in the last 24 hours, everyone on the social media platform X has been complaining about the existence of a new feature on an app they presently do not use. here is the post in question:
it’s hard to overstate the extent to which all the participants of that site do not like this post, or what it represents. both the average nobody and the thought leader alike, they hate this post in equal measure. it’s hard to get everyone to agree on something, so they say... and yet, here we are.
if only everyone wasn’t wrong.
i actually don’t want this to be “AI art is good” think-piece. (i want this to be a “why doesn’t anyone think for themself?” think-piece.) as such, i don’t seek here to undertake an exacting defense of the specific matter at hand. but i’ll give a quick overview.
there is an app that no one uses called Meta AI. the company formerly known as facebook has done pretty poorly in the AI race, hence why i’ve never heard of anyone using it. but what they unveiled was a feature of that app that… the one that no one uses. it’s a scrollable vertical video feed except all of the content is AI generated, right there, within the app.
here’s how Business Insider describes it, lightly edited:
So what is Vibes? It’s an almost endless feed of random AI-generated video clips. For now, the feed doesn’t seem personal — it’s just a random grab bag of videos (according to Meta’s press release, the feed will eventually get personalized).
While theoretically anyone can post to the feed, Meta seeds a decent amount of the videos (look for accounts with the “AI” tag in their bio — that’s a Meta-created account).
But the Vibes feed is just clips with nothing deeper behind them. The focus of the app seems to be the feed itself, with its sheer volume and randomness — Vikings next to cartoon ducks next to a beautiful woman — displaying a chaotic showcase of AI’s possibilities, rather than an experience you’d enjoy.
Look, I would love to come to some counterintuitive conclusion here other than: This is an AI slop feed that no one wants. For now, that is exactly what this looks like.
and everyone, apparently, across the internet in hates this.
here are some posts i saw today:
you get the idea.
but for me, i thought the idea was cool, and i thought there was potential in there being a social aspect. (i think there is, but it’s very half baked.) but i imagined a world where people could gain an audience by being good at prompting. for the creation side of things, it uses midjourney under the hood, which is the tool i use for AI images (and sometimes video) anyway. altogether, it seemed like an interesting idea with a lot of potential.
i went into the decision with a default open state. (maybe i’m abnormally high in “openness” or something, i have no idea.) from my perspective, other people just default to “no” on all things. (then, when ideas later become mainstream, they trick themselves into believing they always thought it was a good idea.)
i think a small number of internet thought leaders do this, and then everyone else just got in line. for the masses, i suspect not a lot of analysis is happening, period. they just agree with whatever smarty pants funny guy they read while they poop says.
i felt this exact same way the Cracker Barrel logo controversy. the thought leaders hated it early. i actually saw that 5min after it dropped. thought it was a solid improvement, much cleaner, tweeted as much. live reaction: solid improvement. then, i saw NO ONE that agreed with me for the next week and a half.
but getting back to Vibes app. the thing that really irks me is a certain species of complaint. you see this a lot both online and at the proverbial water cooler.
“why does this exist?”
alternatively:
“why do we need this?”
i’ve always loathed this particular remark. i’ve never had that feeling. so far out my world view, the phrase is, that it’s befuddling. and grappling with this has made me realize a while ago that i’m different. (i honestly don’t know when this was… could be a year, a decade, or my whole life.)
but why does it irk me so?
i just don’t understand why something you don’t like existing is so bad. if you don’t want it, don’t use it. there are many things i don’t like, that i simply don’t know. i would never wish them out of existence. “not for me”, one says. that’s a phrase we all know. (except lately, it’s gone AWOL.)
it’s just hard to place myself in the head of someone who’s think’s “not only do i not like that, but i don’t like it to such a degree… that i don’t want anyone to have it”.
i feel this is central to the concept of “capitalism” which has remained (arguably) the thing i will defend the most of all things. i am team capitalism. it’s dismaying that society has started to turn away from capitalism as a concept to hold sacred. these days, being in favor of capitalism makes you right wing or some shit. and that’s such a shame.
but let’s just break this down.
if you don’t like something, just don’t use it. if literally no one likes it, then market forces will cause it to no longer exist. it shouldn’t bother you that other people like a thing that you don’t personally like.
that’s what i think, anyway.
my revulsion to, and the ubiquity of “i don’t like something so much that no one gets to have it”, are in combination, somewhat depressing. i remember the 90s somewhat, and the early 2000s pretty well, and people were not this way back then. not to this degree.
one other thought i keep having is how much i would hate myself if i was typing up the same take as everyone else. don’t people want to apply their own spin to things? isn’t that the point of life, in a way?
a lifetime of being in my own head has provided what i think the answer is: most other people don’t want to be different. or, they do want that feeling, but their fear of being labeled “different” outweighs it. i don’t know which thing it is.
maybe, most people don’t care either way. they just want to fit in.
i guess that’s probably it.
but i’m not this way on purpose, i swear.