Gonna post the comment thread from the previous post into a standalone post, to get a new ball rolling, and start some more aesthetics posting in the comments, putting the 50-year civil cohesion cycle on the back burner for a few days (although I have plenty more to say already).
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Well, if no one else is gonna spell out why the Ghibli-fied AI slop doesn't actually look like Ghibli, I guess I will. I already wrote a more expansive post about AI slop in general. This'll just be a couple comments since it's more focused and won't be wide-ranging.
I'll skip the typical midwit crap that no one cares about, but that generates all the buzz in the media -- no one cares about copyright, it's fake.
Employment for artists does not depend on how they perform vs. AI, it's solely a matter of the patrons' willingness to give up their money for something great, or cool. If they're unwilling, the artists don't get hired -- whether this is rationalized as "no one does good art anymore" or "AI does an equal or better job than human artists" or "artists are Democrats and I'm a Republican".
So AI is not going to eliminate jobs for artists that would have been there, if not for the AI. "AI" is just an excuse for slashing jobs that were going to be slashed no matter what.
The American Empire is collapsing, so there's less wealth to spread around, and the elites are greedier than ever. *That* is why there are hardly any jobs for artists, compared to the good ol' days.
At the heart of the matter is "does the Ghibli-fied AI slop even resemble Studio Ghibli works?" And the answer is -- no. It's just a re-skin of an image, usually a digital photo but perhaps another piece of AI slop.
And the aspects of the image that it re-skins are the most superficial -- mainly the facial features on human faces, giving them the standard in-house proportions, lines, and shapes, and as a result the expressions, of Ghibli characters.
It also re-skins the use of line / line art into a more illustrated look, and blocks in the color as in an illustration, with minor use of sculptural shading.
However, just cover up the facial expressions, and ask how Ghibli it looks -- it doesn't, it looks like any ol' Photoshop filter that makes a photo look like an illustration instead. E.g. the ubiquitous Photoshop rotoscoping of the 2000s, which detects the outlines of major shapes and gives them dark bold outlines, and then you can fill in the interior with whatever color block you want.
Someone went further to make an entire movie out of digitally rotoscoped film footage (i.e., the alterations were done by computer programs, not by a hand moving a pencil or pen over tracing paper on top of a lightbox with a film still being projected up through it).
That was the 2006 movie adaptation of Philip K. Dick's iconic novel A Scanner Darkly -- it was such a snooze that I literally fell asleep in the theater. I didn't go out to the movies much after the '90s, when they all started sucking. But I did venture out for that one, and I wrote it off as just boring.
After reading the novel some years later, it really struck me how terribly they butchered it in the movie, and the visuals were a key part of that. There was nothing in the novel to suggest visualizing it as taking place in a '90s virtual reality aesthetic. It looks so stupid.
So, the Ghibli AI slop is just a reheated Photoshop rotoscope filter. Depending on which illustration style you're telling it to emulate -- Ghibli, 1940s Disney, or whatever else -- it renders its rotoscoped trace-over lines in the intended line art style. And then it fills in the color blocks in the same style, with or without sculptural shading depending on the intended style.
It really is mind-blowing how technologically retarded, and aesthetically blind, everyone has become by now. It's just a Photoshop filter, belonging to an existing class (rotoscoping), that requires a full input image to operate on, then spits out the output. This slop is literally 20-25 years old, not cutting-edge at all. I don't mean that Studio Ghibli's signature style is old, which it is, I mean the tech used to "make my image look like Ghibli" is old.
It doesn't qualify as AI either -- no more than "Photoshop" counts as an AI image-generator. When AI generates images from verbal prompts alone, is where the real slop comes in, and I already covered that in the standalone post from a few months ago. When it's just transforming an existing fully rendered image file, it doesn't even count as "generating" the output -- it's just an alteration or re-skin or transformation, a la Photoshop.
Putting aside the datedness rather than cutting-edgy-ness of the tech being used, how good is it at emulating a certain coherent style, e.g. "Studio Ghibli" or whatever else you prompt it to emulate?
Not good at all. As mentioned, 95% of the dum-dums' "gee wowzers!" reaction is due to the human facial expressions alone, which does not count as an entire aesthetic or style.
Damningly, the AI gets the Ghibli *animal* expressions completely backwards. I image-searched "Ghibli AI cat" to see representative examples, and the cats all look very naturalistic in line, shape, proportion, and expression -- with some basic line art and color-blocking to make them look like drawings rather than photos.
But Ghibli never renders animals that way -- their signature, distinctive in-house style is to make animals look caricatured, from the mundane ones like Kiki's black cat or the fantastical Totoro. Their animals always look unusual, exaggerated, even surrealistic, compared to the human beings from the exact same movie, who look much more naturalistic -- just with a little line art and color-blocking. But the people are rarely caricatured visually.
As I said in the previous standalone post, AI slop is biased toward photorealism rather than stylization. Even when you specifically tell it to emulate an illustrated / animated style, and where the animals have a distinctly stylized and caricatured look, it can't help but portray them naturalistically, by illustration standards, rather than the caricatures that are truly and already present in the training set data.
So, even if you were as lenient as possible, "OK, let's just grade it on how Ghibli-esque the faces or bodies look," it fails. It does well with people's faces, although Ghibli doesn't have very distinctive human body shapes (unlike, say, The Simpsons, South Park, Peanuts, Garfield, etc.), so the fact that the AI slop matches the original on body shapes is no proof of its intelligence or accuracy.
But it fails completely for animals -- and in order to achieve a Studio Ghibli aesthetic, how the hell can you ignore animals? They're central to every single one of their works -- sometimes they're the main characters, like in Pom Poko! It's like with Disney, an imaginary world filled with animals who have more personality than ordinary persons.
The line art and color blocking and minor sculptural shading is the remaining 5% of the "gee wowzers!" reaction. It does all right, but that's cuz Ghibli doesn't have very distinctive line art and color blocking -- that's just a generic illustrated or animated look, not specifically Ghibli.
The programmers would get more credit if they tackled a more distinctive target, like Disney's Aladdin, which has very specific line art, itself derived / inspired by the illustrator Al Hirschfeld. *That* movie, hand-drawn from 1992, is impressive -- matching the line art to the original inspiration's style, and doing it throughout an animated movie rather than still illustrations.
So far we've only tackled aspects of (Florentine) disegno, not (Venetian) colorito. And as any art appreciator knows, disegno is basic or irrelevant, and colorito is where all the artful liveliness... well, comes alive!
The reheated Photoshop rotoscoping filter does fill in the interior of outlines with color blocks, but which colors does it choose? And which color combinations? And in what lighting conditions -- evenly lit bright, evenly lit dark, evenly lit hazy twilight, chiaroscuro?
It makes no decisions on these central facets of the image's aesthetic. It blindly copies them over from the input image. It flattens a range of colors into a color block, and likewise for lighting variations getting flattened into a "shaded color region," like animation.
But the range of colors it's choosing from, and brightness or darkness conditions it's choosing from, is what is already present in the image.
If a person is wearing a brown shirt in a photo, there are in fact a zillion different shades of brown present at the pixel level. The filter chooses from within that range of browns, and expands that one shade of brown throughout the entire region of the image.
But the filter didn't choose the person to be wearing a brown shirt, rather than a red, blue, yellow, or purple shirt.
Ditto for the lighting conditions -- copied over, and simplified, from the input image. Not over-writing them or second-guessing them, like making a relatively bright region dark, or making a high-contrast image into an evenly lit one, or whatever.
Therefore, the distinctive Ghibli-ness of the output image is entirely dependent upon the input image already possessing the distinctive colors, color combinations, and lighting conditions, of a Ghibli image. Whether deliberately or coincidentally -- but given that this filter showed up after the photos were taken, we can assume any resemblance of the input image to Ghibli is purely coincidental.
That is, because the input photos were NOT made to look Ghibli-esque to begin with, regarding colors and lighting, the output of the Ghibli filter will look no more Ghibli-esque. It adds no value, passively copying over the original choices, simplifying them somewhat to look illustrated rather than photographed.
