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Honestly, this is an awesome use of DALL-E and I'll probably start doing the same for my blog It's perfect because: - The images just need to get across a vib

Honestly, this is an awesome use of DALL-E and I'll probably start doing the same for my blog It's perfect because: - The images just need to get across a vibe, they don't need to be perfect - It's a low-value enough use of images that you'd probably never commission a human artist to do them; instead you'd either use stock photos, or skip having images completely - The nature of header images for a tech blog tends toward the abstract/surreal, which means it's either hard to find the right stock images, or the ones you do find will be super abstract to the point of being boring All of these make it a great use of the technology

throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
>The images just need to get across a vibe I can't speak for everyone, but with my own experience of reading (at least partially) a dozen or two technical articles almost every day for many years, pointless media is a hallmark of low quality. these days, I just immediately bail with Ctrl+W as soon as I encounter a twitter-pop-culture meme/gif in the header or anywhere near the top. sure, it does mean I skip the 5 out of 100 that were worth reading, I save a lot of time by skipping the 95 out of 100 that weren't.
- anotherevan 4y ago
  I almost always bail when I see animated gifs in a technical article. They are most often meant to add a touch of humour, so of questionable value to begin with, and I find them painfully distracting from the text I'm actually trying to read. “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
  - ziddoap 4y ago
    >They are most often meant to add a touch of humour, _so of questionable value to begin with_ This comes across as remarkably sad to me. Humor is of questionable value as a baseline? To each their own, I suppose. I enjoy a technical article with animations that explain things, or a well-placed joke/humorous anecdote/etc. Especially in cases where the humor also supports a point or illustrates something. I tend to remember things better when they have some sort of emotional impact, and out of the emotional impacts possible (sad, angry, etc.) I definitely prefer joy, humor, etc.
    - anotherevan 4y ago
      You're right. I definitely worded that poorly. My distaste for animated gifs that are _meant_ to be funny, but I find sensorially painful and detracting rather than enhancing definitely leaves me in poor humour. All in favour of animations that explain things and definitely enjoy a well-placed joke or anecdote.
- OliverGilan 4y ago
  I use image thumbnails for my blog posts as well but they don't even show up in the article. Instead when the article is linked to on twitter or a message the thumbnail will show up. That's to say that this is pretty awesome and very valuable for a blog even if not used for cringy pop-gif stuff in the article.
  - throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
    but if that thumbnail is from an AI-generated image, it has no value. tech blogs don't need to follow the same practices as clickbait farms. the audience is very different
    - agileAlligator 4y ago
      How would you even know it's AI generated at this point? Did you see the images generated by the author of the article? They might as well have been made by a human digital artist
      - throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
        they're great. but if you have no image relevant to an article to put in the header/thumbnail, what value does using a cringy stock photo or generic cutesy cartoon add? the infotainment/clickbait/gossip websites do that because they know their target audience. you don't need to do that on your tech blog
        agileAlligator 4y ago
        1. It will attract people by catching their attention 2. It will not affect clickthrough rates of people like you who don't like it
- phire 4y ago
