(no subject)

[olivermoss]

* Humans back on top in Go. For now at least, humans can beat computers are Go by specifically exploiting the weaknesses of machines... which is basically studying your opponent.



* A Sci Fi magazine that helped launch a lot of authors is closing open submissions due to getting spammed with AI submissions.

* Also something something the Bing AI was weird and argued with people about what the current year is.

* Even more RPG and other companies that take art submissions for contests and/or publication are banning AI and the tech-bros are angry. One of the points no one seems to care about is that art needs to be human made to by copyrightable in the US. These companies can't use AI submissions for art assets, because art assets need to be subject to copyright.

But also, these spaces rely on community. Allowing AI art in some of these spaces would be the companies screwing over their own communities, and therefor customer base. Tech bros flooded a twitch stream I was on to 'help' the streamer learn to use AI for thumbnails and art to promote the stream. He was just like 'My community makes my art. I don't want to be a dick to my own community.'

None of this means that plagarism bots calling themselves 'ai' are over, but a few months ago we had no idea how these apps were going to play out and now we are starting to see. The companies are dealing with backlash, legal issues and and need to start monetizing their products.

This Tom Scott video is one of the few good takes we've seen. Basically no one, not even insiders, know if the technology is going to continue to evolve or hit a ceiling. The weird techbros and their fanboys who are pushing completely false narratives about reactions to the rise of the digital age so far are sure that things will only improve faster and faster, but that is not how anything has worked ever with technology or computers.

Some very random navel gazing about this:

What has perplexed me the most about reactions to 'ai' is people being 'we can't tell what is real anymore'. But, these people NEVER COULD. We've had slick audio editing tricks only professionals could detect for about 20 years now. We've always been reliant on good sourcing and trusting experts. But so many people, especially those under 30 are panicking like their lifeline to reality is eroding because they rely on viral 'leaked' videos and audios to know what is really going on in the world instead of news media or having a basic concept of how to source anything.

For a lot of people, it's like reality is falling apart for them, but that reality has always been bullshit. They've just built their lives on information flows outside of the evil 'mainstream media' and have zero media literacy. And, to be fair, I do following some sources I trust who are outside of mainstream media, especially on crypto... but also I had a base understanding on crypto before the NFT Web3 BS blew up so I was able to navigate who was saying shit that made sense and who didn't, no matter how many people screamed at me on twitter. I also do read articles from news sources, even though they tend to be trash. Honestly, one BIG reason why a lot of people who are very internet culture / tech / new media literate tend to hate anything even close to mainstream media is that they tend to be hot garbage on the topics they know a lot about. All the articles I've seen from established news sites or magazines on the rise of ai where complete shit.

Anyway, just like in the early days of computers a lot of news places need to source some non-idiots to cover this shit. I'd go on a bit longer, but I need to get off my butt and get some stuff done.

Comments

[mistressofmuses]

I'd heard about the AI stuff flooding submission forms. That shit fucking sucks.

The AI stuff is making me more and more strangle-y (as in... want to strangle people) lately. (More of the nihilistic asshole opinions - from people I've been acquainted with for a while, even, not just randos! Lots of "AI is never going to be the next Van Gogh or Neil Gaiman or Shakespeare or whatever... so if you're "worried" about AI replacing art and writing jobs, well, that just means on some level you know your art and writing is worthless, and you're just desperate. Either become the kind of artist that can't be replicated or admit that you aren't producing anything of value anyway."

I'm glad that it seems that there IS more pushback from a lot of sources, particularly from people who do see creative endeavors as being part of a community that's worth maintaining and cultivating... That's at least *something*, and I hope that social pressure increases so that publishing houses and other similar entities don't try to see how much they can do via AI instead of actual artists/writers.

[olivermoss]

In the case of the streamer I'm talking about, some of the art he uses from viewers for promo... I wouldn't post that to the internet. I have somewhat fandom-addled ideas of what decent amateur art is like. But the point is community building. There is so much value to art outside of whatever some idiot's idea of 'good art' is. We have enough 'good art' to last us forever already, it's not about that. It's about having artists and people with visual literacy.

