Inkbunny

My comment was made as satire, not directed AT any one individual or even at any group, but the general mindset the internet has taken in the last several years. If you've taken it as a personal affront... it does kind of prove my point, but it was not the intention.

...This is my own fault for speaking up and getting involved. It never goes well. You'd think I'd have learned better by now, but here we are.

Balmung

1 week, 4 days ago

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@ XPAuthor

Sorry, but as I said in another comment, satire simply doesn't work online anymore. What you said is said by complete seriousness by other people and I don't know you well enough to tell.

And no, I'm not taking offense, but really speaking in a straightforward manner would be very helpful here. This is enough of a mess as it is.

Balmung

1 week, 5 days ago

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Satire is dead on the internet and shouldn't be used. The internet is global and immense. Not nearly everyone will parse the subtleties of the English language. Any position no matter how insane has representation somewhere, and in the modern internet the few crazy people that believe it form a Discord server, or what have you.

We've also gone from forming tight knit groups where everyone knows everyone and there's a pervasive concept of "netiquette" and "lurk moar" to indiscriminate sharing of content and people dropping in from a link posted somewhere else entirely. You can't rely on people understanding some sort of context because it's highly likely that all they know is that you said something and they showed up to support, oppose or comment on it.

Yes, of course I understand you aren't literally suggesting hanging somebody by the testicles. But I do believe that any suggestion of violence towards a disagreement over pictures on the internet is unacceptable, no matter how cartoonish. I also highly dislike any normalization of violent speech towards others as a general principle, that just doesn't make for a good society.

Meowmere

1 week, 5 days ago

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"	Satire is dead on the internet and shouldn't be used.

Nah dude. Satire is our last bastion of freedom. I'll die before I let illiteracy towards subtext and sensitivity to emotive words force me to sweat in anxiety over what I can and can't write.

I have done my best to allow for a healthy discussion.
I can't in good conscience tell people they are not allowed to foster negative emotions.

beforethefall

1 week, 5 days ago

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Satire isn't dead. Literacy is. :p

WizardsTariff

1 week, 5 days ago

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A-fucking-men to that. 100%, don't let the thought police win!

LemmyNiscuit

1 week, 5 days ago

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> Satire is dead on the internet and shouldn't be used.

They didn't use satire in their expression, they used hyperbole.

> The internet is global and immense.

That's kinda cool I guess.

> Not nearly everyone will parse the subtleties of the English language.

What's special about the ability to parse the subtleties of the English language over any other language?

> Any position no matter how insane has representation somewhere, and in the modern internet the few crazy people that believe it form a Discord server, or what have you.

Johannes Gutenberg sends his regards.

> We've also gone from forming tight knit groups where everyone knows everyone and there's a pervasive concept of "netiquette" and "lurk moar" to indiscriminate sharing of content and people dropping in from a link posted somewhere else entirely.

What is an example of "discriminate" content-sharing? I'm having trouble parsing that because I was around when the internet began and it's always kind of just been defaulted to indiscriminate content sharing. Shock content was a thing before the internet, it is prominent on the internet.

Also, focusing on the first part of this:

> We've also gone from forming tight knit groups where everyone knows everyone [...]

We're actually going back to that. People are lamenting that forums where information used to be shared in a common way are being fractured into communities on Reddit, Discord, and other places, where you can't just easily look up information on Google anymore. The internet is probably more a fiefdom today than it was in the 90s.

> You can't rely on people understanding some sort of context because it's highly likely that all they know is that you said something and they showed up to support, oppose or comment on it.

Requiring everyone to understand "some sort of context" for me to be expressive however I choose to be is asinine.

> Yes, of course I understand you aren't literally suggesting hanging somebody by the testicles. But I do believe that any suggestion of violence towards a disagreement over pictures on the internet is unacceptable, no matter how cartoonish.

