3 ms·

> In a world where every celebrity is having sex with gorillas, doesn't such an image lose its charge? Will Norms and values around sex/body shaming change? I

by Swizec 4y ago

> In a world where every celebrity is having sex with gorillas, doesn't such an image lose its charge? Will Norms and values around sex/body shaming change? I hoped this would happen with social media. Everyone says stupid shit online and everyone has past beliefs they’ve outgrown. So what’s the big deal? Instead we went the opposite way. Everyone is super self conscious and censoring at all times because you never know who’s gonna take it out of context and make a big deal.

seydor 4y ago
This is not the same though, it's about being able to deny that that photo of you is real, not that it's taken out of context.
- Swizec 4y ago
  Well what’s a “real” photo? If I take your photo and photoshop (very well) different surroundings. Is it a real photo if you? If I photoshop your face (very well) onto a different body. Is that real? If I feed your photos into a model that can create realistic versions of those photos in different poses or with different facial expressions. Is that real? They all start with something that is very definitely a real photo. You can’t (yet? ever?) generate a realistic photo of a specific person from a textual description. The machinery needs a source.
  - seydor 4y ago
    A real photo is one created by photons outside the camera
    - Swizec 4y ago
      You’ll be surprised to learn that doesn’t work without some amazing tech to process the photons. Different settings will produce a different photo. Hell, just changing focal length makes a bigg difference to what your face looks like: https://imgur.io/gallery/ZKTWi https://imgur.io/gallery/ZKTWi no digital manipulation required. Which of those faces is “real”? They’re all just recording photons hitting the camera, but look very different. It gets even worse when we start talking about colors. For example: it took cameras decades before they could accurately capture black faces. Where accurately means “an average person would say it looks right” https://www.vox.com/2015/9/18/9348821/photography-race-bias https://www.vox.com/2015/9/18/9348821/photography-race-bias Edit: here's a fun example of how journalists use perspective and focal distance tricks to support their desired story angle. No digital manipulation https://twitter.com/baekdal/status/1254460167812415489 https://twitter.com/baekdal/status/1254460167812415489
  - kortex 4y ago
    Simple: a "real" photo is one in which a light field from the real world impinges on a photosensitive media (CCD, film), and directly encodes that information, with some allowance for global light levels, gain, ISO, and speed. Anything else is a modification therein. HDR, multi-exposure compositing, etc, aren't truly "real". They may be 99% real, but aren't 100% real. If you crop it, it's 99.9% real (we have models which can detect cropping and even from which region it originated, obviously it can't reconstruct the missing data). Yes, by that definition, most photographs already aren't real.
    - simondotau 4y ago
      So if I take a photo of a photoshopped photo, it is a real photo.
      - cgio 4y ago
        It is a real photo of a photoshopped photo, not a real photo of the photoshopped photo’s subject.
    - Swizec 4y ago
      > Yes, by that definition, most photographs already aren't real. What if I use no digital manipulation at all, but play around with focal lengths or perspective to produce the desired effect. Is that a real photo? For example from covid reporting: https://twitter.com/baekdal/status/1254460167812415489 https://twitter.com/baekdal/status/1254460167812415489
      - kortex 4y ago
        Sure, I'd say that's a real photo - you could easily pull it off with a single exposure of film. Just because the photo is real, doesn't mean it's free from deception. I could take a "real video" of gorilla suit^W^W bigfoot and it'd still be deceptive.
- taylorportman 4y ago
  It is an interesting point [the hope that values will adapt to reflect typical mischievous patterns of social dynamics within various clusters].. I used to marvel during the dotcom era at the salivating delight of "the internet never forgets" of college students caught smoking a bong and the subsequent impact on their career (virtue signalling?).. I saw hope that society could then adapt about ridiculous FUD biases. There is a strange relationship of scarcity & opportunity and these windows into souls painting a distorted picture of the darker side of our ambitions. It is a cancer. Also, humans are always testing boundary conditions - curiosity, discontent, security,insecurity. Some inherent desperation of people jockeying for the next path from frying pan to fire in the search for greener pasture breeds opportunism that seems certain to favor desperation and negativity.

by Swizec 4y ago

seydor 4y ago

This is not the same though, it's about being able to deny that that photo of you is real, not that it's taken out of context.

Swizec 4y ago
Well what’s a “real” photo? If I take your photo and photoshop (very well) different surroundings. Is it a real photo if you? If I photoshop your face (very well) onto a different body. Is that real? If I feed your photos into a model that can create realistic versions of those photos in different poses or with different facial expressions. Is that real? They all start with something that is very definitely a real photo. You can’t (yet? ever?) generate a realistic photo of a specific person from a textual description. The machinery needs a source.
- seydor 4y ago
  A real photo is one created by photons outside the camera
  - Swizec 4y ago
    You’ll be surprised to learn that doesn’t work without some amazing tech to process the photons. Different settings will produce a different photo. Hell, just changing focal length makes a bigg difference to what your face looks like: https://imgur.io/gallery/ZKTWi https://imgur.io/gallery/ZKTWi no digital manipulation required. Which of those faces is “real”? They’re all just recording photons hitting the camera, but look very different. It gets even worse when we start talking about colors. For example: it took cameras decades before they could accurately capture black faces. Where accurately means “an average person would say it looks right” https://www.vox.com/2015/9/18/9348821/photography-race-bias https://www.vox.com/2015/9/18/9348821/photography-race-bias Edit: here's a fun example of how journalists use perspective and focal distance tricks to support their desired story angle. No digital manipulation https://twitter.com/baekdal/status/1254460167812415489 https://twitter.com/baekdal/status/1254460167812415489
- kortex 4y ago
  Simple: a "real" photo is one in which a light field from the real world impinges on a photosensitive media (CCD, film), and directly encodes that information, with some allowance for global light levels, gain, ISO, and speed. Anything else is a modification therein. HDR, multi-exposure compositing, etc, aren't truly "real". They may be 99% real, but aren't 100% real. If you crop it, it's 99.9% real (we have models which can detect cropping and even from which region it originated, obviously it can't reconstruct the missing data). Yes, by that definition, most photographs already aren't real.
  - simondotau 4y ago
    So if I take a photo of a photoshopped photo, it is a real photo.
    - cgio 4y ago
      It is a real photo of a photoshopped photo, not a real photo of the photoshopped photo’s subject.
  - Swizec 4y ago
    > Yes, by that definition, most photographs already aren't real. What if I use no digital manipulation at all, but play around with focal lengths or perspective to produce the desired effect. Is that a real photo? For example from covid reporting: https://twitter.com/baekdal/status/1254460167812415489 https://twitter.com/baekdal/status/1254460167812415489
    - kortex 4y ago
      Sure, I'd say that's a real photo - you could easily pull it off with a single exposure of film. Just because the photo is real, doesn't mean it's free from deception. I could take a "real video" of gorilla suit^W^W bigfoot and it'd still be deceptive.
taylorportman 4y ago
It is an interesting point [the hope that values will adapt to reflect typical mischievous patterns of social dynamics within various clusters].. I used to marvel during the dotcom era at the salivating delight of "the internet never forgets" of college students caught smoking a bong and the subsequent impact on their career (virtue signalling?).. I saw hope that society could then adapt about ridiculous FUD biases. There is a strange relationship of scarcity & opportunity and these windows into souls painting a distorted picture of the darker side of our ambitions. It is a cancer. Also, humans are always testing boundary conditions - curiosity, discontent, security,insecurity. Some inherent desperation of people jockeying for the next path from frying pan to fire in the search for greener pasture breeds opportunism that seems certain to favor desperation and negativity.