I know I mention this a lot, but so many photogs who only use cell phones have such poor visual literacy I cannot even have a conversation with them about tones or colors... and I am good at doing super basic explanations. This is not a ME problem when people can't understand what an overblown highlight is.

There is so much more to it than I can list here and I lot of people talking about 'good art' need to realize some of the most venerated and valuable art in the world is crude spraypaint on walls using stencils.

Art cannot move forward, or continue to reflect our current world, without new artists... actual artists.

[mistressofmuses]

Yeah, I know there's definitely a... scale of quality, and I've certainly seen some fanart or promo art that is well below the threshold I'd be comfortable sharing or attaching my name to. But even so... I'd genuinely rather have wonky but heartfelt fanart than smooth AI-generated nonsense in just about every case. But yes - having the visual literacy and the knowledge to make art also makes you a better consumer of it, even if you don't create at a "professional" level or with professional aspirations.

And oof. I know what you mean. Trying to get someone to understand that "the brightest and most saturated version of a color is not always the best one to use" is an uphill battle, lol. Or "hey, sliding that "sharpen image" bar aaaaaaaall the way to 100 every time *may not* actually make the image look clean and crisp."

I'm personally glad that not everyone has the same idea of what "good art" is... yet we do have an awful lot of good art to choose from! Whether visual or written. I find it weirdly frustrating every time I see the take that AI won't ever touch "good" art or writing, that it's only replacing "regular/popular/amateur/disposable" art, as if there's agreement about where those categories begin and end.

And idk, I also feel like it's fair to point out that a lot of our really amazing artists... didn't start amazing. Maybe some of them were born producing the unique unreplicatable fully-formed masterpieces that are lauded now... but I'm going to guess that most of them weren't. Plenty of them - including Neil Gaiman, given as an example by this particular "AI won't replace good writing" guy - have talked a lot about how their careers started, and how continually they had to work at it to get to the point they're at.

So okay, the highest-paying short genre fiction magazine that allowed unsolicited submissions just had to close those submissions down because they were flooded with (bad) AI submissions.
And to be honest, I feel like comic book plots would be *ripe* for AI writing (and art!) - Marvel and DC, already fairly notorious for exploiting writing staff who aren't well-known, plus a tight schedule to churn out issues for multiple characters... The plots are already fairly formulaic in a lot of ways, and feature a mostly-unchanging cast of big characters. (There are exceptions, I'm being intentionally reductive.) So how soon will at least some issues start being produced either entirely by AI or having AI do the "first drafts", with actual people only editing the final product?

The avenues by which a lot of deservedly well-regarded authors or artists got their starts have already been closing. The handful of places that still offer something similar - short story magazines, comics writing, contracted to-spec work, etc. - are the types of things people like this are claiming *deserves* be taken over by AI. Same with art - cover and promo art, comics work, illustrations to go with short stories in these genre magazines. All of that is fair game for AI, because that's not "great art." So where do you expect the next Great Writer or Great Artist is going to come from, with no entry points left?

Self-pub also seems like it's likely to require trying to wade through AI garbage, the same way short story submissions are. Those stories aren't good, but people are trying it as a "get rich quick and easy" scheme, and you could wind up drowned out by sheer quantity.
Traditional publishing has continued being an utter nightmare, and now you ("AI *should* replace things" assholes, you) want to ensure that there's nowhere left that someone could possibly build a portfolio of work to show an agent/publisher.

But somehow, it will all suddenly be a meritocracy and the good writers and artists (even if they never have a way to get started) will just rise to the top and produce the kind of Unique Good Art that guys like this claim to still want and appreciate.

Sorry, apparently I've got quite a lot of feelings still built up over this!

[olivermoss]

I get having a lot of feeling over this. It's complicated. It's good to talk about but it's also like looking into the void and I am not seeing signs that fandom exchanges and other things are addressing this. Maybe they are just waiting for the problems to start. The writing shit was clearly trained on AO3 data so next Fandom Tree I could just do the 100 word minimum for everyone... well, I wouldn't but people pulled weeeeird shit back in fandom stockings for attention.