  You are probably right about meme/gifs (or xkcd comics) anywhere near the top indicating a low-quality post. Though they are fine if you can get a few pages in before finding memes/comics. Meme style gifs below the fold... probably not. But we are talking here about headers with abstract "art". They are more there for style and "vibe". Placing a Meme/gif/comic comic above the fold seems to indicate the author was unconfident about the actual content hooking the reader, and they decided to try and hook them with humour or recognisable memes instead. Which is a bad sign in itself. All that custom abstract art in the header really tells you is the author cares about style/vibe. Which I'd argue is not a bad sign in itself; though perhaps it's a warning sign to quickly check other things, like does the style/vibe match the content you are expecting? Is this just low-effort content to attract newsletter signups? It's also annoying when the header takes up more than half the screen. Especially more than half of a desktop screen. Phones are somewhat excusable. But I'm not sure there is a correlation between that and bad articles. Caring about style is not the same thing as being good at style.
- asojfdowgh 4y ago
  Don't want them either, but, please blame the specs? not needfully the writers? https://ogp.me/#metadata https://ogp.me/#metadata opengraph requires an image, for example
  - naavis 4y ago
    You can use the same image for every page on the website if you want.
Morgawr 4y ago
I've recently started dabbling in short story narrative writing as a hobby and I found a super interesting usage of dall-e is to generate certain art works or art style to draw inspiration from. For example I came up with [0] after writing a draft about an old warrior/mercenary in a fantasy-like setting and then put something into dall-e and built upon that just to get the right "vibe". Or if you're into more "cosmic horror" kind of stuff I generated artworks like these [1] which gave me a lot of inspiration for future short stories I'm planning to draft. I only spent about $15 so far, and a lot of it was just experimenting with artstyle (mostly to get some interesting discord profile pictures and logos) but I feel like I learned a lot. I can't stress how ridiculously cheap it is for the amount of quality artwork you get out of it. [0] https://twitter.com/xMorgawr/status/1555728353780310017 https://twitter.com/xMorgawr/status/1555728353780310017 [1] https://twitter.com/xMorgawr/status/1556667345443049473 https://twitter.com/xMorgawr/status/1556667345443049473
powersnail 4y ago
> The images just need to get across a vibe, they don't need to be perfect I dislike super generic stock photo at the beginning of an article. It’s completely pointless, sometimes aesthetically unpleasant, often disconnected with the actual content, and hence a distraction. If neither you nor the reader cares about the stock photo, why not just forsake the thumbnail or use your website’s logo?
- woojoo666 4y ago
  It seems pointless but it works. Our monkey brains like aesthetics. From the article: > Blog posts with images get 2.3x more engagement
  - powersnail 4y ago
    That number refers to actual images in blogs, not specifically stock photo thumbnail. Perhaps I’m just an outlier; but every time I see a thumbnail that has nothing to do with the title, I scroll past it. It’s a negative for me.
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    I wonder if that is because of social media. In which case add the silly image to the metadata for embedding as a tweet, but keep it out of the post.
  - scbrg 4y ago
    Those metrics imply that what images are being used is completely irrelevant. Either that's true, and we could all just use the same photo everywhere (I suggest the one of St. IGNUcious, Your Mileage May Obviously Not Vary - all hail the irrefutable and infallible 2.3x metrics!) or it could still be true that a "super generic stock photo at the beginning of an article" is, indeed, pointless.
  - april_22 4y ago
    Yes also due to shortening attention spans
april_22 4y ago
Agree, especially since it could bring some image variety into blogging. Sometimes I keep seeing the same, overused image again and again. Now you can create super cool looking, unique images and tailor them to how you'd like them to look like.
antioppressor 4y ago
Oh jesus. 99,5 percent of sites use terrible, bland, uninteresting images. Like people have no sense of beauty at all. Now people will use these horrible abominations that DALLE shits out, well, a very nice and bright future is ahead of us :D.
- autoexec 4y ago
  I'm hoping websites eventually accept that forcing everyone to scroll past a bunch of useless barely (if at all) relevant images to reach content isn't making their sites better.

