On Accusations of AI Slop, and How to Handle Trolls on Instagram
When I posted the teaser for “Chocobots,” I boosted it and crossed my fingers. Over 7,000 views later, the trolls showed up right on schedule. A few I fenced with. A few I teased. My wife showed me how to set up the block, and still they tried to climb the wall, coming as fresh avatars to slip past the filters. They needed to tell me it was “too easy” to use AI to make things, without the slightest idea about production, asset creation, persistent character generation, nuance, editing, and everything else that goes into it.
Poor gatekeepers. At first I trolled them back, thinking this might even turn the chaos into clickbait. After all, I paddled into this wave on purpose.
They can see the tsunami headed for their village and say, bravely, “Bring me my brown pants so I do not embarrass myself over what fear does to intestinal fortitude.” Every AI slop accusation is from a suboptimal artist printing bondage anime girls in his degenerate creeper notebook and thinking it is just as good as “Chocobots.” And it is not.
So, do you engage? Do you become the archtroll and have at these poor insecure weightless foolish mortals, as much fun as that is, watching them bring a knife to a hellbore fight?
No, you don’t. Never, never ever. You have a reputation to uphold on Instagram.
Just feed the good dog. Set up your filters to nuke the AI-Slop related trolls into little tiny bugs without legs or mouths, and keep right on doing what you’re doing.
I am releasing yet another glorious record, “TEETH,” on June 19 by the fabulous Fake Sugar Daddy. It has been ready for a month. All the songs draw from synthetic covers of tracks I wrote as far back as twenty-five years ago, along with poetry I have collected in dusty pixels and grimy spiral-bound notebooks. Ideas arrived like sprites in the night after a walk beneath the Ventura sunset—filled with strange digital magic that did not even exist a year ago. I am most anticipating your reaction to “The Year Before The Internet” and “Computer Related.”
The work speaks louder than any reply ever could.
Keep shipping, my dudes. Keep creating. Never regret this new medium, and never apologize to the outgoing gatekeepers. The real audience is watching, and they are not the ones crying in the comments.