No wonder none of those Ghibli AI slop images look like they were taken from a Ghibli movie -- where are the rich blue skies, the verdant green grass or foliage, the pale buttery creamy yellows to contrast against the saturated blues and greens, billowy white clouds, and all the other fixtures of a characteristic Ghibli image?
Where are the brightly lit exteriors and landscapes? Where are the chiaroscuro interiors, or outdoor interiors like a clearing in a forest? Where is the connection to the ukiyo-e woodblock prints, which all iconic Japanese art afterward derives from? Something as basic as the background of Super Mario Bros looks more Ghibli-esque and ukiyo-e derived, regarding color and light, than the latest dud of a Photoshop filter that purports to be oh-so-much smarter and cutting edge. It looks dumb and dated.
Then there's composition, or the arrangement of the separate objects in relation to one another to yield a single coherent scene. Since Japanese animation is heavily influenced by photography, regarding composition, this implies things like "camera placement," "camera angle," and so on.
As with colors and lighting, the reheated Photoshop rotoscoping filter does not make any decisions about camera placement -- height off the ground, angle in any direction, proximity to subjects, blurry vs. sharp focus, and so on. Just blindly carried over from the input image.
Therefore, any resemblance to Ghibli images is coincidental, and due to the creator of the input image, not to the AI programmer.
And of course, very damn few of those photo-snappers were going for a Ghibli look, meaning they largely do NOT look Ghibli-esque. If Ghibli had totally naturalistic camera placement, angle, etc., then perhaps a fair share of ordinary candid photos would resemble it.
But they go for more stylized camera placement, like very high or very low angles (especially in those iconic landscapes, a low-angle camera somewhat close-up, showing the people or animals appearing to tower right up into those rich blue skies and billowy white clouds).
Most ordinary photo-snappers don't opt for off-center compositions, cropping, or really consider composition at all. That's why none of them looks like a still from an anime, where such concerns are central to every scene.
They look exactly like a typical candid photo shot by someone with no aesthetic concern while pressing the button -- cuz that wasn't the point, it was just to record a memory or event in visual form, not to be artistic, let alone to emulate a certain aesthetic like Ghibli or whoever else.
The fact that line art and color blocking is slapped on top of these totally ordinary compositions, ordinary colors, and ordinary lighting, does not change the fact that the original images -- and therefore, the superficially re-skinned outputs -- do not look like anime, of any studio's style (Ghibli or otherwise).
Final meta-observation, about the state of commentary or criticism in both art and technology. I see no evidence that anyone commenting on these topics majored in art history, or is self-taught in it.
Maybe some of the practicing artists, who all uniformly hate AI slop -- but then the dum-dums just write that off as professional jealousy against their computer program job market rivals, rather than taking their opinion more seriously since they have demonstrated some level of "having a good eye" through their art.
Otherwise the terms I used would be standard in tHe DiScOUrSe about this AI slop. Again, perhaps the practicing artists have, but I don't think so. They just say, "Wow, this looks like shit". Fair enough -- they're artists, not commentators or critics. But anyone else should have a basic toolkit of terms, and the visual and perceptual skills needed to analyze images, along with practice from studying art history.
As I said in the previous post, though, all the AI slop cheerleaders are wordcels, not visual people. Forget artist vs. critic -- the more important difference is wordcel vs. shape-rotator or color-perceiver.
Again, their choice of words and their arguments are never about the visual nature of what they're bla-bla-bla-ing about. It's too vibe-y or meta-, like does this represent the human spirit or not?
Who cares about what you think represents the human spirit? -- just tell me what you're looking at. You can't build an argument about art without first knowing what it is you're seeing. And these wordcels can't tell you what's staring them right in the face. They're just not visual-brained. They can analyze narratives and dialog and word choice, but they can't talk about visual art at all. It's beyond their ken.
Nor have they written a computer program of their own -- OK, that's forgivable, like not being a practicing artist. Do you at least know what programs do, have you used them before? Maybe you could be a decent critic of the tech, despite not being a practicing computer coder. How many hours did you spend Photoshopping digital photos during the 2000s?
These dumbos can't even recognize a Photoshop rotoscoping filter when it's staring them in the face -- and the output of that filter was ubiquitous, not a niche thing. How about the program itself -- Photoshop?
Their only awareness of that seminal piece of tech is in their verbal wordcel meme-world, where "haters will say it's photoshopped" was verbally altered into "haters will say it's AI". They view that as a mere verbal riff, updating an older and semi-outdated joke -- or so they think. What if this use of so-called AI is functionally identical to a Photoshop filter? Well then, there's no need to update the joke.
In fact, the datedness of the tech's functionality needs to be called out, and the pretense of it being cutting-edge / the future must be cut down to size. It's not progressing and cutting-edge when it's 20-25 years old -- eons, in computer tech lifespans.
As I said before, these AI slop-slurpers are just gadget-diddlers, they don't know any math or computer science. Jesus, they don't even remember what Photoshop already did 25 years ago! And they're not visual people either. They are the last people to ask about the matter of "AI art".
They just really get a dopamine rush from playing around with gadgets and devices, and the AI prompt is just another gadget for them to diddle and feel dopamine hits from.
Some of them are paid to hawk this slop, some are just really obsessive about their favorite gadgets and shill them for free.
Either way, it's a sign of our collapsing culture that the legacy and Millennial media outlets won't track down, let alone pay, someone who can do what is necessary to comment on these matters.
But then, that's why you keep returning to these ruins of the blogosphere, to ask the cliff-dwelling sage what he thinks about all this crap. ^_^
"This'll just be a couple comments since it's more focused and won't be wide-ranging."
Famous not-so-last words that I never, ever stick to... but you've probably picked up on this quirk of mine by now. I just can't help it, and I'm like that with in-person presentations too, not just online / in writing.
But it's worth it, you wouldn't want some crisp, terse, just-the-facts bullet-point slideshow, if you're trekking up the Cliffs of Wisdom. You can get that from any ol' talker. My meandering is always coherent, on a zoomed-out-enough perspective, not pointless. ^_^
All for now.
A recurring theme with the braindead AI cheerleaders' attempt at commentary, criticism, support, etc., is that none of them will ever say "you're wrong", let alone make arguments to the contrary.
ReplyDeleteWell, of course -- it's not up for discussion. The wannabe Ghibli slop looks nothing like a still from one of their movies, aside from very superficial stuff like facial expressions.
Notice how none of the cheerleading involves a landscape with no human faces, which Ghibli has made many many iconic examples of, but which would look totally ordinary and not-Ghibli-at-all if you fed some random landscape photo into the reheated Photoshop rotoscoping filter.
The colors, color combos, lighting, the entire composition -- none of it looks like Ghibli. So they can't, and won't say "you're wrong". And they certainly won't expound on that in argument form.
So they concede the major point, that AI slop is always slop, and doesn't even do what its cheerleaders claim it does -- e.g., "make your photos look like they're from a Ghibli movie". So the larger questions about, "Yes it does these wonderful things, but is the price worth it / think of the lost artists' jobs / etc.?"
That debate doesn't take off the ground, cuz there *is no* Faustian bargain of wonderful mind-blowing aesthetics, but at the price of having it done by an automated computer program instead of the human hand and handheld technology like paper, pens, lightboxes, etc.
Since there's no trade-off, AI slop is a dead-weight loss. It provides the rationalization / excuse for slashing tons of artists' jobs, while also looking like total slop. It's lose-lose! Not a win-lose trade-off!
The shills aren't so shameless as to straight up lie about what the images look like -- they're not reacting with, "Um, ackshually that sepia-toned hazy scene has a bright blue sky, verdant foliage and grass, and warm creamy yellows, with sunlight pouring onto the entire scene, just like in Ghibli landscapes. You just can't perceive it for some reason, skill issue."
ReplyDeleteSo rather than argue on aesthetic grounds, they fall back onto the non-defense of "just deal with it", as though it has a mind of its own, or as though the dumb tasteless ill-gotten wealthy elites are just going to keep putting the pedal to the metal on this AI slop, forever and ever, out of spite and/or clueless delusion.
This whole AI bubble was inflated as one special case of the mega-bubble that began with QE (Central Bank money-printing by the trillions, and handing it out to any dumbass who could razzle-dazzle the money-lenders, a la the Shark Tank TV show -- that was a documentary, not a fictional portrayal, of the QE scheme).
