@david_j_rothIn the name of being the change we want to see re: bringing back the Blog Era, @maria and I did an Awl-style yakkin' post about AI prose and the cretins who want to make it the future, and I guess also what is to be done about all that. https://popula.com/2023/04/30/yakkin-about-chatgpt-with-david-roth/
It feels like kind of a sad time online overall, just in terms of seeing a bunch of the last decade's stuff either resolving towards zero or eating shit because of idiotic ownership. I think there's a future for this, and I hope Defector and Popula both will be part of that. I don't know what it will look like, but I sense it's going to have to be a No Venture Capitalists Allowed affair.
Enterim@david_j_roth I think the Infinite Growth Forever Or Everything Implodes model will work next time, let's not be hasty
Jacob Kramer-Duffield@david_j_roth yeah extremely so - as you say, the kind of business media is (a business that can make real but not fuck-you kinds of money) is just not something these dudes are interested in. But they (both VC and regular idiot media exec) would rather flush billions on Quibi and an nth reboot of Medium than make 5-10% on e.g., local newspapers and blogs. So it can't be their money but it has to be... *some* money. And I'm not sure yet what money that is for the scale of the thing
@jaykaydee I feel like in some ways it's probably for the best. Obviously there's a great deal of suffering as this era continues to unwind, but also these just aren't people that we should be doing business with. The interests fundamentally don't align.
@david_j_roth to say nothing of the previous generation of media owners, who only didn't do this shit as quickly because they were some combination of too lazy and unimaginative to conceive of it. Not something worth going back to even if we could, which we can't, so, onwards!
@jaykaydee Yeah you can't really do business with them, either. This is one of those areas where I'm more tech-positive than usual, because the necessary interventions to cut that class out entirely are things bloggers can't invent or implement.
Maria BustillosVC jobs are predicated on generating massive windfalls for capital, so to interest that kind of money you gotta have a fairytale that ends with everyone splashing around in Scrooge McDuck pools of gold
A story about founding a magazine that lasts for decades, advances great ideas and writing, and develops world-class talent? it's like "non-overlapping magisteria"
Brian J. Link@david_j_roth The derogatory term in tech for companies like Defector is a "lifestyle business."
Unfortunately, a whole generation of tech-savvy people's brains have turned to mush because VCs and investors like Paul Graham taught them that growing fast and then selling out big, is the only true outcome.
Of course, that is the lesson those people teach because they are the ones profiting the most from the arrangement.
Arbitrary_Arbys@david_j_roth I used to have to ask people what they'd do if they found a turtle on its back in the desert, but now I just ask about AI and an alarming number of friends will fall over themselves trying to say how convincing the writing is. It's alienating in its own way to me, a human man of superior discriminating taste.