DC and Marvel both have been re-using work of their own employees without credit or pay since the start. There have been huge pushes to get them to stop, especially since... Stan Lee is such a narcissist he pushed himself as the loving creator of Marvel while some of the people who did the actual work and created the characters died early because they couldn't afford medical care. Like, they already deep into the low tech version of this. This is why so many writers are willing to jump ship from them even for risky new indie companies. This is why Image created a huge brain drain at Marvel.

Self pub is already a mess, and this is going to make it worse. People are going to spam and hope. I can't navigate self pub already.

I de-HDR my photos. 90% of my editing is killing the detail in the shadows. More clarity and more detail is terrible looking. Making a shot super clear doesn't make it a good image, it just makes part of your brain think it's seeing really clearly, operating at 500%. That's the rush from both macro photography and hyper clear wide angle shots from vistas of plains and mountains.

Yeah, we need people with visual and other types of art literacy. Art is a conversation humanity is having with itself. Certain tools to help creators aren't bad, but plagiarism bots cross a line. Right now a lot of people are just going 'ha ha you said I had to work hard to make things and I don't, you are the sucker' And it's like... go away no one likes you.

We used to have a lot of small publishers, but most of them fell apart. I hope now that there is clearly a market, we might get some small publishers again. I'd love to see that. People will pay a LOT for convenience, and that is what editors do, ideally, slog through the garbage to give curated experiences.

[mistressofmuses]

Yeah... I do wish that more places *were* addressing it - like fandom exchanges and the like. Maybe they are waiting until someone tries it to address it, but I can absolutely see it being the sort of thing that someone WILL try. Either on the art or the writing side.
Jeez, I can see someone doing exactly that for fandom stockings or chocolate box or similar. I feel like there was something like that one year where someone submitted a bunch of fills that were identical, with just names and details like hair or eye color changed? It may not have been a big event, maybe it was a kinkmeme or something.

But exactly! Marvel and DC have already proven that they're willing to exploit their writers and artists (with a lot of "you're lucky to be here, so many people would kill for this job" stuff the same way AAA video game companies do.) And yeah, that's a pretty upsettingly baked-in part of the culture, considering the history there. So I feel like they'd *jump* on AI as a way to justify paying fewer people or paying them less, to increase the rate at which they expect things to be produced, etc. I mean, maybe that could be a minor boon for indie companies, who have already been a more attractive alternative. We could hope that the big companies jump on it and crash and burn... but it feels like we're rarely so lucky.

But yeah, I think that this is going to create a TON of "spam and hope."

I feel like that's going to become an imminent problem for kindle, if it isn't already. A handful of writers have allegedly already stated that they're using AI to write parts of things, and others have said that they're thrilled that it lets them write so much more than they were writing "on their own", or that they're glad they no longer have to write scenes they find boring, etc.
(I am getting that info second-hand, from another author blogging about it. I did not see the tiktoks she's talking about first-hand, but she also tried out one AI writing program with various prompts in order to test what sort of output it gives, and shares her results.)
She does point out that with self-pub, especially on Amazon, the algorithm heavily weighs productivity and steady output, which means there's a lot of incentive for someone playing that game to be interested in something that lets them generate new work quickly... as long as they don't care that they're putting out a product they didn't really create.

So yeah, I feel like this is about to make a lot of things a lot worse.

I looooooathe the fact that my cell phone camera automatically turns on its HDR "feature" - despite me having manually turned it off - any time there's basically any lighting contrast when I try to take a picture.
For some things, that super clarity and high detail might be the right choice, but it absolute is not always. It's yet another place where there's like, no concept of nuance. "If clarity is ever good, it must ALWAYS be good. If blurry is bad, then the sharpest image possible must be the best image possible. The things that are beneficial for one type of photography or one type of subject must be best for all types!"

I wish that art education was better. I know that's one of the places that a LOT of budget cuts hit the hardest. My art classes when I was a kid weren't amazing, but I at least learned a few basics about a few things. Not that that makes me wildly art literate - being friends with people more engaged with visual art than I was probably did more for that. It's still frustrating to see people who don't seem to have *any* knowledge who decide that they're somehow also experts.

There really is a frustrating smugness to the "ha, you worked to do this? I don't have to put any effort in at all, so there!" attitude toward AI. (OR snide "this is MY choice of artistic medium, and I am just as much of an artist as any of YOU.")

