#creative industry

Case in point: when a company tries to “level the playing field” by offering opportunities to working-class people—but fails to grasp that travel costs money. Most working-class creatives don’t live in London. Most couldn’t afford to. And even if they could, these organisations rarely understand that most people in the UK don’t have savings.

More than one in four adults have less than £100 in savings, and the number of people living paycheck to paycheck is rising. But sure—I’ll just pull hundreds of quid out of my arse to access an “opportunity” designed for working-class people... What?!

They assume there’s a financial cushion—that people can just absorb the extra costs—because middle-class access to opportunity isn’t shaped by whether or not they can spare a train fare.

One unplanned emergency—your car breaking down, a wisdom tooth flaring up, your dog eating a goddamn snail—can derail your life for months. You push back bills. Rack up late fees. If you’re really on the edge, it’s the payday loan or nothing.

Meanwhile, society tells you it’s your fault—that you just aren’t trying hard enough—while the government upholds policies that literally manufacture poverty. And in a country that dismisses every study on how traumatising poverty is, you’re left feeling like you’re screaming into a void while social mobility collapses around you.

Right now in Japan, there is a debate happening between writers and illustrators.

What’s going on is that a well-known novel marketplace recently introduced a new rule related to AI. The rule bans the use of AI-generated illustrations for novel covers.

In response, many illustrators are strongly protesting, saying things like: “AI is unacceptable! Writers should commission illustrators instead of using AI for their covers!”

On the other hand, Writers argue: “Covers are just extra for the novels, so paying illustrators for covers feels like a waste of money.”

Also don’t get me started on the controversy I heard of tadc fans being mad that the official VAs aren’t in fan projects like why do we have to hear the same voices over and over again??? are we allergic to supporting voice actors??? Getting into the creative industry is already hard enough also which other fandom has official VAs taking part in fan made stuff

Before I deleted my twitter account, one of my mutuals was a professional animator who has worked on dozens of shows for Disney and Warner Bros, and they're struggling to make ends meet. They're more talented than I could ever dream of becoming, and they have to couch surf in order to not become homeless. A ton of Emmy and Oscar award winners, the best of the best of the best, live in squalor and can't even afford insurance. They're all living the dream, they're undeniably successful by every other metric, but financially they're in the hole.

What chance do I have? If they couldn't make it work, how could I?

A youtuber I've followed for years just posted a video saying they have to give up animating for the foreseeable future because their art has done irreparable damage to both their wrists; they have chronic pain, and even after six months of physical therapy they simply can't work anymore. They're famous, they have millions of subscribers and thousands of monthly patrons, and their livelihood just went up in smoke.

Again, what chance do I have?

If I put in the effort to get good at something, even half as good as any of these creatives, even 1% as good, I'll be in the same miserable, penniless boat as they are. It feels like fighting against entropy, a ton of hard work to try and stave off the inevitable. If you let up for even a second, you lose so much progress that it doesn't seem worth it to keep trying. I will never be as famous or as talented as my favorite artists because I don't have the temperament to keep going against the odds. I'm weaker than they are. They have every right to be proud of their work for its own sake, but they still have to eat. You can feel good about making something, but if it doesn't pay the bills it's hard to stay motivated.

The dream of making it big and never having to work again is just that, a dream. It's like winning the lottery; yeah, sure, "somebody has to win," but that doesn't mean you will, and there's no correlation between input and output; the odds are so long that spending ten or a hundred or a thousand times more money doesn't significantly increase your chances of winning. A million times zero is still zero. In the case of art, hard work does not guarantee success. It's all random! A handful of people make it big by chance and the rest of us look to them as inspirations, but even if you do EXACTLY what they did you're not gonna wind up like them.

The Canadian Government has a survey about public opinion on copy rightand AI art.

Have your say here: https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/strategic-policy-sector/en/marketplace-framework-policy/consultation-copyright-age-generative-artificial-intelligence