#essay

Hélène Cixous, from The Laugh of the Medusa

in light of the ongoing Discord Palantir Kerfuffle, there’s been a lot of discussion about potential discord alternatives. i’m hearing about “stoat” and all sorts of other mammals.

well, we can talk about “replacements for discord” in a moment. for right now, though, i want to talk about one of the things discord replaced:

IRC!!!

it stands for Internet Relay Chat, and it’s a chat protocol (not an app—a protocol) from literally 1988. it predates the World Wide Web! like discord, the world of IRC consists of servers divided into chatrooms called “channels” where users self-moderate and talk about whatever. and despite its age, IRC actually has extreme advantages over discord and discord-likes:

IRC is a protocol, not an app. an app that supports the IRC protocol is called an “IRC client”, in the same way that an app that supports email is called an “email client”. like email, anyone at all can make an IRC client, and those clients can run on pretty much any device with an internet connection.

unlike discord servers, an IRC server is literally just some software that anyone can install on any server anywhere, and anyone with an IRC client can then join that server.

“well, hang on. at what point exactly do the corpos swoop in and delete my server for posting unregulated booby pictures?” my friend, the answer is never. because there is no IRC corporation. because IRC is a protocol, and not an app!!!

in other words, IRC is enshittification-proof.

…………………………………too bad it sucks!!!!

I made a blog!

been thinking a lot about our relationship to technology and what I find unsettling about "tech detox" culture

there is still time

cover art: @punkitt-is-here

Or, Use It Or Lose It

It's not just that Chat GPT essentially makes my job as a writer and editor obsolete -- if not now then definitely in the future -- although that's probably the reason why I was hesitant to jump into the deep when most people did. I wanted to observe it a bit longer from the outside, like I tend to do with most new technologies.

I see so many people who won't even write their own emails anymore, sit with a problem and come up with a solution, look up a simple fact on Wikipedia, or read their friends' long messages. And AI has just been around for just a few years. Scary.

It frightens me how fast people are willing to give up thinking and how many have surrendered their hard-earned skills in such a short time. I don't think people realize how fast you can lose a skill when you stop using it. (This is coming from my neurology angle. If you want to know more about this, the terms you need to research are "neuroplasticity" and the "use it or lose it" principle for neural circuits.)

It feels like the people who keep doing stuff without AI will be the only ones left with reasonably intact critical thinking skills, writing skills, and deep reading skills, and the rest of the world won't even realize what they have given away. And that's not even taking into account what's left of our attention span after nearly 20 years of social media.

Other reasons why I don't like AI:

It is factually wrong so often, but with such confidence, I don't think people realize it. It promotes misinformation and if AI keeps learning from AI, the problem will only grow.

Interacting with customer service bots almost never answers the questions I have.

I don't like it if a friend mentions they used AI to reply to my text message when they were tired. What the actual fuck? I want to connect with my friend, not with Chat GPT. I'd rather be left unread for days than get an immediate but artificial reply.

As you well know, AI capitalizes on the creative work of actual humans who worked hard to hone their skills.

The spaces where I share my art are flooded with "okay enough" AI slop, making it even harder for me to find and connect with my audience.

As a reader I agree with this tweet by Ian Boudreau: "Why should I bother reading something that nobody could be bothered to write?"

It takes so much electricity and drinkable water to make AI run. That doesn't sit well with me, coming from a generation that's been told a million times to turn off the light when we leave the room or to turn off the tap while we're brushing our teeth. It feels like we're setting the planet on fire for short-term convenience.