I hope that we do wind up with a bigger range of smaller publishers. The monopolies we have now (big 5 - barely averted winding up with big 4) have created a lot of sameness, I think. And I like plenty of mainstream work published by those companies! It's not that I think oooh big publishing always bad or anything... but I think smaller, niche publishers can offer a lot of good for authors and readers

[olivermoss]

Back in Fandom Stocking someone was gifting the same story, no changes, to every LOTR fan for years.

The flood of generic and samey stuff that Amazon wants to hook me on so I subscribe to Vella is already too much for me. And yeah, like the blogpost you linked said, ai stuff is super generic.

I went to well funded schools and somehow barely had any art. I didn't really have any in high school. We had an art class technically, but either no instruction or barely any. It was often treated like a study hall. I can't remember if we had instructed art in middle school... but one good effect of years of photography is that a lot of things in images stand out to me. And honestly, the degree to which people accept obviously edited images as real is insane... but also if you point anything out about it they get pissed off at you.

This is why I don't do long exposures. Other photogs can recognize them, most people think water just.... looks like that in Oregon? WTF? That is exactly why I use a Lensbaby if I am going fanciful stuff. It's a visual grammar, it makes the image having effects obvious. I know this isn't a big deal, but just having that as a baseline makes all the 'how will we trust pictures now?' stuff extra insane.

I am just trying to keep my head down and work on my own stuff. I know ai can't come close to what I am trying to do... if my tastes were more generic my life would be very different and maybe I wouldn't even be so motivated to write in the first place!

But also a lot of the stuff people are frustrated with and use ai to help nudge them along... this is why writers tend to work in groups to chat about things to get past blocks or fill in details. Fuck, I wish I had a group. Oh well.

I wonder how many people are selling 'how to use ai to make books for passive income' BS video right now...

[mistressofmuses]

Ugh, that's somehow not surprising, yet is very annoying. Why are people *like* that?

Generic and samey seems to be the draw for a lot of things. And like... I get it to some extent - if I can find the particular set of catnip tropes and character dynamics that I love, I'll read quite a few similar things and love every one! However... those are very rarely actually the popular things that are being churned out on KU or the various pay-by-chapter sites out there.
Maybe if my tastes did follow more popular/generic lines I would feel differently, ha, but for better or worse, I don't like the stuff that's intended for broad, generic appeal.

I luckily had at least some decent elementary ed art classes - nothing amazing at that age, but we got to do a few different things and at least do very simple intros to various mediums. Unfortunately we were probably mostly too young to appreciate or remember much about it, or for it to even guide later interest!
I think by middle school it was just one elective of many, though my memory could be off. In high school you only needed one art credit to graduate. By that point, the classes were more specialized, so there wasn't a generalist "try a bunch of different things!" option.
I took jewelry, and it was absolutely no real instruction. We got a list of projects we had to complete by the end of the semester, and extremely basic information on how to use the equipment (soldering irons and such)... and then no check-ins at all, so I wound up doing all of mine, badly, in a panic in like two weeks because I hadn't done anything all semester.

I definitely learned more about art from poking around deviantArt as a teen than from high school art, ha.

People are terrible at judging edited photos, or things that just utilize certain techniques - like long exposures. I've certainly seen lovely images captured that way! But yeah, waterfalls don't naturally have that glowy hazy look that a super long exposure gives, and it makes me a little sad that people don't realize that... water doesn't... do that?

Yeah, I wish that I'd ever had any real luck with a writing group. I've had to nope out of more than a few, and I know that I've also just not really given much effort in other ones on discord and such.

Oh god, however many are selling the idea of "ai writing as easy passive income", it's too many. Ugh.

[olivermoss]

A surprising amount of people don't realize water doesn't do that. A lot think it's just what water does early in the morning or something? Like the waterfall is just waking up for the day??

My experiences with writing groups has not been great. There was a local yuletide group that didn't mind me joining while I worked on fandom_stockings fills, but that hasn't been happening for years now. My experiences trying to join groups have been bad and the local Nano stuff is... the local leaders are all systems. I don't know if you are going to understand what that means or not, but uh... I honestly have not posted about how amazingly over the top the local nano stuff is, it's must more messed up that I've let on. It's like a parody of the worst of some of the most out there tumblr behaviors. Kinda pisses me off because that should be a place for me to find either groups or people to have with but the local leadership is really, really out there and has no concept of personal space. Anyone I'd want to hang with would also run screaming.