As the money deflates from that bubble, all this idiotic slop is going to go the way of the dodo. Or more to the point, the way of "entire meals in a single pill", "flying cars", "automated autonomous robo-agents", and so on and so forth. All failed and un-doable boondoggles. Not just out of our reach, simply un-doable.
In the meantime, as long as they try to shovel this slop into our trough, we (who are not shills for it) will keep ignoring or rejecting or mocking it for what it is. We're not dealing with or adapting to anything. Artists won't adopt it, audiences who aren't braindead won't pay for it, and critics who can see more than one color and get past level 1 on Tetris will keep panning it.
Another deflecting non-defense are the lazy irrelevant retarded "analogies" drawn to any ol' art movement or artist from the past, which are cherry-picked to be iconic yet thought to be bad at the time.
ReplyDeleteAI "art" just dropped yesterday, it has no iconic status whatsoever. So the only part of the analogy that can be substantiated is that everyone at the time it came out hated it, said it sucked as art, sucked on a technical level, boring, slop, geddit outta heah...
And most things that provoke that reaction from the audience and critics *are* worthless slop that will NEVER become iconic or sleeper hits or critically re-evaluated down the line.
Claiming that AI slop will be vindicated by critics or audiences of the distant future is 100% pure bullshit cope fanfic.
Because it cannot stand on its own aesthetically, the dum-dum supporters have to prop it up by broken analogies to some other canonical art movement.
Sorry -- only thing they have in common is being panned at their debut, which most bad art is!
The whole "my favorite slop will be vindicated" is just another variant on the seething impotent revenge fantasy genre, an ever popular genre with nerds.
ReplyDeleteAnd as usual, they project their own garbaggio onto their betters. They think Shakespeare was hated and panned in his own time, or that Bach was, or that Titian was, or any of these other iconic figures whose prolific output proves that they were wildly popular in their own time, not panned.
If they were hated in their own time, they wouldn't have gotten very many commissions, would they?
It's so easy to see through the BS claims about "contemporaneously hated, but later canonized" -- just another flavor of the "misunderstood genius" fantasy. Just about all geniuses are appreciated as treasures within their own lifetime, they get all sorts of support (material and reputational), and only a tiny number slip through the cracks.
"But I or my fave slop-server could be one of those tiny number that slips through the cracks!" Slim to none chance -- and the only similarity between you / your fave slop-server and the genius who was only recognized long after his death, is that nobody praises you while you're alive. Yeah, you and everyone else!
You're not special, stop seethingly revenge-fantasizing about postmortem vindication. Barely less immature than a 7 year-old fantasizing about how "I hope I die, it'll be worth it just for ghost-me to see the tears streaming down their faces when they realize how much they should've appreciated me while I was alive".
Intolerable in a 7 year-old, bully-worthy in a grown-up.
Added a "Civil Discord Cycle" category tag, so you can find posts on this theme easily going forward. See the "Category Index" sidebar. I'll be doing a lot on this theme, so might as well have a tag for it.
ReplyDeleteFewer deportations than Biden, getting embarrassingly cucked by Iran in the Mid-East while wasting shitloads of "blood and treasure", AI slop aesthetics -- glad I didn't vote Trump or GOP this time around. Def won't be voting in the future either, unless there's an anti-woke left candidate, the only source of realignment in America coming up.
ReplyDeleteAll pro-Trump media talking heads (podcasters, posters on Twitter with over 10K followers, etc.), should be the first drafted by the Hegseth Pentagon to embed in Iran or Persian Gulf region, so they can get what they're cheerleading for, or deflecting away from / mildly grumbling about to support with plausible deniability.
Time to put some skin in the game! Time to prove your allegiance to your patrons and repay them *for real*, not just cheap lip / meme service on Twitter.
*Someone* has to be there to livestream Trump, Vance, Musk, Prince, or whoever getting Julian the Apostate'd by the Persians!
The strikes against the Houthis... "You mean, are they stopping the Houthis? No. Will they continue? Yes." Now Trump and MAGA-tards are the ones eating shit in Yemen, with the exact same impotent defeated complaining as Biden.
ReplyDeleteSure, we're still getting cucked in the Red Sea by the Houthis, cannot repel the Hezbollah expansion into Northern Israel, nor the Turkish expansion toward and confrontation with Israel via Syria, nor is even a minor foe like Hamas eliminated.
And sure, we just got cucked out of Afghanistan by the Taliban, leaving shitloads of expensive equipment there, bringing home no loot.
And sure, we just got our asses handed to us in the Ukraine by Russia.
But hey, why not go for broke and add war against Iran to the list of multi-theatre cucking embarrassment?
Some retards are just addicted. Ending the addiction would uhm ackshually be a sign of weakness, so we just have to keep proving how tough we are by losing to every single enemy, even weak stateless ones like Hamas, until we drop dead from imperial overdose.
Then cue the standard wimpy loser revenge fantasy about, "B-b-but THENNNNNN, as my body lies brutally eviscerated, unjustly persecuted, the rest of the world is going to look upon me and tears will be streaming down their cheeks, realizing only TOO LATE that I was the best thing they ever had, they didn't express their love and appreciation for me enough while I was alive, and now it's too late, they'll just have to stew in their tear-streaked misery and regret for the rest of all time, while my ghost just shrugs its shoulders up in Heaven, looking down on their peabrain little sOcIeTiES, heh..."
ReplyDeleteSorry, faggot -- nobody in the Middle East is going to miss us when we're gone. Places that you conquer and administer and incorporate, maybe. I could see Japan longing for the good ol' days of post-WWII American occupation, which allowed Japan to turbo-industrialize and get super-wealthy, since they didn't have to pay for their national defense. And all the great culture they imported and made their own variations on, like jazz and rock and Dungeons & Dragons and the rest of it.
But we never conquered a single MENA / Mainland Asian country, let alone administer and incorporate it as we did with Japan or the Southwestern U.S. after the Mexican War, or Puerto Rico after the Spanish-American War. Even Cuba didn't want us there after we won the island in the Sp-Am War, kicked us out in the late '50s, and we failed to ever take it back. Ditto the Philippines, also won in the Sp-Am War, leaving in the late '40s, and never coming back.
However, we haven't tried to wipe out the Philippines in the meantime, unlike our failed conquests of the Middle East. They're *really* not going to miss us when we're gone, and may not even bother pissing on our graves, just being glad to finally be rid of us and move on with their own lives.
The most sad and pathetic part of this Millennial evolution of Reaganite neo-con slop is that they've given up on the Boomer muscular triumphalism, and fully adopted the "truth and beauty" aesthetics of retarded and ugly Tumblr angsty teens from the woketard 2010s.
ReplyDelete"Sure, I'm about to get my ass handed to us, but history will eventually vindicate me as being on the side of truth rather than lies, intelligence rather than low-IQ, and elite beauty rather than normie mediocre ugliness..."
Keep coping and write better fan-fic, dorkwads. I would also add "draw better fan-art," but they don't even draw it themselves, it's just cyber-puke.
So intelligent that you know nothing, such champions of the truth that you rely on lying and deceiving as defense mechanisms for your own mental state (not only for propaganda directed at others), so beautiful that you're plain / ugly freaks with AI slop aesthetics and tryhard chuuni emo Tumblr badass LARP symbols and slogans.
Mild-mannered normies with kawaii cartoon characters painted on their aircraft noses scored the last W for America in warfare. Boomer muscular triumphalism failed in Southeast Asia, and later in the Middle East.
Now it's the revenge fantasy-obsessing Millennial whine-fest about how we're complete losers in the Darwinian struggle for survival against our competitors, but on a higher plane of truth and beauty, we'll be VINDICATED for fighting the good fight against the Muslims, browns, low-IQ's, etc.
LOL, no you won't, dork, your grave is going to be pissed on for being ugly, dumb, and cringe (and callous / evil, but putting aside the moralistic angle, you'll be pissed on for the aesthetic crimes alone).
"Good optics are SO BACK" -- upcoming presidential candidate is an overweight closet-case emo-llennial, no different from his McCain or Graham predecessors in the gay neocon camp.
