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> Mediocre art and mediocre writing weren't valuable or expensive last year. At one point every town had a blacksmith, even the smallest villages. You could g
by Turing_Machine 3y ago
> Mediocre art and mediocre writing weren't valuable or expensive last year.
At one point every town had a blacksmith, even the smallest villages. You could go there to get your horse shod, buy a pair of fireplace tongs, get a new latch for your door, and so on. In the nature of things, most of these blacksmiths were mediocre, but still, they made a living.
Now, there are certainly still a few people who make a living by being blacksmiths, but you sure won't find one at every wide spot in the road.
- ghiculescu 3y agook, but has there ever been a time when mediocre artists or writers made a living?
- the_only_law 3y agoI don’t know, do TV writers make a living?
- mjr00 3y agoWriters working on network TV represent the most successful 1% of all writers.
- the_only_law 3y agoYeah I’d say most of that is pretty mediocre.
- nemo44x 3y agoBefore the advent of music recording there were many more musicians since the only way to hear music was to to hear people play it. Of course music recording created a lot of job that didn't exist before too. But many of these musicians were presumably mediocre but they made a living doing it.
- Riverheart 3y agoToday? Or before the internet when people’s idea of mediocrity and access to top talent was more limited? Depending on where in the world you live a $30 commission is a lot of money.
- Turing_Machine 3y agoSure. The people who write clickbait articles get paid even now. Not very much, as a rule, but they do get paid.
- mjr00 3y agoExcept in this analogy, we're in the mid-20th century and you're lamenting that a new horseshoe-making AI is going to put mom & pop blacksmiths out of business. Mediocre art, writing, and music on their own were already completely worthless. Go look on Soundcloud and watch as hundreds of new songs get posted every minute, most of which get 2 or 3 plays; no AI necessary. Even before ChatGPT, if you looked at the latest Medium blogs it would be a steady flow of articles with a handful of views. Flooding the internet with AI-generated garbage content is going to be virtually indistinguishable from what we have now.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago> you're lamenting that a new horseshoe-making AI is going to put mom & pop blacksmiths out of business. I'm not "lamenting" anything, and can't imagine where you're getting that from. > Mediocre art, writing, and music on their own were already completely worthless. Nope. Plenty of people get paid for creating mediocre art, writing, and music. The guy who writes commercial jingles for Bob's Used Cars is not Johann Sebastian Bach. But he still gets paid.