[mistressofmuses]

I feel like I saw someone trying to explain it like they thought the water was just... supercooled in the open? Like that weird phase of "below freezing, yet liquid, and now it's in the process of rapidly becoming ice". And like... no that is not how THAT works, and it's definitely not how waterfalls work!

But lmao, yes, that's just how waterfalls wake up! It's magical!

Yeah, a lot of same with the writing groups out here. Similar to a few of the discords that I've joined, the ones I've paid enough attention to tend to be absolutely get taken over by a few strong, pushy personalities. And like... that isn't *wrong*, it's not that those people shouldn't be talking about their work, but... they tend to drown out anyone and everyone else, or turn every conversation back to *their* work specifically, even if it's not terribly relevant. Other groups have been super snarly and condescending about fanfic, so that's a nope. Aaaaand there are plenty that seem great, but they're so active and move so fast on discord that I get overwhelmed just thinking about trying to jump in.
And oh yeah, I absolutely know what you mean by systems. I try to be pretty neutral on that, and like... whatever, I'm not the identity police. But there is a HIGH correlation of mega-drama with all of the systems I've interacted with for any length of time. I'm getting flashbacks to frankly astounding amounts of LJ drama, lmao. But trying to deal with that irl sound at best EXHAUSTING. Yuck. And poor personal boundaries? Big no thanks.

Frustrating, because yeah, that's exactly the kind of space and group it seems like you should be able to "find your people" in, yet it sounds like the exact sort of space that would chase the people you want to find far, far away!

[olivermoss]

Yeah, people like an image and then get defensive of it. Even when it's got super obvious visual gonks from too much editing. Some of the tells aren't obvious if you don't do photo editing yourself, but if you do it them jump out at you.

Yeah, it's yet another case of 'this door looks like the one I should walk through to find what I am looking for' and then it's like 'no, oh...no'. I was at a meet up and someone was literally gripping someone's arm with both hands and telling them all about their story idea. I was like 'surely, the leaders will kick this person' and then it turned out she was one of our regional leaders.

[mistressofmuses]

Right? People are funny like that, getting defensive over images. Like... it's okay to like a manipulated photo? You don't have to stop liking the image just because someone points out the "trick" to getting it. (Though agreed - a lot of people overdo it.)

Oh good lord. That sounds awful. I'd haaaaaate some rando (and leader of the group! should know better!!) grabbing onto me to gush. Like, if it's between people who know that's welcome, cool, but personal boundaries are a thing! And you'd think, with the fairly... "tumblr-esque" nature of some of the crowd, they'd be well aware of many reasons random touch might not be desired. Eesh.
(Then again, I've met people who do understand that some people don't want to be touched... but switch it around to how their *particular* mental/emotional/psychological situation means that they *have* to touch people, and not allowing them to do so is ableist against them. Not saying that's the case *there*, just that I've encountered it among the group of con-going friends-of-friends in college.)

[olivermoss]

"but switch it around to how their *particular* mental/emotional/psychological situation means that they *have* to touch people, and not allowing them to do so is ableist against them."

I don't know if that is the case here, but I am 100% ran into that here. Also people who are very nosy and say it's a 'tick' and they need to know for ND reasons so they can properly classify people in their mind. Yeah, that is a THEM problem not a ME problems. It is weird how you'd think tumblr-esque crows would be a certain way, but a lot of them don't have the most basic concept of boundaries at all... no even a touch

It's frustrating. Spaces that should be good... are just trainwrecks... and sometimes I've put up with those trainwrecks when I should run screaming

[mistressofmuses]

Oh yeah, that specific type of "I need to pry into everything about you, no matter how personal because of MY issues" is definitely one of the major categories of boundary-crossing I've encountered.
And like... competing access needs is a thing, but leaving room for people who get actually inappropriate is super uncomfortable and absolutely will chase a lot of people away from a group.
I absolutely hate how so many things - right now, especially neurodivergence - has been turned into a get out of jail free card for a lot of situations. I almost certainly have ADHD and I get a lot of the things that people talk about, and understand the ways in which certain tasks or ways of communicating are hard. But it's not a magical "this means I can behave however I want, and asking for any effort on my part is ableist!" card. Asking for understanding is one thing, but this often isn't that. It IS trying to make a THEM problem into a YOU problem, and that's uncool and uncomfortable.

