Creativity Isn't Cost-Effective
The Chimes of the Failed
Currently playing: Still Clair Obscur and R.E.P.O. They’re both still very good.
I’m old enough to remember a time when Creative Labor was included as a subset of Paid Labor. It was understood that writers, authors, artists, filmmakers, musicians, editors, etc. should and would be compensated for their work. Now, I’m not old enough to remember when they were fairly compensated, but there was still an expectation of wages, fees, royalties, what have you. We, as a global society, started shifting away from that expectation around the late-90’s.
Now, I frequently whine that “the Internet was a mistake,” and I’m half-joking when I do. It connected us all more intimately and widely, for better or for worse; information became more widespread, whether or not it’s factual; the arts became democratized, since anyone can record and upload their own music, publish their own stories, or film their own series, regardless of its quality or message; and media as a whole became much more accessible, and easier to steal.
Once file-sharing became widespread, those with a decent internet connection started expecting free entertainment: music, movies, porn, books, doesn’t matter. If I can get it for free, then it must be free. And I would argue there’s very few in my generation and those before whose hands are clean of this. It was a problem of our own making. Unfortunately, I believe a line can be drawn between our acts of digital piracy and the questionable popularity of generative AI, scourge that it is. And it is a scourge, created and foisted upon the world by ultra-rich millennials like Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg and ultra-rich Gen-Xers like Elon Musk.
Where am I going with this? Well, I believe when one starts expecting art to be free, art stops being art — it becomes content. Art carries with it the flavor of choice. Every stroke of a brush, and every adjective and noun was chosen to evoke texture. Every musical note was chosen and played with a specific technique to evoke a feeling from the listener. Every rest and pause and line break were chosen to create either tension or relief. Every piece of art is a gathering of choices, a dialogue between the artist and the work imbued with meaning and certainty and effort and study and feeling. Again, that word. Feeling. Art, regardless of its creator’s intent, should evoke feeling from the audience.
Content, however, does not. Content is only there to sustain, to fill space, to consume time. Consume enough content and you too can be a part of the conversation in the office or on social media. Content deludes you into thinking you’re a part of the greater collective unconscious formed through shared experiences and dialogue. Consume enough content and it becomes the only way you share experiences. Consume enough content and you only discern between what’s good and what’s not by how cost-effective it is. Were you sufficiently amused for enough time without spending what you believe is too much money? It’s good. Did that bag of chips fill you up for cheap? It’s good. Consume enough junk food and your palate simplifies, inadvertently closing yourself off to the larger culinary world. Consume enough content and you close yourself off to the larger artistic world. And anyone who tries to explain this to you is “gatekeeping,” especially when you’re trying to justify your use of genAI to “create” something.
We are not gatekeeping. We are trying to help you see what makes art art, and how you can go about making it yourself. We want more artists in the world, especially in terrible, chaotic times like right now. But we want people to make a portrait of a character that has us wondering what they’re thinking and who they’re looking at, not a plastic looking, unnaturally lit big-breasted woman of questionable age looking soullessly at the viewer. It evokes no questions nor curiosity and is about as titillating as a pair of coconuts with nipples drawn on them. There’s no humanity there. No feeling. Just content failing to pass for art that was clearly made for the “creator’s” self-gratification.
When the gatekeeping label gets cast aside, the accusation of being anti-poor comes about. Yes, commercial success in the arts is heavily weighted towards those who are already wealthy or well-connected to those that are. No one denies that. But the entry fee to the arts is ridiculously cheap. A pencil and paper cost very little. Brushes, inks, and canvas cost more, but aren’t quite the level of a security deposit on an apartment. In music, entry-level instruments are cheap for a reason. Starting out with several thousand dollars’ worth of recording equipment, amps, and instruments is highly discouraged. So no, being against genAI in the arts isn’t anti-poor — you just want genAI to make you commercially successful without the work.
After that comes the accusation that artist against genAI are ableist, which is inarguably the most laughable of them all. A cursory search online can find you a list of books written by authors with mental disabilities. I myself have been diagnosed with major depressive disorder, PTSD, and pain-induced insomnia; I self-pubbed my first novel last year, am drafting its sequel now, and have the completed first of another series with a beta reader. “Okay, what about the physically disabled?” Well, another cursory search can find you a list of books written by such authors. You can even find books written by quadriplegics. I and many artists and authors like me have days, weeks, even months where we lack the spoons to create anything. It’s an unfortunate part of the disabled artist’s life. Yet we’re still creative, and we eventually find the spoons to get back to work. A disabled artist is anything but uncreative and lazy. Anyone who uses genAI, however, is both.
The same could be said for those at the top of tech and entertainment. If they ever want to create something new and ambitious, it’s always in the service of creating more for less money. Those in tech want an AI to write emails and summarize reports and spreadsheets and replace jobs they deem redundant. In entertainment, it’s eliminating artists, because artists don’t make content. They make art. And art, to them, is expensive, risky, and time-intensive to make. Understanding the art people may want requires taste, something they sorely lack. Distributing art that may shock or arouse could lose the audience, and in turn, profit. And by the time said art is created, the tastes of the audience may have changed. Content is the cheaper, safer, and faster alternative. In other words, content is cost-effective. Creativity isn’t.
Writing update: Still pressing on with the Firewind’s Accord sequel. About 2/3rd of the way done drafting. Spent way too much time debating how spicy to make it, considering the level of spice in the first was relatively low. I’ve decided to just say screw it and let the characters screw. Art that arouses is still art, after all.