ReplyDeleteHis wife is attractive enough, but being Indian, she's not very American. Not in the sense of "not of Euro genes" -- Indians just got here yesterday, including her parents (both immigrants arriving in the '80s).
We never conquered India, even partially, so that's not part of formalizing a political union through kinship and cultural union as well. It's just foreign strivers trying to squeeze what they can out of our society while there's still some juice left. Opportunistic, one-night-stand -- not a long-term monogamous commitment to our society.
Maybe if one of her ancestors married into British royalty during the Raj, that would be a ceremonial formalizing of their incorporation into the British Empire. Like Spaniards inter-marrying with Aztecs, to formalize the union of their two polities after one conquered the other, and isn't going to be cruel winners, but just winners, and making a place for the losers in the new landscape -- politically, culturally, and genetically.
Same goes for Trump -- his wife is attractive, but she's a foreigner, and not from anywhere that America conquered. We didn't defeat the Austrian Empire, which Slovenia belonged to, we didn't defeat Yugoslavia which it later belonged to, and we didn't defeat it as a standalone nation in post-Yugoslav Balkan history. They're just strivers trying to squeeze whatever they can out of America while there's still some juice left.
Marrying a Cuban hottie after the Spanish-American War, marrying a Japanese hottie after WWII, *those* are the wedding, so to speak, of good optics with good politics. Total propaganda victory.
Presenting babes from undefeated nations doesn't provide the political punch to the propaganda -- and even less so when the husband is an overweight homo, rather than Clark Gable with a South Seas warbride during Golden Age Hollywood.
Unironically, AOC would make a better First or Second Lady, whether it was to a fellow Democrat or a post-partisan / unity-ticket Republican.
ReplyDeleteShe's also a babe, same birth decade as Usha Vance, and just as exotic -- but her exotitude is tied into America's political and cultural destiny, coming from Puerto Rico, which we won after the Spanish-American War in 1898, and one of the few territories from that war that we still control.
Unlike Puerto Rico, India's fate is not intertwined with America's. And we've hardly incorporated any Indian culture into our own, whereas most "Latin" music in America is Caribbean, stemming from our occupation of that region during much of our nation-defining 20th century.
For that matter, Tulsi Gabbard would make a better First or Second Lady than Melania Trump or Usha Vance (again, regardless of who she was married to). Also a babe, also born in the '80s like Usha and AOC, and also exotic -- but from a white American mother and partly Polynesian-American father, growing up in Hawaii.
Her father is partly Samoan, from American Samoa, which we invaded and occupied in the late 1800s -- not part of our victory over Spain in 1898 (as with nearby Guam and the Philippines), but the same time-frame. We occupied it and partitioned Samoa with the German and British Empires. We still control it as a territory to this day.
And talk about incoporating exotic cultures into our own -- Polynesian / South Pacific has been as American as apple pie since the late '20s, and remains a standard influence with Hawaiian shirts, rattan furniture, and the rest of it.
All the elements are already there, not in some abstract brainstorming conceptual stage, but embodied by specific already well-known individuals. And yet, American elites still can't pack the political punch to their increasingly clueless losing-the-plot propaganda, which has largely become an end unto itself, and then the reasons for its existence are rationalized after the fact, rather than starting from a list of reasons or intuitions to make it, and then realizing those goals in the execution.
Not to take away from their good and exotic looks, but Melania and Usha are far less optimal than AOC or Tulsi as propagandizing Leading Ladies.
Not to yuri-bait, but AOC and Tulsi would make a great governing and married couple. They both give off vibes that are Sapphic (Tulsi) or bi (AOC, whose bf is an obvious flamer decoy / eunuch), so it wouldn't be mindless yuri-baiting.
ReplyDeleteOriginally from the same party, but now on opposite sides of the aisle, but therefore perhaps able to reconcile the two factions -- or at least get the ball moving in that direction. And also getting the ball rolling on purging all the fags and trannies from elite positions, while still acknowledging LGBT representation and female representation.
They'd not only make a unity ticket of Democrat and Republican, they'd both double as Leading Ladies. One would be First President / Second Lady, and the other would be Second President / First Lady. Ha!
Maybe America is not yet ready for this level of post-polarized political healing, but at least they could co-host a TV show or podcast or livestream, to help move along the depolarization of the society after its peak of chaos in 2020. Yuri innuendo and body language not required, although welcome as dramatic tension if they were both so inclined.
AOC and Tulsi would also make a great complimentary, yin-yang, odd couple pairing, phenotypically -- the taller, thicker, mellow butt-woman, and the shorter, skinnier, neurotic boob-woman. Something to vote for, for all voters.
ReplyDeleteSouth Asian opportunistic infiltration via relationships is not limited to the GOP side, of course. Kamala Harris' claim to multicultural fame was having an Indian mother -- from a culture and society that we have basically no connection to. No propaganda value there, and no offense, but not much hottie value there either (although she's plain or a little above-average for her age).
ReplyDeleteAnd if rug-munching Hillary Clinton had won, the de facto First Lady would have been exotic hottie Huma Abedin, of both Indian and Pakistani recent immigrant background, who she first seduced when she was just her 19 year-old assistant. But again, from cultures with whom we have no "the dye is cast" intertwined co-fates.
Seriously, enough of South Asian opportunists in the American elite stratum. You know I'll be voting against Ramaswamy in the GOP primary for Ohio governor coming up, he's the last thing we need. I'll straight-up vote for the Dumbocrap in the general if he squeaks through the primary due to the Orange Retard's endorsement -- Ramaswamy is a biotech / finance scammer libtard of foreign parents from a culture that America has no long-term links with. He might as well be a Democrat.
The Ohio Democrats will nominate an African-American / descendant of slaves libtard, or a moderate white heritage-American. Either way, they're equal with Ramaswamy on policy, but would be a bulwark against further South Asian opportunism in American affairs.
Even easier vote if the Democrat is former US Senator Sherrod Brown -- one of the last dinosaurs in the party, who's white heritage-American, straight, male, populist. I already voted for him as Senator, easy to vote for Governor, if the Republican is a fanatically neoliberal crypto-foreigner.
Till then, here's to dreaming about that AOC-Tulsi unity ticket in 2028, defeating the overweight closeted homo and his rootless in-laws.
"Why is Twitter so boring now?" Many people are asking -- cuz Democrats are no longer being paid to post, and Republicans are being paid *not* to post. Ditto for the podcasts, streams, etc.
ReplyDeleteDems lost all that USAID funding, and the GOP funding is telling its mouth-pieces to just shut up or ignore the continuing massive fuck-ups and betrayals by the Trump / Vance / Musk White House.
Easiest way to see that is that war with Iran is visibly heating up, with all sorts of carrier strike groups being sent to the Persian Gulf -- yet the dIsSiDeNt RiGhT is having 1/1000000th of the negative reaction they had to the lead-up to the bombing and boots-on-the-ground in Syria, during Trump: Season One. Same time during the term, April of the inaugural year.
The openly retarded faggot right is allowed to do their tired and failed Boomer triumphalist LARP about how Iran is fucking around and about to find out. But the closeted retard-faggot right has to keep their traps shut, since their target audience niche is anti-war in the Middle East or anti-war in general, whether on moral principle or just cuz all America does is lose after WWII.
But the overall silence from the right as war on Iran gears up, is just propaganda -- not reality. Reality is about to bite all of these right-wing dum-dums in the ass, handing the imploding American military yet another massive L, which they have been racking up since the failed war against North Korea in the late '40s, with no W's to compensate.
War-losers, and their cheerleaders who glorify humiliating defeat as "fighting the good fight" and promise "eventual vindication of today's beautiful losers", just can't stand leaving the collapsing American Empire with a modicum of dignity and respect as it contracts.
They insist on embarrassing the American people as much as possible, putting ever more and ever larger L's on the great big international scoreboard, since most Americans can play no greater role in war than spectators of a sport.
And it's not the libtards who are humiliated by all those L's on the scoreboard -- they're not the ones who treat the military like a sports team, and war against Iran as a Super Bowl. It's the conservatives and right-wingers themselves who view war that way -- but rather than let them live out the rest of their lives in innocuous delusions about "the world's strongest military", the Trump / Vance / Musk admin insists on humiliating the shit out of their own diehard voters.
