memes

The idea is exactly the same

Correct. So what makes the difference?

There's a hard truth known amongst people who do things:

Ideas by themselves are worthless without effort taken to communicate them. Few ideas are actually unique, and if they're made real at all, the difference between a "good idea" or "bad idea" is in execution and no small bit of luck.

That execution lives or dies on fundamental understanding and process, but "great ideas" folks are primarily only concerned with the glorious end result and nothing in between.

If that idea is to be worth anything at all, they need to put in the work to make it real, just like anything else.

Even philosophers, whose entire field centers around ideas, need to understand how to communicate that philosophy in a way others will understand.

Have you seen storyboards for award-winning films or videogames or comics? Seemingly simple scribbles made by people who put in the work to understand the fundamental process, used to communicate to others who put in the work to understand different parts of that process. This is how these ideas are tested and refined to eventually become art.

This is why none of those "aspiring game designers" who "have no skills but great ideas" have ever become actual game developers without getting their own hands dirty and learning at least part of how games are actually made. Making worthwhile things takes action, and action takes effort.

Nothing worthwhile in life comes without some kind of effort, and failure is how we learn and improve, despite what commercial interests will loudly and repeatedly sell you.

Ai gen is tempting because it seems to remove all the personal growth and introspection and effort requirements to communicating these supposed "great ideas" for someone who's "just too busy" to learn anymore.

But why should we care about a "great idea" that someone is only willing to put a bare minimum of effort into sharing with us? We're busy learning and collaborating on our own work to make it into art.

Ideas without meaningful action and understanding are simply an act of mental masturbation. It's fun, even healthy in moderation, but not worthwhile to anybody but the thinker.

We scorn Ai images as "not art" because it's a single step away from mental masturbation.

It's a siren's call appealing to "ideas people" who think they can finally avoid the scary process of improving themselves or trying something new, and everyone will be cheering them on as "artists" because they patiently shuffled words around and hit "make it for me" a few hundred times.

It's a fun tech toy at best, and so, so many bad things at worst.

If you read this far, thank you! Sorry it was a lot. I put probably half an hour or more into exercising my perspective and particular abilities to make sure I conveyed my points effectively.

I imagine you certainly wouldn't bother if it were just GPT'd, but I put effort into this comment. Merely thinking it and having a machine spit it out would likely be of very little use, and possibly even insulting, to you.

Don't be afraid to learn and grow if you want to express yourself. That is the joy of being human! I'd like to quote the legendary Bruce Lee here:

Do not fear failure. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.

Have a good one.