I'm genuinely confused about this hill you're on considering most of your content is applying the natural predator/prey behavior in our world upon the furry world and having artists depict brutality, death, gore, rape, and murder (which I think is a fascinating concept and I have always appreciated your interpretation of that even though it's very much not my thing).

By the way, the world and stories you create is satire.

> I also highly dislike any normalization of violent speech towards others as a general principle, that just doesn't make for a good society.

I think suppressing peoples' ability to express themselves how they choose at the behest of the potential sensibilities of others is a gross malicious application of boundaries; and that the pervasive gross malicious application of boundaries doesn't make for a good society.

Balmung

1 week, 5 days ago

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@ LemmyNiscuit

"	LemmyNiscuit wrote:
	I'm genuinely confused about this hill you're on considering most of your content is applying the natural predator/prey behavior in our world upon the furry world and having artists depict brutality, death, gore, rape, and murder (which I think is a fascinating concept and I have always appreciated your interpretation of that even though it's very much not my thing).

I've got no problems with things like brutality and murder in principle. But only very firmly within the realm of fiction. I've never made any such implications towards real people or kinds of people.

In fact over time I found I'm not even very comfortable depicting realistic scenarios, which is why over time I gravitated to intentionally extreme, unrealistic, predator/prey scenarios.

"	LemmyNiscuit wrote:
	By the way, the world and stories you create is satire.

My position is that it's merely world building. It's not supposed to be a metaphor, a commentary on real world politics or behavior or anything of the sort. It's just an experiment of starting with some extreme parameters and seeing where things go from there.

I'm quite curious about what creation of mine you think is satire and of what.

"	LemmyNiscuit wrote:
	I think suppressing peoples' ability to express themselves how they choose at the behest of the potential sensibilities of others is a gross malicious application of boundaries; and that the pervasive gross malicious application of boundaries doesn't make for a good society.

I don't see it. I didn't say the criticisms or views aren't legitimate. I just said I can't support violent speech towards people that simply make pictures in ways the speaker doesn't approve of. Because that's ridiculous.

LemmyNiscuit

1 week, 5 days ago

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> I'm quite curious about what creation of mine you think is satire and of what.

As I recall several of your stories, maybe your older ones, had notes of classism where the predators were implied to be upper-class or wealthy, and the prey were lower-case, poor, or of a class that was seen an "sub-species." Several of the stories had implications that abusing them physically and sexually was seen as either inconsequential or even moral, or as a way for the predator to exert their power by torturing their food.

Intentional or not on your part, there's a lot of satirical commentary you can interpret within that.

> I don't see it. I didn't say the criticisms or views aren't legitimate. I just said I can't support violent speech towards people that simply make pictures in ways the speaker doesn't approve of. Because that's ridiculous.

You've got every right to have a personal opinion about it and to express it. I just think that to some degrees you're going beyond that in ways I don't think make the best sense, because they made appeals to things that don't have as much merit as they sound like they have.

You're also now being inconsistent. You keep referring to the hyperbole in question as violent speech, but then said "satire is dead," implying that it is also satire. These two things, at least the way I know them, are mutually exclusive.

If you consider the hyperbole in question to be violent speech, you will absolutely not like the speech I use to vent my own frustrations about whoever the FUCK conceived the idea of making a UI window "always on top" in a way that I can't turn off.

Balmung

1 week, 5 days ago

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@ LemmyNiscuit

LemmyNiscuit wrote:

That's not how it works in my setting, there's no unified society like in Zootopia. Predators and prey are entirely separate, with their own societies, laws and rules. Prey don't have a class in predator society, they're not even part of the hierarchy.

Prey are less technologically developed and predators more so, but not because of any superiority/inferiority real or social, but because prey don't get to live that long and that makes tech development very hard.

For predators, prey are supposed to be killed quickly and only as needed. Most of my predator characters break the rules of their own society because it'd be boring otherwise. Characters can believe anything, but that doesn't mean it's considered proper.

