I feel trapped in an existential and material battle as an artist in this time period. An era in the culture that wants to take artists down swiftly and expect them to put up no resistance or there will be bloodshed of these artists' livelihoods, dreams, hopes, prospects. You know what keeps artists going. The narrative getting shoved and pounded is that artists are inconvenient. As if artists never really meant anything and never have, the machines will take care of that now. Get back to work peasants, climate change debris ain't going to clean itself up.
Those possibilities presented over ten years ago of the digital landscape are being stomped out I cannot believe how much I let myself miss. Yet once the ruling tech vultures and capitalists saw people were enjoying too much art, interesting thoughts, and connections, they couldn't let that continue. You can't connect ideas, art, and helpful back and forth supporting others out and informing them of ways to make the world better! They have money to make and they demand loyalty to all your time and attention working to make them more money asap. I think a very difficult thing in this moment is while artists have the strength of imagination to intellectually go Battle Royale against this disaster, I don't believe many have the actual willpower to fight fight.
The internet and social media needed to be monetized to death and made unusable and make everyone who inhabits these terrains feel bad and hopeless. There are a couple social media accounts I have that I am able to curate that escape this plight for now. I worry that the right will scorch and whittle away those sections of Instagram they have not infiltrated. The AIDS Memorial page still up is pretty amazing that is allowed with how things are being pushed. It's also more independent, alternative accounts. Like an internet version of those eclectic old thrift, vintage, book, odd and oddity shops that got pushed and gutted for gentrification. Also independent artists and creative people doing their talented thing, cutting past all the doomerism so they can make, live, share and connect. Generative AI is a house of cards but that will take awhile. Tech freaks aren't going to write themselves out of existence and funding.
There was a very good tweet awhile back of mentioning how convenient the machines can get the luxury of writing poetry.