Never-ending massive L's on the scoreboard, so there's no doubt about the imploding state of the military and empire, depriving the fans in the stands of the ability to suspend disbelief during their escapist LARP and cope about the world's strongest military.
But at least Israel will have some of its dirty work done for it by the Pentagon! They're already stalemated in Gaza, repelled and invaded by Lebanon in the North, and about to get blown to smithereens by Turkey in Southern Syria. Israel needs all the help it can get in their suicide-by-cop death-throws war against Iran.
Like I said, anyone with an account of 10K followers or more, who is not embedding themselves in the Persian Gulf region, is full of shit and 100% on the take by one of the right-wing moron billionaires.
THAT is why Twitter sucks so much these days -- it's no longer a bunch of people spitballing their takes, it's just billionaire partisan mouth-pieces posting for dollars, with the AI slop aesthetics only making clear on the surface how fake and gay and retarded they have become on the inside after selling out.
Twitter's "payouts for posting" scam seems to be mostly a combination of pyramid scheme and laundering the funding for mouth-pieces.
ReplyDeleteNot to say illegal laundering, i.e. making illegally obtained money appear legitimately obtained -- I mean morally, reputationally, etc. Don't cut the mouth-piece a check, that's too obvious that they're on the take and a poster-for-hire. Too damaging to their reputation, when their target audience values authenticity and honesty and integrity and editorial independence / autonomy.
So instead, send them their payments via the posting-for-dollars public-facing front-end of the funding apparatus. Then it just looks like the mouth-piece is getting remunerated by the editorially blind and fair free market of ideas -- you may not like what kind of posts get the most engagement, but at least that's editorially neutral, so it preserves the reputation of the on-the-take poster.
They don't appear to be funded by ANYONE above them, let alone someone who purchases their viewpoints, beyond merely funding them to post whatever they want.
I remember seeing a recurring complaint from not-on-the-take posters about "Wow, how does this low-engagement nobody get 10x, 100x, 1000x the payout that I do, when I've had multiple posts go viral to the tune of over 100K likes, not to mention superior engagement metrics across the board?"
Then she pointed out that the low-engagement nobody was also known to, and favored by, and part of some social or career circle including Elon Musk -- the guy who owns the site.
But she couldn't make the final conclusion -- that the accounts making mega-bucks on Twitter are not being rewarded by a blind neutral market mechanism, a la "paid according to your engagement metrics".
Nope, it was just good ol' fashioned money laundering (laundering the reputation, not the legality) -- the low-engagement nobody was being paid a salary by Musk or his team or like-minded billionaire, and the Twitter payout system was the delivery vehicle, rather than a direct deposit to her bank account. She was doing the ideological and cultural bidding of her paymasters, and being compensated for it, just like the recipients of USAID funding.
Why was this viral-content-generating poster not getting paid even on the same order of magnitude? Cuz she wasn't formally hired by Musk or his team or some other billionaire funder. She truly was being rewarded according to engagement metrics -- but Twitter clearly sets these payouts to be several orders of magnitude lower than their hired guns. You may earn more if you get more engagement, but the starting value and the increments per engagement are obviously way lower than it is for hired guns.
That must be incredibly demoralizing for not-on-the-take posters who want to post like it's the Twitter of the 2010s. Not only are you not receiving the bot-boost that the hired guns are, and so not receiving the same visibility as they are, you're also not getting paid a fraction of what they are, despite regularly and reliably producing better content than them.
Musk's Twitter is just the latest, and most pathetic, version of the old think tank model, with mediocrities shilling for their donors' goals while taking a sinecure, and anyone else being cleared from view or paid peanuts for piecemeal work.
ReplyDeleteHowever, there is a novelty to it, as it drinks further from the neoliberal Kool-Aid bowl. In the old think take model, nobody else got paid anything, or was even invited to produce content for the think tank.
Musk's Twitter slaps a good ol' fashioned neoliberal pyramid scheme on top of the "paid shills" think tank concept -- by teasing and tantalizing the legions of posters who are not on the take, with promises of payouts for posting, Musk and his team can deceive legions of posters to produce as much content of the highest-engagement quality, mostly for free.
"See, look at this poster's payout -- think how nice it would be to get a little supplemental income stream!" But the advertised poster is really a hired gun making shit-loads on a formalized contract, with the Twitter payout system being their delivery vehicle rather than direct deposit.
That defrauds a bunch of top-level posters into going into posting overdrive, hoping to chase the same level of remuneration. But it's just fraud, cuz the paymasters are lying by omission -- "Oops, did we neglect to mention that that super-paid poster was formally on contract for their posting duties? And that if you're not, your payout mileage may vary by several orders of magnitude? Heh, nothing personal, kid, that's just life in the big online city..."
And then it iterates at each tier down the poster pyramid. The top tier of non-contracted posters make shitloads less than the hired mediocrities, but the 2nd tier of non-contracted posters looks up to the tier just above them and sees a still tantalizing prize to be won. So they give it their all, yet still get paid far less than those above them. And the 3rd tier looks up to the 2nd tier and sees a prize worth posting their all for, yet still gets paid noticeably less. And by some further tier down, the would-be posters-for-dollars just figure it isn't worth it anymore, and that's the furthest that the recruitment drive goes.
So, rather than formally hire all of those posters across all the tiers, they only hire one tier, which is artificially boosted to have mega-visibility. All the other tiers of non-contracted posters are not exactly "doing it for free" like zealous jannies, but are working their posting fingers down to the bone for minimal piecemeal payments, which each tier tantalizing and recruiting the next tier down, in typical pyramid scheme fashion.
Given the exponential drop in payments with each drop in the tier level, that makes it insanely cheap for the paymasters to operate an army of posters. If all of them were formally on contract, there's no way they'd accept such peanuts-level payment and getting paid for piece-work rather than a sinecure / salary to post whenever and whatever (within ideological bounds), like the hired guns. Not to say the hired guns can just not post and get paid, but they don't have to put their nose to the grindstone like the piece-work posters do.
The same model must be true of OnlyFans, BTW. Twitter is just OnlyFans for ideology. There are regular video clips, posts, screenshots, etc. from an OF girl "revealing" how much she makes per month -- sometimes 7 figures per month.
ReplyDeleteSorry, but what clueless retard thinks that in 2025, with an internet awash in free porn, an individual hole-show-er is getting regular monthly payments of over 1 million dollars, from audience / viewer purchases alone? Nobody will pay for porn, let alone to that order of magnitude.
And no, she's not the most elite-tier super-sexual love-bomb that the entire world has converged upon her account, to the exclusion of all other accounts. That might explain why an Einstein gets exponentially more funding and publications than a regular physicist, but OF girls are not the Einsteins of porn. Nobody is blown away by their content, like the audience for physics research was blown away by Einstein's work.
They're just regular porn girls -- why do they get paid so much? Cuz it's a pyramid scheme, with one tier of formally on-contract girls getting 6 or 7 figures per month as their salary. A very small number of girls, BTW, which they admit -- "I'm in the top 0.0000001% of OF girls!" Yeah, cuz whoever is bankrolling OF is a tightwad and not hiring many girls.
This small but highly paid tier is given media appearances, make posts of their own, etc., to promote the brand and the amount they're paid. But they're not paid with an invisible direct deposit -- they get paid through the OF delivery vehicle, making it seem like they just have billions of paying customers, rather than the reality that they're paid a salary by a bankrolling producer. Or if they are paid piece-work, it's highly paid per piece.
The aspiring hole-show-ers don't know this, since OF is defrauding them by lies of omissions about how that millions-per-month girl earned all that money (contract with producer, not paying end-users). So they see that tantalizing amount of money, and enlist themselves in the hole-showing army, then get paid at least an order of magnitude less than the hired guns. But still, enough to make it worth their while, so they keep doing it.
And so on down the tiers of hole-show-ers, until the aspirants feel it's not worth debasing themselves for an extra $50 a month in income, and the recruitment drive ends. But that's still a HUGE porn-generating army that OF has recruited, while paying them barely anything and making them post till they drop dead for piece-work peanuts payments.
