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naraburns  nihil supernum  3yr ago (text post)   34296 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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Working in tech is considered to be relatively high status.

Higher or lower status than art? The latter is usually associated with self-sacrifice, of pursuing beauty even at expense of earning potential. So I would say that there is no obvious winner: the engineer can afford to attend to attend an exhibition, but it is the artists work that will be viewed.

Being a tech bro is vastly higher status than "digital artist on Twitter". These people don't have art in galleries like the few high status artists.

Being a tech bro is also vastly higher status than most people working in tech. Most people working in tech aren't doing cutting edge innovation, they're debugging old code for some obscure system or programming some website that gets 2 hits a day or even just tech support. This whole thread is mostly just the apex fallacy, either comparing high status tech workers to average-status artists or high status artists to average-status tech workers in order to get the comparison that's favorable to one's particular narrative.

You will run afoul of that fallacy if you try to compare what I would call "socioeconomic status".

As @aquota mentioned, a lot of people are talking about a different kind of 'social' status. The kind of status that is associated with better social skills, taste, knowledge, more cultured, "more SOUL". As opposed to the kind of status that engineers and programmers have which is entirely a result of their income.

Those two statuses are correlated but not the same.

Journalists, Academics (humanities), artists, etc have more of that kind social status than engineers. They are perceived to be more well read, intellectual, "interesting", exciting, etc. As opposed to the engineers who lack social grace and are just cogs in a machine making their money because capitalism.

being a successful artist is high status, which most artists are not

Like @EfficientSyllabus says, in «the real world» artists aren't doing too hot, whereas techies are in great demand. But in their own frame of reference, artists are the master race. Moreover, it's not mundane conceit, like low-grade techies' own boasts of having high IQs or earning a lot while creatives flip burgers. It's more similar to Russian ressantiment-powered invectives directed at the West: artists have unusual, rich SOVLS, and their entire trade is about conveying their inner depths to the thankful audience (which is near-universally despised and considered to be scum with trash taste, however – especially in light of their interest in AI content), Techies are the complete opposite of artists: ignorant of SOUL, of beauty and love and other lofty categories, mere bugmen churning out code to make the corrupt machine of capitalism run smoothly, crushing the fragile wonder of the human heart etc. etc.

This is insulting on its face and, what's more, it's laughable chutzpah. There is of course art in STEM and specifically in coding, and it's not lost on developers who wander into artists' dens that there's astounding cynicism, small-mindedness and mercenary attitude among artists. It's a crab bucket where every crab gatekeeps his secrets of drawing some perverted fetish (often a sort of furry or dickgirl) to cater to a niche audience of degenerates.

Thus their scorn.

Why do you capitalize SOUL? Because of that Indy PRG?

Because of that Indy PRG?

Magical Girl Celesphonia?

no, i thought about the one making a big fuss on 'determination'. Undertale

Ah, I couldn't stand its art style, so I don't know anything about it beyond the memes.

It’s a meme.

please, could you be more specific?

meme? Could you please be more specific?

So much of the hatred directed at AI art I see just makes me think of this old Futurama joke.

Relevant lines:

"With all that Salmonella and me been through, her sound is unique. All your fancy technology will NEVER be able to copy this guitar."

"Using my fancy technology, I can make an exact copy of this guitar."

Of course, duplicating a physical object is a different endeavor, but the fundamental phenomenon is the same.

In the real world, normal guys who study art and hope to support themselves off it are ridiculed as lazy unserious dreamers who have no willpower to study something difficult or work hard. In Hungarian they are nicknamed canteen-cloakroom degree programs, implying they don't have to go to lectures. I get the impression that it's similar in Western Europe too, not sure about the US. If a normal middle class parent hears that their kid wants to "become an artist" the reaction is "what the fuck, you want to flip burgers at McDonald's?". Art as in Michelangelo, Leonardo, etc. is in high esteem but not "art grads". It's a rockstar profession where a tiny minority gain high status with it.

I think artist is being use as a stand in for an much larger social clan that see the works of "Techies" or STEM people as at best lacking soul and more often just evil. I don't have a great word for it but it intuitively feels like there are two very different hierarchies in at least the united states. There is the "Physical" Hierarchy where people get status because of the things they make. There is also the "Social" hierarchy where one gets status by who holds them in high regard, who they are in particular. One interesting way these two hierarchies interact is in debates around things like socialism/communism, a system that totally collapses the way that the "Physical" hierarchy gets status and purports to level the playing field, but many people on the "physical" side correctly intuit that when you go to only one hierarchy there will still be rich people but they'll be the people rich in "social" status. Artists, journalists, politicians and many other professions are coded as "social" and techies intuit a strike against them as a win against the entire "social" hierarchy that increasingly seems to disdain them and call for their status to be revoked.

In all actual communist countries it was the physicals who controlled things like heavy industries or the military who had power. Artists were kept on a tight leash and only allowed to do things in a style that would uplift the status of the leaders of the physical hierarchy. It was the USA where the CIA pushed abstract expressionism as a way to undermine the Soviets.

To these types communist doesn't refer to historical communist regimes but idealized ones.

Isn't the relevant split just humanities vs STEM? As an aside, it's strange that there was no standard way to say STEM until the clunky acronym was invented. In Hungary it's common knowledge that there are "humán" and "reál" subjects and kids get categorized by parents and teachers into one or the other quite early. I don't think this is very good by the way (historically science and math was very connected to philosophy and humanities).

I also wonder where a pure math prof would fall in the dichotomy. They are certainly "reál" but not a "physical" maker. And a lot of artists are hands on makers, craftsmen, sculptors and painters (digital or not), they don't just talk. Maybe your split is just bullshitters/talkers vs doers/makers.

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