MamaToph

1. This topic was not agreed upon in the briefs beforehand so she and her team aren’t answering squat

2. This guy keeps asking her “what’s your favourite ship” completely unaware that part of being an avid train enthusiast means having secondary, yet at times equally strong, interests in other forms of transportation and this guy just gave her the opening of a lifetime

3. She finally has a platform and a live audience and this particular rant needs to be heard, dammit

“Yeah, there’s many people who rely on medication to live and price gouging…”

“They’re putting autism in vaccines!”

The number of kids that are on a 'do not photograph' list isn't large, but it is a non-zero number. If that kid is even out of focus in the background, we do not use that photo.

If a child shows even the tiniest bit upset that there's a person in the room with a camera, I do not take their photo.

At pop culture conventions, I ask people if I can take their photo. Or if I take a candid of them, I track them down and give them my info and get th3ir consent before posting.

At events like parties, concerts, performances, consent is generally implied because these are photographed events, but if an attendee approaches me and tells me to crop them out then I crop them out.

This makes street photography tedious, but I learned in my very first job as a camp counselor that people have very good reasons for not wanting their photo publicized. There are kids in the foster system with abusive parents. There are adults with stalkers. There are people who might be a witness to a crime.

Even outside of this- I've seen how private persons become memes against their will just by going out in public. Some people are super not normal about meme fame.

Right now, you have to be a team player. You cannot complain about AI being used to fuck over your industry and then turn around and use it on somebody else’s industry.

No AI book covers. No making funny little videos using deepfakes to make an actor say stuff they never did. No AI translation of your book. No AI audiobooks. No AI generated moodboards or fancasts or any of that shit. No feeding someone else’s unfinished work into Chat GPT “because you just want to know how it ends*” (what the fuck is wrong with you?). No playing around with AI generated 3D assets you can’t ascertain the origin of. None of it. And stop using AI filters on your selfies or ESPECIALLY using AI on somebody else’s photo or artwork.

We are at a crossroad and at a time of historically shitty conditions for working artists across ALL creative fields, and we gotta stick together. And you know what? Not only is standing up for other artists against exploitation and theft the morally correct thing to do, it’s also the professionally smartest thing to do, too. Because the corporations will fuck you over too, and then they do it’s your peers that will hold you up. And we have a long memory.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking “your peers” are only the people in your own industry. Writers can’t succeed without artists, editors, translators, etc making their books a reality. Illustrators depend on writers and editors for work. Video creators co-exist with voice actors and animators and people who do 3D rendering etc. If you piss off everyone else but the ones who do the exact same job you do, congratulations! You’ve just sunk your career.

Always remember: the artists who succeed in this career path, the ones who get hired or are sought after for commissions or collaboration, they aren’t the super talented “fuck you I got mine” types. They’re the one who show up to do the work and are easy to get along with.

And they especially are not scabs.