I wish that more people who organized groups like that WOULD put real thought into things like boundaries and such. A lot of them either have bad boundaries themselves, or are very susceptible to any perceived pressure... they try to be SO accepting, for fear of being called unaccepting/ableist/etc., that they wind up allowing that bad behavior that chases the people with better boundaries/lack of tolerance for bullshit out. So again, you wind up with a group of all bad boundaries, and it's a strange echo chamber of weirdness that no one else wants to touch.
But I'm not bitter. :P

I also get it - I've also put up with some serious weirdness because I feel like it's supposed to be "my people", or because it's the best I can find, or because I feel like I must be the odd one out if no one else has a problem with the way people are acting.
Anime clubs... writing groups... queer groups... *sigh*

[olivermoss]

"I feel like it's supposed to be "my people", or because it's the best I can find, or because I feel like I must be the odd one out if no one else has a problem with the way people are acting."

So much this, it really did a number on me and probably screwed up my life pretty badly. Like, the more distance I have from some things that more I am just 'wtf...'

For me it was a weird mix of people expecting special treatment but also aggressively not respecting my boundaries. People who were only two years younger than me kept calling me 'fandom Mom' which is just layers of disrespect. First off, I am not the parents here to look after you just because I have a car. They were fundamentally rejecting me as part of the group, a resource, but also they thought it was funny that I hated being called Mommy and so they did it even more... while they all demanded all sorts of special treatment and consideration for themselves. Also, like... the gendered part of it make me ill. I never put up with it, but man so many people wanted to slot me into that 'mommy' role.

I've mentioned this before, but when groups fall prey to this BS everyone who can peaces out. They self-select down to the people who having nothing else and it just gets worse and worse. Lots of fannish people and queer people out there, but a lot of the organized groups can just wind up in this spiral. I've seen it happen.

[mistressofmuses]

Luckily I've usually noped out of the groups before I think there was too much lasting damage for me, minus the general weight of how the same damn things keep happening, and how so many places that should have "felt like home" aren't places I want to be.
Perpetually feeling like the outsider among supposed outsiders isn't great! Though at least looking back now, I also have more of the "man, wtf was that shit" feeling, rather than the confused/hurt feelings I used to have.

And yeah, it is a terrible mix! Boundaries for me, but not for thee. *I* must be catered to, but trampling YOUR boundaries is just funny!
Ugh, ew ew ew at the "fandom mom" thing. I hate that general term, and I really hate that you were pushed into it (or that they attempted to do so.) Gross. Like... I am not your damn mother, and I do not want to be.

We have talked about that, and it absolutely tracks with basically every group I've tried and failed to become a part of. The people you would actually like to meet and hang out with nope out because of the bad behavior, leaving an increasingly self-selecting set of people who are DOING the bad behavior, or who are just willing to tolerate it because they feel like they should or have to. So bad boundaries from one side or the other. Like, a lot of these groups are supposed to be full of weirdos, and I have a decently high tolerance for weird! But not boundary crossing, hypocritical, rude, bad behavior.

[olivermoss]

Sadly I was stuck in a loop of leaving... only to return when I couldn't find other places to be social. My pretty much losing my 20s to being sick and trying to start like having a social life around age 29 probably is mostly to blame for why I couldn't break out of that cycle. Most people my age were already settled in connections and circles.

Yeah, the outsider among outsiders sucks. So many 'welcoming and accepting' spaces did not mean me.

I glad you managed to get out of all that.

I can handle weird, but there is a difference between that and having no concept of boundaries or thinking the world needs to cater to you.

[mistressofmuses]

Ugh. I'm sorry you were trapped in that cycle. I think I was only saved from that by circumstance - graduating from college, moving out of that city, etc.

Spending that much time sick really sucks, both in terms of the time spent sick, but also the long-ranging impacts after figuring out what was happening.