Hiring all those girls on a contract, a la the San Fernando Valley porn agencies of the '80s and '90s, would make it order of magnitude more expensive for the bankrollers. By transforming the hiring process into a pyramid scheme, they slash their costs like crazy, and make a killing in profits, while chewing up and spitting out their minimally compensated "content creators", after luring them in with hopes of earning 6 or 7 figures per month, which was just a mirage to begin with (only a few formally hired guns).
In fairness to OnlyFans, at least they're not deluded about waging a larger war of influence upon the society, and as though their pyramid scheme model of remuneration is making that war exponentially cheaper. The producers and investors are literally just in it for the money, and slashing the costs of content-production by orders of magnitude is solely in the interest of getting higher profit margins.
ReplyDeleteMusk and other clueless billionaires like him, whether right-wing or left-wing, are not only running a hyper-neoliberal hiring and remuneration model. They really think there's a tangible real-world outcome that their army of operators are going to win -- maybe winning the hearts and minds of the public, maybe improving the odds of victory on the battlefield, influencing elections, whatever it is.
They've already forgotten the lessons of the 2015-'16 electoral cycle, where Trump won against the entire media apparatus on both the left and right and in all mediums, first in the GOP primary and then in the general. And previously unknown Bernie Sanders got so far in the primary, despite the whole media going against him.
And then in the 2020 Democrat primary, Joe Biden coming in 5th place so pathetically, despite the media gunning for him all the way, that the party simply shoved out the mostly unknown figures like Buttgag and Klobochar and Bernie et al, so Biden's pre-ordained path could be cleared.
Media doesn't shape real-world outcomes -- or else we would've won against North Korea in the late '40s, we would've easily re-taken Cuba in the '60s, we never would've gotten stalemated in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, we would've been in control of Iraq by 2003, we'd be controlling Afghanistan right now rather than sent packing without the time to pick up our expensive gear, and we'd be controlling the Red Sea rather than the Houthis.
It's time to put away these Boomer delusions about "marketing tricks" and "the power of subliminal advertising" and media brainwashing its audiences, etc. The media has very little effect on real-world outcomes -- it barely affects public opinion on important matters like presidential elections, where there is a high cost that the targets of media brainwashing would pay if they allowed themselves to be brainwashed.
In 2025, you can only brainwash those who want to be, in other words it's supply meeting demand, not influencers overpowering reluctant audience minds.
All of this Musk-takeover-era of Twitter has still seen the Houthis cockblock the American military and NATO out of the Red Sea, Iran missile-slap Israel around to its heart's content, Russia make mincemeat out of America in the Ukraine, yet another failed coup against Chavismo in Venezuela, and on and on down the line.
Propaganda doesn't alter outcomes, which makes the "Twitter as OnlyFans of ideology" model all the more pathetic. Debasing a global platform, in order to continue losing wars, failing coups, losing special elections despite the owner himself of the platform campaigning (Wisconsin Supreme Court), etc.
Propaganda is at best correlated, not causal, of win vs. loss outcomes. And the current epic badass LARP, with AI slop execution, is correlated with pre-ordained failure. But even if the admin reversed course on the propaganda and LARP-ed as WWII propagandists, they'd still fail -- it would be cargo cult behavior. However, at least it would be less embarrassing and more pleasingly American propaganda, not this Indian engagement-farming AI slop.
I don't claim credit for the originality of figuring out the payout systems for Twitter and OnlyFans, i.e. being pyramid schemes rather than everyone being subject to the same market forces and paid the same piece-work rates. I don't claim originality of linking the two either.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I haven't seen anyone else make these insights, so I may be the first to do so. I would've figured this out instantly if I were ever on Twitter, or if I ever looked at OnlyFans. I only see it at a distance -- but just from that much, it became clear how they truly work. And the Twitter paying-for-posting scheme is fairly recent anyway.
It all got rolling in my mind with that one girl posting about how little she was earning despite having multiple viral posts and better average engagement than some literal-who mediocrity -- who happened to be directly connected to the platform owner.
That made me realize instantly that the literal-who was a hired gun, but I didn't think there were so many posters-for-dollars on the site these days, after the payout scheme launched. That means the whole thing really has devolved into a pyramid scheme of decieved prize-chasers.
No wonder the timelines are so boring, and everyone so miserable and checked-out -- I would be, too, if I found out I'd been recruited into the OnlyFans of ideology, and paid peanuts for piece-work.
The blessings and bolsterings of having always remained a cliff-dwelling sage in the ruins of the blogosphere...
And to give credit to the livestream medium, whether face-streamers or vtubers, their model is open about the big earners being hired guns who get paid a formal on-contract salary, with other sources of income perhaps (superchats, merch, etc.).
ReplyDeleteThey don't deceive aspiring streamers out there by saying, "Wow, look how much I earned last month as a streamer!" without revealing that they're being bankrolled by a production company. Everyone knows that's where most of the money comes from -- not the $5 a pop superchats from end-users in the audience. Everyone realizes those superchats, donos, merch purchases, etc. are just icing on the cake, and the cake itself is baked by a production company that has formally hired the content creator.
And these companies are openly known by name -- Hololive, Nijisanji, sometimes the platform owners themselves like Twitch, etc. That makes it even more transparent how streamers earn their living, not just a vague awareness of them being paid a formal salary.
It's similar to feature film or TV actors -- they work for such-and-such studio for this-or-that movie, and that's where the income comes from. Not a pyramid scheme about how they make shitloads acting in Hollywood, and gee golly gosh, anyone else can do it too if they just give it their all, igniting a pyramid scheme of talent recruitment in order to slash production costs and boost producers' profits.
Another reason that audiences are increasingly abandoning the sinking-ship mediums like Twitter, and turning to streamers for new content or watching old movies and TV shows. The honesty and transparency of the patronage network in streaming, vs. the cryptic and cloak-and-dagger nature of it in Twitter and OnlyFans, is correlated with more earnestly and sincerely made content, made for its own sake, enjoyed by the creators and audiences alike. ^_^
On the flipside, the streaming medium is also more transparent about a creator losing their source of income, like if their production company fires them or they quit. That receives a formal announcement by both parties.
ReplyDelete"Sorry, but the Twitch negotiators and I were unable to come to an agreement, so I will be moving my streaming over to YouTube instead." Or, "The talent So-and-So has been fired for such-and-such reasons, and will no longer be streaming as that persona under our brand umbrella."
OK, guess that's why that individual creator is no longer earning so much money, and has checked out / stopped streaming so much, or may be changing their content in order to accomodate a new bankroller.
There will never be a formal announcement from both parties when Thiel, Musk, or whoever else, or USAID / Soros / whoever else on the left, stop funding a particular Twitter poster or podcaster. There was no formal announcement of their hiring in the first place, why should there be when the business arrangement is over? So cryptic and paranoid -- and therefore, so trust-destroying for the audience, most importantly, blunting whatever persuasive power the bankrollers and their posters may have had on the doom-scrolling audience.
For streamers, they may not reveal all the gory details of the contract not being renewed, quitting, etc., but there is still a public understanding that it has come to an end, so that individual's content may change in tone or frequency as a result of now looking for new sources of income.
And to wrap it up for the time being, on a positive note, let me praise Umino Miruku's debut performance as a Hololive streamer, while her (also adorable, also talented) neighbor Irys was mysteriously whisked away during April Fool's Day. ^_^
ReplyDeleteShe's a natural crowd-pleaser, the type to eagerly sing and dance before the whole family on Thanksgiving or Christmas. ^_^
I hope we get to be treated by another appearance of hers in the future, whenever her equally adorable and talented neighbor doesn't feel like streaming for the night. ^_^
It sounded like she has a strict mother, but I'm sure that's made up for by having an indulgent dad who she does cool things with, like watching The Terminator or something. She definitely seems like a daddy's girl. ^_^
Hontoni, I could not stop "awwww!"-ing out loud when she first came out and started speaking. I never do that, but she was just too precious and adorable. ^_^
Just make sure to get a formal contract salary from a production company, Miruku-chan, and don't fall for the trap of working for low piece-work rates. I'm sure your equally adorable and talented neighbor Irys would agree, and help you out with the negotiation process! There could be no better nepo hire... lol. ^_^
Trump's tariffs are fake as expected, for the same reasons I wrote about last time, some months ago. They target countries, not goods or services. So there's no industry that could plausibly be brought back.
