Harrison Bergeron," one of the most commonly asked-about things on the subreddit, but nobody recognized it until we understood that the excerpt was slop made up in response to a scene they misremembered as part of the story.

It's a frustrating time to be a human on the internet.

I think I'd rather read someone's prompt instead of having them paste me the output. I can always run it myself if I want, but a lot of the time I'd rather cut out the AI

Yeah, one of the things that I WILL say there's an art to... is trying to get Genmoji to generate emojis of copyrighted things without triggering its programming. All creativity goes into basically doing everything you can to walk around the obvious

I would actually like to read people's AI prompts.

A a series fb post from an elderly lady attempting to prompt facebook into simulating her deceased child.

"Keep it realistic. don't make make them sound too kind."

well engineered prompts are like a dive into the "psychology" of whatever AI tool you are using. I like the ones that go like "whatever you do, don't put an elephant in the picture"

yeah if gen AI progression keeps going with the same speed and hardware costs manage to decrease "turn this book into a graphical novel/computer game"s will be on the horizon.