Trying to find rl friends and things in my mid-30s has proven really difficult for exactly that reason: most people around my age already have pretty strong social groups. Relationships in my 20s were a mess, and a lot of those people I had to just cut ties with. I'm glad I did so, but it's also tough to find and make connections now.

SOOOO many "welcoming and accepting" spaces have been closed off for whatever reason. Lots of invisible gatekeeping or the bad-boundary issues we mentioned earlier. It sucks.

Exactly. I'm good with weird, and even the weird that's too weird for me personally I can almost always look at with a "you do you" attitude. But NOT when it comes with the lack of physical/emotional boundaries and that expectation of being catered to. Nope, nope, nope.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, it's so hard to navigate it, but every time I've asked for help the reactions have been gross. Like, if I can't find a social space they must be rejecting me for a ~reason and I should stop trying to be around people. There are a lot of factors that lead to where I am, and the more distance I get the more I realize that being gender non-conforming was a bigger problem than I realized. Also, I've since learned things about some of the leaders of some cons and groups and yeah, they were actively policing the groups for certain things and I didn't realize it. Now it's all clear, but that doesn't help me now.

Ah, sorry to dump!

Having to cut ties and start over is really hard. My now-ex-therapist tried to hard sell me on the idea that the pandemic would be a huge boon for me with the online spaces and also how after people would be rushing to make new connections and expand their circles again. Yeah... that didn't happen.

[mistressofmuses]

That's awful. I'm sorry you've gotten so little support, both from the groups themselves and from others when you've tried to seek support outside said groups! I think there's a lot of that sentiment; "well, what did YOU do to deserve it? Didn't you see their sign that says they're open and accepting of everyone?" When like... you're trying to explain that there's a big unspoken asterisk on the sign. [That metaphor might be a gigantic mess, lol.]
Oof. I can completely see how having the wrong people in a leadership role would cause a LOT of problems if they decide to push their own biases or exclusionary beliefs and things like that, even if they do it "subtly."

Nah, it's not dumping, just commiserating!

Ugh, yeah. I kept hearing how there was going to be this fantastic boom of in person friendships and interactions and things after Covid. Yeah, there were people excited to do stuff for a while... most of them were anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers and for way too long, every single event caused a wave of Covid infections in everyone I knew who'd gone to them. By the time things reached a point where it seems kind of okay to go do things, everyone is uninterested, just like they were pre-Covid.

[olivermoss]

The words 'you need to consider that YOU are the common factor in all these situations...' ugh. Logically, I know it makes no sense and studies are showing that isolation and loneliness are skyrocketing problems, but there is no way to talk about the issues for a number of reasons.

Also, maybe Portland got more than it's fair share of the really tumblr-addled set. Lots of nerds moved here when I did, maybe some where strange and some where just boundary-less people looking for validation.

Same. Every time I've got to a meetup event or walk it's all the hardcore anti-mask and anti-vax set who assume I am one of them and want to welcome me into their MAGA arms and nope, nope, nope, nope

[mistressofmuses]

Ugh. Yeah, there's a lot of data out there that points to how common isolation and loneliness are, the ways in which it impacts mental health (and physical health!) outcomes, how this is actually very widespread and something worth being concerned about... And yet it's something that most people want to brush off as a personal issue.

Portland might have been a big target for the worst of the tumblr-types. It has that sort of "liberal utopia (in the quirky/weird way)" reputation. (Though I know you said that there've been people told absolutely untrue things about stuff like long-running transmasc queer spaces or the like.) It's very possible that there was at least a slightly-higher percentage of the bad-boundaried than in the average population.

Right? It seems like the "in-person socialization boom" is only for certain kinds of people... mostly ones I don't want anything to do with.
And while this is only true of my personal life, it seems like the vast majority of the people I knew at an acquaintance level, but would like to get to know better, are stuck dealing with other things completely. Grief over lost loved ones (covid and non) or all-consuming health issues (covid and non)...

[muccamukk]

I feel like the people who are freaking out about how deep fakes or whatever are a new thing need to be shown Wag the Dog or something.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, I agree. It's nuts. These specific problems are not new problems. That they all thought they had some direct access to reality and truth is disturbing.