throwaway0x7E6 4y ago

>The images just need to get across a vibe I can't speak for everyone, but with my own experience of reading (at least partially) a dozen or two technical articles almost every day for many years, pointless media is a hallmark of low quality. these days, I just immediately bail with Ctrl+W as soon as I encounter a twitter-pop-culture meme/gif in the header or anywhere near the top. sure, it does mean I skip the 5 out of 100 that were worth reading, I save a lot of time by skipping the 95 out of 100 that weren't.

anotherevan 4y ago
I almost always bail when I see animated gifs in a technical article. They are most often meant to add a touch of humour, so of questionable value to begin with, and I find them painfully distracting from the text I'm actually trying to read. “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
- ziddoap 4y ago
  >They are most often meant to add a touch of humour, _so of questionable value to begin with_ This comes across as remarkably sad to me. Humor is of questionable value as a baseline? To each their own, I suppose. I enjoy a technical article with animations that explain things, or a well-placed joke/humorous anecdote/etc. Especially in cases where the humor also supports a point or illustrates something. I tend to remember things better when they have some sort of emotional impact, and out of the emotional impacts possible (sad, angry, etc.) I definitely prefer joy, humor, etc.
  - anotherevan 4y ago
    You're right. I definitely worded that poorly. My distaste for animated gifs that are _meant_ to be funny, but I find sensorially painful and detracting rather than enhancing definitely leaves me in poor humour. All in favour of animations that explain things and definitely enjoy a well-placed joke or anecdote.
OliverGilan 4y ago
I use image thumbnails for my blog posts as well but they don't even show up in the article. Instead when the article is linked to on twitter or a message the thumbnail will show up. That's to say that this is pretty awesome and very valuable for a blog even if not used for cringy pop-gif stuff in the article.
- throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
  but if that thumbnail is from an AI-generated image, it has no value. tech blogs don't need to follow the same practices as clickbait farms. the audience is very different
  - agileAlligator 4y ago
    How would you even know it's AI generated at this point? Did you see the images generated by the author of the article? They might as well have been made by a human digital artist
    - throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
      they're great. but if you have no image relevant to an article to put in the header/thumbnail, what value does using a cringy stock photo or generic cutesy cartoon add? the infotainment/clickbait/gossip websites do that because they know their target audience. you don't need to do that on your tech blog
      - agileAlligator 4y ago
        1. It will attract people by catching their attention 2. It will not affect clickthrough rates of people like you who don't like it
phire 4y ago
You are probably right about meme/gifs (or xkcd comics) anywhere near the top indicating a low-quality post. Though they are fine if you can get a few pages in before finding memes/comics. Meme style gifs below the fold... probably not. But we are talking here about headers with abstract "art". They are more there for style and "vibe". Placing a Meme/gif/comic comic above the fold seems to indicate the author was unconfident about the actual content hooking the reader, and they decided to try and hook them with humour or recognisable memes instead. Which is a bad sign in itself. All that custom abstract art in the header really tells you is the author cares about style/vibe. Which I'd argue is not a bad sign in itself; though perhaps it's a warning sign to quickly check other things, like does the style/vibe match the content you are expecting? Is this just low-effort content to attract newsletter signups? It's also annoying when the header takes up more than half the screen. Especially more than half of a desktop screen. Phones are somewhat excusable. But I'm not sure there is a correlation between that and bad articles. Caring about style is not the same thing as being good at style.
asojfdowgh 4y ago
Don't want them either, but, please blame the specs? not needfully the writers? https://ogp.me/#metadata https://ogp.me/#metadata opengraph requires an image, for example
- naavis 4y ago
  You can use the same image for every page on the website if you want.

Morgawr 4y ago

I've recently started dabbling in short story narrative writing as a hobby and I found a super interesting usage of dall-e is to generate certain art works or art style to draw inspiration from. For example I came up with [0] after writing a draft about an old warrior/mercenary in a fantasy-like setting and then put something into dall-e and built upon that just to get the right "vibe". Or if you're into more "cosmic horror" kind of stuff I generated artworks like these [1] which gave me a lot of inspiration for future short stories I'm planning to draft. I only spent about $15 so far, and a lot of it was just experimenting with artstyle (mostly to get some interesting discord profile pictures and logos) but I feel like I learned a lot. I can't stress how ridiculously cheap it is for the amount of quality artwork you get out of it. [0] https://twitter.com/xMorgawr/status/1555728353780310017 https://twitter.com/xMorgawr/status/1555728353780310017 [1] https://twitter.com/xMorgawr/status/1556667345443049473 https://twitter.com/xMorgawr/status/1556667345443049473

powersnail 4y ago

> The images just need to get across a vibe, they don't need to be perfect I dislike super generic stock photo at the beginning of an article. It’s completely pointless, sometimes aesthetically unpleasant, often disconnected with the actual content, and hence a distraction. If neither you nor the reader cares about the stock photo, why not just forsake the thumbnail or use your website’s logo?

woojoo666 4y ago
It seems pointless but it works. Our monkey brains like aesthetics. From the article: > Blog posts with images get 2.3x more engagement
- powersnail 4y ago
  That number refers to actual images in blogs, not specifically stock photo thumbnail. Perhaps I’m just an outlier; but every time I see a thumbnail that has nothing to do with the title, I scroll past it. It’s a negative for me.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  I wonder if that is because of social media. In which case add the silly image to the metadata for embedding as a tweet, but keep it out of the post.
- scbrg 4y ago
  Those metrics imply that what images are being used is completely irrelevant. Either that's true, and we could all just use the same photo everywhere (I suggest the one of St. IGNUcious, Your Mileage May Obviously Not Vary - all hail the irrefutable and infallible 2.3x metrics!) or it could still be true that a "super generic stock photo at the beginning of an article" is, indeed, pointless.
- april_22 4y ago
  Yes also due to shortening attention spans

april_22 4y ago

Agree, especially since it could bring some image variety into blogging. Sometimes I keep seeing the same, overused image again and again. Now you can create super cool looking, unique images and tailor them to how you'd like them to look like.

antioppressor 4y ago

Oh jesus. 99,5 percent of sites use terrible, bland, uninteresting images. Like people have no sense of beauty at all. Now people will use these horrible abominations that DALLE shits out, well, a very nice and bright future is ahead of us :D.

autoexec 4y ago
I'm hoping websites eventually accept that forcing everyone to scroll past a bunch of useless barely (if at all) relevant images to reach content isn't making their sites better.