Content and the Faceless Void
I truly hate the word "content" as it's used these days. The distillation of everything you do into something made for public consumption is extremely sad and tasteless, and that's how we end up in the world where people that should never have a platform lead a bunch of people into following them, an environment incentivizing reckless behavior and ragebaiting, instant gratification and thoughtless responses.
An environment where what is produced is valued over the people who made them.
Having worked in webtoon and keeping a close eye on and arm's length from the video game industry, I have seen the shift towards treating art as a contextless thing coming out of an endless font. It's incredible how entitled people get. I made the mistake of reading the comments for the stories I handled, and I got gems like, "Awfully slow update! You're literally paid to draw, so how come you can't update every day?" on a weekly serialization (which is probably as fast as you can sanely expect, and even then is barely healthy) or, "Coming here for the new series, only to find that the author dares to charge for view??? What a--" (the author was quite sickly, and only continued to draw for the sake of her audience. The charge was part of official publication because food and medication obviously did not come free). People swarming to lambast the author when he announced hiatus for family bereavement. People raging against an author's choice to end a series and start something new.
The world demands unlimited entertainment.
The platforms deliver unlimited entertainment.
Makers are not human, they're just faceless void assigned to produce and produce more.
"I use ChatGPT because the author is too slow."
Everything warps around you, you, you.
"I dislike this, therefore there should be less of this in the world."
In your cozy little bubble, scrolling an endless supply of "contents".
Your art is content. You are content. Your life is content.
Before AI gets to subsume us, our fellow humans have chosen to turn their eyes blind and cast the world beyond their screens into the faceless void.
And then they wail because when they create something no one pays attention to their struggle.
"Eh, could've generated that myself."