The setting has changed somewhat over time, but I don't think any story ever said that the torture was moral.

"	LemmyNiscuit wrote:
	You've got every right to have a personal opinion about it and to express it. I just think that to some degrees you're going beyond that in ways I don't think make the best sense, because they made appeals to things that don't have as much merit as they sound like they have.

Okay, which ways?

"	LemmyNiscuit wrote:
	You're also now being inconsistent. You keep referring to the hyperbole in question as violent speech, but then said "satire is dead," implying that it is also satire. These two things, at least the way I know them, are mutually exclusive.

I used the word "satire" because it's the word that was used in the post, so I referenced it directly.

Satire, hyperbole, whatever. My point is that on the current internet this is not a good idea for various reasons, like Poe's Law.

DanielBunny

1 week, 5 days ago

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I was excited about AI here on Inkbunny, because I don't feel a lot of artist focus too much on the "fur" part of furry. Little, if any, detail, and some seeming to actively avoid anything that was textured more than just colored skin. AI filled this void at first. The fur was amazing, and since most artists were not doing that level of detail often, if at all, and others having done it in the past but stopped because of how time consuming it is, AI creators filled that niche for me. However, now I'm seeing AI creations moving away from fur, and that's disappointing, because 99% of everything else just looks cookie-cutter. I'd rather AI creators focus more on what we don't have rather than what we have an abundance of.

MSTR

1 week, 5 days ago

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That's not how "AI" works though. It fundamentally cannot create. It can only copy what it has taken from elsewhere. If there is very little of a specific style or subject out there to begin with, genAI will be terrible at making more. Where genAI "shines", for lack of a better term, is lowest-common-denominator slop. The more generic something is, the better AI can copy it.

DanielBunny

1 week, 5 days ago

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@ MSTR

I mean I'm not going to quibble over the specifics, I'm just saying what I've seen.

Meowmere

1 week, 5 days ago

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Edited 1 week, 5 days ago by Owner

In extension of MSTR: what you effectively want is for real creators to do more of the things you like. AI "creators" cannot "focus" on doing what you like. They can shout at an algorithm working with earmuffs in another room, hoping it listens.
If you saw beautiful fur in AI generation, likely there is an artist out there who originally drew just that. And it's sad that you might never find that artist, but it is even sadder that you ascribe this accomplishment to "AI creators", egging them on to keep impressing you.

DanielBunny

1 week, 5 days ago

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I haven't seen where the super detailed fur styles might have come from, no, and as you said, I probably never will. So what's the harm?

Meowmere

1 week, 4 days ago

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The harm is in you valuing the cheap product over effort.
The harm is you wilfully being a part of an enormous, thoughtless section of users doing the same thing, contributing to the demotivation of anyone who wants to put in effort. This is the very effort that AI art is founded on, and ironically a prerequisite for it doing anything interesting. Without effort, original content on the Internet vanishes, AI eats it's own shit, and all washes into an amorphous grey blop.

Fens

1 week, 4 days ago

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Edited 1 week, 4 days ago by Owner

Just to play devil's advocate, what if Myst were to just quietly enjoy it without commenting on the posts, let alone egging on the people doing the generating? Is even just expressing the personal positive here in some way problematic?

Not to shout you down or anything; I can think of a couple of counterpoints to that of my own. I'm just curious how your viewpoint responds.

Meowmere

1 week, 4 days ago

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Edited 1 week, 4 days ago by Owner

@ Fens

I did write in the original post "please enjoy it elsewhere". Even so, of course expressing an opinion or attitude isn't "problematic" on a personal level. Just like eating a burger is so far removed from the issue of factory farming, that moral grand standing over a meal is absurd.
I am speaking out against a general, great force of habit, not any individual behaviour. Myst may do whatever they like. I may express my concern that it contributes to a problematic wave of behaviour.