ReplyDeleteThe only effect that country-targeting tariffs have is re-arranging which shithole countries are the destination for off-shored industry, funded and operated by the greedy domestic manufacturers in America, who will still refuse to bring those factories back.
Or, to hire Americans to do whatever jobs are brought back -- they'll import shitloads of cheap workers from shithole countries, which Trump has been openly promising and urging since the campaign. "We need a lot of people coming into the country" cuz "factories are going to be coming back to this country" = only immigrants will be hired.
Looking through the list of countries, the tariffs are lowest in Latin America, some of the Middle East, some of sub-Saharan Africa, and really tiny shithole islands in the South Pacific. Looks like they're thinking of where the US has a heavy military presence to protect trade routes, and therefore surrendering to the Chinese military by abandoning most of the whole Asian sphere -- apart from the Turkic Muslim Central Asian -stans, which the WH may think are outside the Sinosphere and more amenable to being exploited by American rather than Chinese companies.
Notably, there are high tariffs on Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, and other former beneficiaries of anti-China off-shoring. That is, first America's greedy manufacturing elites sent the American industries out of America and into China, where labor was dirt-cheap. Then China got too wealthy from manufacturing, so our elites pulled out of China and moved the factories to the next tier down the list of Asian nations -- Southeast Asia.
But even those countries are getting too wealthy from manufacturing, so the new round's effect will be to relocate factories from Vietnam and Indonesia to headhunting tribesmen in Papua New Guinea.
I always joked about how, as greedy American manufacturers kept scraping further and further down the barrel of shithole countries to exploit for cheap labor, eventualy your iPhone would be made by a guy with a bone through his nose. That sick joke will come closer to reality, from this next round of tariffs.
The overall goal has not changed one bit -- as one nation's workforce gets too wealthy from previously being the destination for off-shoring, they will get kicked to the curb, and even poorer workforces in shittier countries will be hired next. Never Americans, never first worlders, never bringing factories back -- and if so, only to be staffed by cheap foreigners, like that Foxconn boondoggle in Wisconsin from Trump: Season One, that *thankfully* never materialized.
I'm tired of reading takes on the abstract concept of tariffs. It's been clear since Trump: Season One that the goal is merely relocating factories from a shithole that is no longer such a shithole, to a shithole that will remain a shithole in the short-term and where labor can be reliably sourced on the cheap for the next 10-20 years.
That's the only reason to target entire nations, rather than industries or products or services. What particular goods and services they're making for us, who cares? They're just a cheap-selling labor pool whose members can be assigned to whatever industry we need them to be. When they get too rich, on the average, they'll get dumped and replaced by another entire nation's workforce who will sell their labor cheap, no matter what specific good or service they make.
Magatard journos (anyone with over 10K followers) are doubling down on their uselessness and audience-culling into a smaller and more impotent echo chamber. Their dum-dum billionaire bankrollers really drank the kool-aid about "marketing tricks" etc. -- as though identification with the aesthetic side of the propaganda will force / seduce the audience into buying the ideology paired with it.
ReplyDeleteGuess again, dorkwads -- it has to be a coherent marriage of ideology and aesthetics to be good propaganda. Once it's purely aesthetic, and contrary to the ideology demanded by the audience, the audience just drops the suppliers as "wearing a skinsuit of what we wanted, but really being a Trojan Horse". People with skin in the game, like normies, aren't stupid -- billionaires insulated by wealth, and take-meisters insulated by their sinecures, *are*.
And to make matters worse, even the purely aesthetic side is slop by now. Literally generated by a retard typing prompts into a Silicon Valley / QE-funded boondoggle AI Slop-O-Matic 5000. Overweight closeted homos married to foreign strivers from a nation that America has no long-term intertwined co-fates with.
And so they commit themselves to going down on the sinking ship, much like their Boomer predecessors during the War on Terror in the George W. Bush era. They are no different than them, just a generational re-brand for Millennials.
ReplyDeleteAfter 9/11, plenty of Americans rightly wanted to find out who did it, and punish them. Maybe including launching a war on them.
Bush neocons took that righteous anger and turned it deliberately away from the perpetrators -- Arabians who the American Pentagon was deeply in bed with -- and pointed the finger at So-Damn Insane from Eye-Rack, and the Taliban from Afghanistan. Neither of whom had anything to do with it.
When anyone, right left or center, pointed out that Iraq the nation or Iraqi citizens had nothing to do with 9/11, and neither did the Taliban of Afghan citizens, but rather it was Saudi Arabians, Emiratis, etc. -- so we should attack Riyadh, not Baghdad, to get revenge for 9/11... they were slandered and shamed by Bush neocon nutgobblers as not having the guts to see America go to war, being pacifists, hippies, or whatever else.
Their lazy fake retarded propaganda did NOT win them the war -- they got their asses handed to them by Iraq and Afghanistan, and inadvertently allowed Iran to expand its influence into Iraq due to the power vacuum created by America. Way to own-goal yourselves, numbnuts.
It also alienated a shitload of the American population, and discredited the national government and the Republican Party as a whole, to this day, decades later. The Republican Party has still not recovered its reputation after the shredding that George W. Bush gave it during the 2000s. That's why Obama was such a shoe-in when McCain ran on Bush neocon-ism on steroids.
Today's Millennial Trump-slobberers are not only repeating that failed plan in the military domain, cheerleading for, or at least rationalizing and deflecting from, the failed American wars against Russia in the Ukraine, against Hamas, against Hezbollah, against the Houthis, and coming to a 3D livestream near you this summer, a failed war against Iran, the final nail in the coffin.
Paid Republican wordcels rationalizing, apologizing for, or outright cheerleading these multiple simultaneous failures in the military -- not so surprising. The GOP is the military party.
However, Millennial dum-dums on the take by Trump-supporting billionaires are expanding their failed slopaganda campaign from just the military domain, to the global economic domain as well. Namely, behaving just like Bush-era neocons for Trump's fake retarded and gay War of Tariffs.
ReplyDeleteAs in the wake of 9/11, Americans in the wake of de-industrialization are righteously angry about the lack of a real prosperous economy for the average American (i.e., excluding immigrants) within American borders.
Industrialization is the only sector that has provided a boost to the standard of living for a wide range of society, removing us from the Malthusian trap of sedentary agriculture. That is because industrial-scale manufacturing is both high-profit-margin -- meaning, there's a lot of wealth generated by the owners / operators of the industry -- and labor-intensive -- meaning, those owners need lots of workers to make their business run.
So it's not just a handful of elites who get chosen to work in these high-margin industries. There's only so many "college material" elites to be hired. After that, hiring goes to the common man -- and that's where a big chunk of those high-margin profits go, into the common man's pockets.
Agriculture is low-profit-margin and labor-intensive, meaning it employs lots of people toiling in fields, but there's barely anything to pass on to them due to low margins. Finance is high-margin but not labor-intensive, so the huge wealth generated goes to a tiny handful of elite professionals who run the bank. Industrial-scale manufacturing is the only break away from this trade-off between profit margins and labor-intensity, and it's in the good direction -- high-margin, labor-intensive.
Having been robbed of this sole source of prosperity for the masses, the masses are pissed, want to know who did it, and get their revenge at least -- and ideally, recover what was taken from them. Failing that, at least getting revenge on those responsible.
Who *is* responsible for de-industrialization. Long-time readers will remember, but just to reiterate -- the Republican Party and its predecessors (Whigs, Federalists) have always been the party of the manufacturing sector. No era of party alignments has ever seen the manufacturing sector belong to the Democrat (or Democratic-Republican) coalition. During the New Deal, Democrats had the votes of the *workers* in manufacturing, due to their support of labor unions, but Republicans still had the manufacturing elites in their coalition.
ReplyDeleteNAFTA was drafted by the Republican administration of George H.W. Bush, at the behest of the National Association of Manufacturers, which has always been as Republican as the Screen Actors Guild has been Democrat.
