Category: CommunityCategory: Community

During yesterday’s “WHO’S WATCHING THE WATCHERS?” conversation, we started talking about Substack’s recent partnership with Pangram, the thing to detect AI writing. The thing is, talk to a bunch of people in the real world, and they have no idea what “a Substack” is, let alone what the fuck an AI detection tool is.

Let’s not outsource our taste to these AI conglomerates, and instead rely on the decades of life experience. The magazines we read when were kids. The songs we listened to on the radio. The adventures we had when renting movies.

From “The Lost Civic Life of Movie Rental Stores,”

Video clerks and store owners fostered a true third-place atmosphere in their stores. “There was always conversation in our store,” recalls Jerry Frebowitz, owner of Philadelphia’s Movies Unlimited. “Especially on Saturdays . . . there was so much film talk going on. Total strangers were talking to each other; it was really a phenomenon.” Though his customers always came to rent a movie, Frebowitz says, “They definitely stayed to talk . . . hardly anybody came in to get the movie and leave.”

There was no shortage of slop before AI, it’s just now we have a multi-billion dollar industry behind it trying to to sell bottom of the barrel CPM ads against it. Just as the techbro vultures co-opted the vibrant blogging ecosystem of the 2000s, they’ll decimate the post-social / current newsletter landscape to the ground as well.

Just go for a walk and let it burn/ Talk to our neighbors. Gather on a Zoom call (we’re talking about this again on Monday). Send each other letters. Update your website. Hop on the phone.

Does this solve everything? Does this “grow your audience” or help you make $10,000 per month?

Friend, the future is each other. The only zen at the top of a mountain is the zen you bring with you. Find your zen.

The shows and movies we loved used to come on VCR tapes, or discs. We’d watch hours at a time, one program, show, or movie at a time.

Now we watch a flurry of brief story lines, bloopers, sports high lights, movie scenes, dancing, crashes, breaking news, podcast interviews – hours of “content” ingested a few seconds at a time.

It’s no wonder we’re exhausted after just 20 minutes of “relaxing.”

Then we spend hours per day trying to cram our work into that whirlwind, and we’d be lucky if a few people will even see it.

That’s why I think it makes more sense to find those “few people” in other places – local and online communities, reaching out, collaborating, interacting with the people doing the same level of work in our creative orbit.

Sure, maybe we “only” reach a few people from all that, but this effort is foundational, building the skills and sense of how to navigate the human to human world of making all this work.

Substack rolled out an AI detection system using Pangram, and it’s kicked up more questions than answers.

​This is well beyond “did AI write this?”

​Did we opt-in to have all our writing scanned? Is our work used to train AI models? Where does that data go?

​When (not if) the detector gets it wrong, what are the consequences for the writer? Can we appeal?

​And underneath all of this, what kind of culture are we building? Are we putting our trust into the hands of Pangram? Are we building a paranoid creative surveillance state on an AI service? And who’s paying for it?!

​So many questions.

​We won’t settle all of this in an hour. This is a room to bring your reactions and feelings and talk about it with other people figuring it all out. There’s no right answer here, or perfect outcome, but we can get together with others as we look ahead.

Thursday, July 30 at 2:00 PM EDT → https://luma.com/fro6y0r8
Monday, Aug 3 at 9:00 AM EDT → https://luma.com/xo7xogcm

This from photographer Tom Bland, sharing a story of local promotion:

We have been leaving small homemade zines in our town’s info booth for the last year.

This week we had some visitors to our art stand who are based in Canada but frequently visit the Berkshires to meet up with family here. They had picked up one of our zines from the info booth last year but not opened it until they got home to Canada. Inside, they found information about our art stand and made a mental note to check it out next time they were in town.

Sure enough, almost a year later they came to the art stand and bought a copy of our First Frost / Final Bloom zine.

I happened to be home so we got to have a great chat. It really solidified for me how seemingly small local marketing ideas like this can stand out as being unique and make a connection with someone who is looking for something different/analog/human.

Social media is alluring because five minutes after you post something, they’ll probably be two likes, and someone left a heart emoji comment. Leaving some small handmade zines in your town’s info booth is a much slower affair, as you lose the near-immediate feedback.

Walking away from that instaneosus feedback loop is a challenge, for sure. But recognizing the mechanics of social media, and how they’re designed to suck you in, is one of the best ways to break up with these platforms.

It doesn’t have to be overnight. None of this is black and white. But putting your life’s work into the hands of companies who only seek to profit from your unpaid labor might not be the best long game to play.

From Seth Godin, on how being a bad boss to ourselves can limit our potential.

When we have the world’s worst boss, it’s no surprise that our work isn’t filling us with anything. The talk inside our head — the story we’re telling ourselves — undermines all of it.

We can find a friend or a group, start a circle, to change the way our boss talks to us. Because if there was a boss like that in the real world, you would never work for them. And you shouldn’t work for yourself if you’re undermining yourself that way.

Echoing Priya Parker, of course, this leans towards group help, instead of “self help.”

You can read all the Seth Godin (or Mel Robins) books in the world, but the breakthroughs and the magic happen in a group, with like minded people, where you can be safe and vulnerable and care for one another.

It’s risky, which is why so many people scoff at the idea. But then again, that’s exactly what a horrible boss would tell you.