Fens

1 week, 4 days ago

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Aaaah. Well thanks for humoring me!
Meanwhile to devil's advocate my devils advocacy:
- It might be seen by AI-favouring users, and be taken as encouragement or a sense of taking sides in any confrontation
- It contributes to the viewcount on submissions, acting as fractional, tacit support.
Not that I feel that's reason enough to stop enjoying it without enthusiastically advocating, either.

Meowmere

1 week, 4 days ago

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Edited 1 week, 4 days ago by Owner

@ Fens

While technically true, one cannot go through life worrying if they give the wrong person a view. Just like a vegetarian shouldn't dwell on stepping on a snail.
One can think "eating less meat may be habit worth striving for" or "my attention to art (and media) is worth something, I may need to think about where I put it"

DanielBunny

1 week, 4 days ago

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Edited 1 week, 4 days ago by Owner

You've made some unfair assumptions there. While I enjoy the very very few AI pieces that do what I haven't seen elsewhere, me commissioning artists hasn't decreased. I'm commissioning more and more expensive pieces lately than I ever have. (Unrelated, has nothing to do with AI). I've commissioned you recently. I recognize that AI art will never replace commissions, and I don't want it to. Additionally if you want to rant about the corporate world stealing artwork, I'm 100% with you. But I like what I like. If the artist whose fur style might have been utilized in AI were here, and open to the things I'd want to see from them, I'd commission them too, but they're not. (Maybe it's a blend of artwork and 3D rendering?)

Meowmere

1 week, 4 days ago

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Edited 1 week, 4 days ago by Owner

You asked "what's the harm", giving me little context to work with.
It's the answer to the question, "what's the harm in giving credit to an AI director over the one providing the training material (despite not being able to find that or those artist(s))". As stated elsewhere, what I meant to do was to describe the harm of a cultural movement, and phrasing it as a callout was a poor choice of words on my part.

I don't like to make assumptions and personally directed accusations, and if it ever came off that way, I sincerely apologize. Despite the unpleasant tone of this whole thread, I am eternally grateful to all my supporters, whichever opinion they hold on the topic themselves.

DanielBunny

1 week, 4 days ago

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Thanks. Anyway, what do you mean by "giving credit to an AI director"? I'm assuming you mean more than just pretending someone who did the prompts didn't do the prompts to produce the image on screen, because if that's the case, may run into a bit of a limitations of language issue.

Meowmere

1 week, 4 days ago

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Edited 1 week, 4 days ago by Owner

I suppose "engagement" is a more fitting word. Views, comments, favorites, and general encouragement. In the light of the hilarity of artists being offered "exposure" as payment, it does seem like a harmless list of things (and I am not personally in the need of them), but those are things that will make a tiny artist's day. It will encourage their continued development, making them invest in their own artistic future.
The very concrete problem I see on IB is that there is a limited space for exposure, in which AI art competes for the very same slots as handmade art. Given the ease at which one (or a mass of "creators") can churn out this "filler" material, my main point in making these journals was that where you "put your engagement" isn't a completely trivial choice, and I believe it's important to put thought and care into it.

DanielBunny

1 week, 4 days ago

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Edited 1 week, 4 days ago by Owner

Well, can't promise, but that does make a lot more sense. As far as limiting exposure, I had heard the staff were trying to come up with a solution, but that was a while back and haven't heard anything since. At the moment, those who block AI keywords won't get them in the popular section, and it'll be populated fully, same number of submissions shown.

edit: I wonder if they'd go for a "blocked by default" list, so those who actively want to see it can unblock it, but new accounts won't.

Meowmere

1 week, 4 days ago

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That is certainly a better solution than none. Here's to hoping.

Balmung

1 week, 5 days ago

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That's a good point, though since the specs on IB are public, it should be possible to take something and make it furrier. There's a LoRA out there for extra fluff.

You can also always try to ask people to do it.