I actually like to read and write. I don't want bots to do it for me and I don't want to be forced to let them do so by the programs or apps I use.

this is an interesting lens to analyze the production and distribution of video games and culture, especially with regard to the USA's language imperialism. but it is not special.

the reason it's "special" is because Toby Fox enjoys a reputation among "leftist" gamers and fandom that other gamedevs who are much more openly rancid U.S. right-wingers (like FNAF Guy) don't.

everyone feels like they are on friendly terms with Toby Fox (once you notice we call him "Toby", i.e. first-name basis, you can't unsee it) because he's creative, progressive, polite, funny and successful. but this is not a reason to trust/expect him to be politically conscious.

now, it's true that this also reveals a lot about fandom racism and people's ability to polarize themselves, often joining the side of the property-owning U.S. millionaire to "defend" him from the global south.

but on the other hand, the people who side "against" his translation decisions are either clearly elated to have a reason to hate on this beloved cinnamon roll (because he's too progressive or not enough). and importantly, to have a reason to indulge petty liberal discourse about individual product consumption/production choices. some of that discourse is openly racist and reactionary, but some is painted under the colors of anti-imperialism and anti-racism.

notably though, i think people with solid anti-imperialist politics made the mistake of extending them into a moral framework here, as if it's the U.S. American bourgeois artist's responsibility to make his (quality)slop available to the global south. this is not a very coherent position. in fact it would be less appealing, but equally coherent to argue we should prevent U.S. games and culture from dominating the world further, and the language barrier must remain to prevent this!

in the end it's nice to be able to participate in the dominant U.S. culture and consume their exports, yes. but that should be a personal struggle. to integrate this into the class struggle is to slip on the banana peel of assimilationism! (of course, blanket rejection of all U.S. cultural production would be a form of reaction, and a mistake as well.)

i think it's evident that Toby Fox's real position is "well i don't wanna! and you can't force me to make art the way you want!", which is his only coherent and defensible position. but he can't say that openly, he's a non-confrontational guy, he wants to be loved and forgiven by his fans in Latin America. so instead he makes mediocre factual claims about game translation and development, which (true or false) just so happen to align with the status quo of culture and language imperialism.

cue, of course, the sound of someone stepping on a rake.

so what now? (this leads to my main point and only real political position on this matter, which i mentioned in a previous post.)

we can argue about the artist's right to create how he wants or the consumer's right to have culture accessible to them, but in any case Toby Fox cannot choose without betraying either his values about "artistic integrity" or his values about "being niceys to fans".

the thing is, these are not opposite values. they are only in conflict for a very specific reason: because people who aren't Toby Fox are barred from making his cultural production accessible. because he reserves that right for himself, and no one else, in the first place. i am of course talking about a legal barrier and a legal right, made into tangible forces because they're backed by cops, lawyers, state violence: copyright law.

Toby Fox finds the responsibility of translating his games unbearable and crushing, but he will not relinquish his exclusive right to do so. he will not relinquish his power to destroy fan translators with a lawsuit the moment he stops feeling Niceys. say, for example... because they've started seeking a fair wage for this unpaid labor. getting paid for real work performed to transform his intellectual property.

the real issue at play is that fan translations are uncompensated work, and this work can never be fairly funded or compensated because of copyright. the fundamental inequality is the implicit threat of a C&D and lawsuit hanging over the head of anyone who might attempt this.

it took Toby a long time to rein in Materia Collective after they proved ruthlessly overprotective of his intellectual property. would Toby pull the equivalent of Nintendo stealing Gary Bowser's wages for life? maybe not, but does anyone want to find out? he certainly has the wealth and goodwill to get away with it, if he doesn't feel merciful.

so, fan translations are the only option. but also, they must be limited in number, quality, and development speed, since they have to be unpaid work, because receiving fair wages for this work is always unsafe.

and Toby could change this and make it safe! for example by releasing Undertale/Deltarune's dialogue files under CC-BY-SA. but he won't. with that decision he has, knowingly or not, followed in the footsteps of every bourgeois artist before him, and manufactured this entire nonsense moral quandary and the various rakes he keeps stepping on!

this is the lesson we should be drawing from this situation, all in all. your artistic integrity, making your work accessible to fans, your class interests as a bourgeois millionaire: you can pick two and only two.