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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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Before AI, Computers also democratized art production. CGI that would blow the minds of every single person on Earth back when I was a kid, is reproducible by mildly talented teenagers, for basically no cost other than their time.

Yeah, but I was thinking just today how CGI, or the overuse of CGI, has just contributed to sameyness; current popular movie culture is just dominated by superhero movies that all blend aesthetically and thematically into each other, into the same weightless and meaningless soup. This is not just because of the overuse of CGI, but CGI is a part of it; it tends to allow for striving for lowest common denominator, easy ways to convey the impression of something that is wanted to be conveyed without the effort of the traditional film craft, perhaps acceptable by itself but, as a part of a larger culture, creating an effect that everything's just... this.

The AI art risk is that it just increases the sameyness of everything exponentially, eventually making all art, even things that are supposed to be in different styles, the same generic "AI style" that's easy and cheap to churn out by boatloads but which, instead of expanding culture, just freezes it to endless iterations of average values of what's been before. OTOH, it may also be unavoidable, barring Butlerian Jihad.

This could be summarized as "superhero movies are low status. It's okay to be snobbish about low status people."

There have been plenty of superhero movies that crashed and burned because not enough effort was put into craft, including the majority of DC superhero movies that aren't about Batman. You can't just put in CGI and expect to make a ton of money from people who'll buy anything, because that just isn't true. People won't buy anything, and CGI doesn't substitute for craft.

Yes! This is exactly how I think it will go down. I also don't see a way out of it for society as a whole. Personally I'm toying with the idea of going pre-Internet-Amish, but I'd be down for the Butlerian Jihad as well.

pre-Internet-Amish

Do the Amish use the internet now?