DanielBunny

1 week, 5 days ago

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Yeah there are a few still doing those. There are a few roadblocks to me trying to do this myself, but when messing with my darkbot scenarios, I like to sometimes jump over to AI to get a quick visual of the scene if I can't find art that has a similar feel.

beforethefall

1 week, 5 days ago

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Edited 1 week, 5 days ago by Owner

It's not that people are incapable of reading satire/hyperbole. They're unwilling to, because it gets a much stronger neurochemistry hit for them to get mad/offended about something and have that position be validated; picking the obvious and pain-spoken path is the easiest way to garner mass support even if it requires utterly ignoring the writer's tone and voice in the process. They've trained themselves to get mad about dumb "gotcha" shit and we all have to suffer them as a result.

Otherking45

1 week, 5 days ago

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AI creators have been on a victim kick lately, so they take anything said as literal so long as it helps them look like a victim.

MSTR

1 week, 4 days ago

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@ Otherking45

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARVO

celerybelery

1 week, 5 days ago

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I think the sentiment of those who put less effort into AI to produce lower quality “work” that steals time, effort, money, and attention from harder working, better producing artists (or workers in general) is a fine attitude to have. I think your specific verbiage speaks to how strongly you feel about it. I can’t imagine there’s much to discuss when it comes to ground-level users/consumers of AI. If it’s a way to make someone money, or a way for someone to view a lot more of a facsimile of something they like, what’s gonna stop them from taking advantage of it?

Balmung

1 week, 5 days ago

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@ celerybelery

"	celerybelery wrote:
	I think the sentiment of those who put less effort into AI to produce lower quality “work” that steals time, effort, money, and attention from harder working, better producing artists (or workers in general) is a fine attitude to have.

I disagree, this is backwards.

I've commissioned a lot of works from many people on this site (you can check out my profile, but beware of the strong content). Nobody's entitled to my money, I spend it because I want to spend it. If I ever decide to pay for AI, it'll be because I decided to do so. That money wasn't "stolen" from anyone, I decided who I want to give it to.

This is all doubly silly because we're on a mostly porn site and this is as unnecessary and luxury as it gets. I don't need to spend money on this at all if I don't want to. And frankly the amount I've spent over the years is kind of nuts.

Arkanos

1 week, 5 days ago

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Edited 1 week, 5 days ago by Owner

"	Balmung wrote:
	That money wasn't "stolen" from anyone, I decided who I want to give it to.

Your money was given to someone, yes.

But the labor, effort, and learning was misappropriated for the profit of an individual that did not do said labor.

Paying for AI-art is actually worse than art-piracy, it moves the compensation for labor away from the people who do said labor whereas piracy just takes compensation away in general.

Balmung

1 week, 5 days ago

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@ Arkanos

If I ever pay somebody for doing AI, I will be paying for the labor of doing AI. It does take some time to accomplish, especially well. An hour of work is an hour of work.

Arkanos

1 week, 5 days ago

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So about $2, then.

I wasn't going out and looking for this, youtube just threw it at me today, but perhaps you'd change your mind after seeing this video: https://youtu.be/EqmvqrdHaSc

Balmung

1 week, 5 days ago

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@ Arkanos

I don't understand, why would that change my mind? A convention gets to make their rules, they can kick out whoever they want.

Arkanos

1 week, 5 days ago

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You missed the point then, of all the unethical behavior and impact from AI folks.

Balmung

1 week, 4 days ago

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@ Arkanos

We're having a disagreement here because we disagree about ethics.

In the video, I don't see any ethical issues. AI art is ethical, a convention making their rules is ethical. AI art breaks a rule in that convention, but there would be no issue with it elsewhere.

Arkanos

1 week, 4 days ago

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1) Either you didn't watch the whole thing or your definition of ethical behavior is lacking.

2) Generative AI exists by theft of labor and lack of compensation for the laborer, to thus use the result of that exploitation and theft is not suddenly ethical because... You want it to be.

MSTR

1 week, 4 days ago

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