Large majorities of the Republicans in both the House and Senate voted for NAFTA, whereas Democrats rejected it in both houses -- however, the minority of Dems who betrayed their party were sufficient in combination with the large majority of Republican de-industrializers, that it passed Congress. The only role of a Democrat was the president who signed it, Clinton, after it was written by a Republican president and passed by Republicans (and a few Dems) in Congress.
So, the answer of who to blame is not counter-intuitive, not a riddle, not an mystic journey requiring an esoteric guru to guide us to the destination -- the greedy manufacturing elites themselves ripped out the factories from America, so that they could be relocated to poor countries where the cost of doing business (mainly labor costs, but other operating costs too) would be exponentially lower than keeping them in America. The political party that manufacturers control -- Republicans -- dutifully implemented this de-industrializing agenda, over the majority objections of Democrats in both houses of Congress.
So, if angry Americans are to get revenge on those responsible, that means launching a literal war, or maybe just seizing the assets of the American manufacturing companies that use China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Mexico, etc. as cheap labor colonies for their products which are merely "designed in America" rather than "made in America". And if we're going after their political vehicle, we must launch a literal war, or maybe just exile or vote out the Republicans.
Despite Trump's 2015-'16 campaign trail rhetoric about re-industrialization, he oversaw a widening of the trade deficit in goods, and he did not "tear up" NAFTA -- he merely re-branded it. None of those factories in Mexico have returned to the 50 states -- let alone, to be worked in by American citizens.
That's the other glaringly de-industrializing agenda that Trump has been pushing as of the 2024 campaign and still in office -- "We need A LOT of people coming into the country, because there are going to be so many new factories popping up all over the place, and we need people to work in them." Hmmm, America already has more than 300 million citizens -- why would a single foreigner, let alone "a lot of" them need to immigrate here for factory work? Cuz the whole point is still to drive down labor costs for greedy manufacturing elites.
ReplyDeleteIf those factory owners relocated the factories to America, they would demand that only cheap foreign labor be used to run them. They refuse to spread their high-profit-margin wealth around with the general population who might work in them -- they will only share a tiny sliver of that wealth, to dirt-poor foreigners who would accept peanuts for menial assembly line work.
In fact, it's the exact same playbook as Gilded Age industrialists hauling in boatloads of Ellis Islanders, instead of employing American citizens, in order to keep their labor costs down. Some random hick from the forests of Poland, who just schlubbed off the boat, will work for peanuts -- better work than he'd get as a serf back in Poland.
Trump, Vance, and the new tech-tards like Musk et al., are reviving the Gilded Age, not the New Deal -- impoverishing American citizens, destabilizing the cultural cohesion of the nation, etc., all so a handful of factory owners can pinch a few pennies.
And therefore, any agenda to exact revenge on those responsible for the de-industrialization of the American workforce, including the use of cheap foreign labor domestically for the few factories still remaining here, must target the Republican Party, Trump specifically, his heir-apparent Vance, and his inner circle including Musk.
But that's the opposite of who's being scapegoated in the War of Tariffs, which is instead targeting anybody BUT American manufacturers, the GOP, Trump, etc.
ReplyDeleteAs spelled out earlier, the only effect of these tariffs is to re-arrange which foreign nations become the new destination for off-shored factory labor -- now that some of those dirt-poor foreigners are not so dirt-poor anymore, and have grown accustomed to first-world living standards. The ingratitude!
"Have you even said 'thank you' for the factories we brought to your country???" Yeah, and now they're used to that, and they want to stay wealthy, not take a hit to their living standards just so their American manufacturing over-seers can buy another McMansion.
Relocating factory labor from America, to China, to Vietnam, to Papua New Guinea, as these tariffs will deterministically result in, has nothing to do with re-industrializing the American economy, let alone re-industrializing the American workforce -- i.e., the work done by American citizens, not just cheap foreign labor working within American borders.
Factory labor will go from high-cost to low-cost, and since the tariffs vary wildly from one nation to another, factories will follow that cost gradient and settle into Papua New Guinea, Honduras, Saudi Arabia, or wherever else -- not America, not done by American citizens.
So it's just like Bush neocons waging war on Iraq and Afghanistan rather than Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates, who were in fact responsible for 9/11. The War of Tariffs is targeting China, and now including Vietnam and other formerly dirt-poor / now fairly prosperous countries who we relocated factories to, after our first round of off-shoring them from America to China led to Chinese prosperity and high wage expectations.
ReplyDeleteThose recipients of off-shored factories are not the culprit -- they're the person who our supposedly faithful employers made the first adulterous move on, cheated on us with, then divorced us in order to remarry... only now, joke's on the new squeeze, which isn't so new anymore, and is being traded in for yet a cheaper model, in the form of Papua New Guinea, Honduras, etc.
Hey, if you married to a cheater, don't be surprised if you get divorced by a cheater.
At any rate, they're not the ones who drafted and implemented NAFTA. China, let alone Vietnames rice farmers, had zero power to steal those factories out of American soil and relocated on Asian soil. That was 100% the choice of greedy American manufacturing elites, to cut costs.
And as the Bush neocon military had dutiful propagandists rationalizing their decisions to the general public, now we have Republican on-the-take take-meisters desperately trying to rationalize Trump's War of Tariffs.
Just like their neocon journo predecessors, they don't argue for why this specific target is the right target, and why this particular attack is the right way to attack it. Neocon journos couldn't find Iraq or Afghanistan on a map, had no clue who the Pentagon was actually in bed with, or anything else about military and geopolitical history involving the Middle East. They were total retards with partisan blinders on as well, for top tardedness.
None of the reacting avis on Twitter have any clue where factories used to be, where they went, why they went there, who ordered them to be sent there, who implemented that within the government, etc.
None of the reacting avis even bothered looking at Trump's own list to see that tariffs vary wildly around the world -- and so, some places will be left, and others entered into, but none of them are America, just various poor (or no-longer-poor) countries playing musical chairs with off-shored American factories. None of which will benefit American citizen workers.
They won't argue why Vietnam should have a high rate, but Honduras should have a low rate, cuz that would give the game away -- Vietnamese workers are too accustomed to decent wages after they've been an off-shoring destination for a decade or more by now, while Hondurans are not, so Honduras should have a weaker barrier as an off-shoring destination. Ooops, now you just argued on behalf of the penny-pinching agenda of American manufacturing OWNERS, not on behalf of rising wages for real or potential American (citizen) workers...
Because they can't defend the specifics of the actual agenda being laid out, the reacting avis can only fall back on generic platitudes, just as Bush neocon journos fell back on abstract discussions about "just wars" rather than a war specifically against Iraq and Afghanistan, instead of a war against Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who actually committed 9/11.
Expect this vague, abstract, content-less slopaganda regarding tariffs throughout the rest of Trump: Season Three, and likely into Season Four as well (not to say he'll be prez, but still the main character who the fandom's ongoing series is named after).
In the exact same way that Bush neocons could only rely on generic shaming discourse, rather than arguing for specifics, that is what Republican cum-guzzlers will be doing going forward.
ReplyDelete"Woah there, we're not going to argue about how Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11, or whether an invasion is the right way to contain him -- we're going to stick to the fact of the matter, which is that you're a bedwetting hippie pacifist, and are too gutless to enjoy seeing American wage and win a just war. SUCK IT!"
No, *you're* gonna suck it -- and suck it the Pentagon did, along with their propagandists, long and hard, with a toxic load shot down their throat.
Magatards are already churning out this same style of slopaganda.
"Sounds like someone doesn't have the stomach to take on globalism, doesn't want to see America win a just war of tariffs, isn't willing to pay higher prices for his pWeCiOuS WiDdLe tWeAtS... awww, poor baby, but don't worry, white men are back in charge now (don't ask if they're straight -- very low-IQ homophobia of you), and we're going to fix the economy whether you thank us or not, heh..."
Write better fanfic, retards.
And that's what the general reaction will be, just as it was to Bush's War on Terror. Only GOP cocksuckers (some literally, some figuratively) tied themselves to that catastrophic failure, while most Americans, including a decent chunk who voted for Bush (as indies), were perfectly happy -- eager -- to dump the Republicans and take a chance on Obama, twice.
The Republican brand has even lower prestige than it did in the 2000s, so even fewer will be willing to go down with the ship -- unless they're getting a sinecure, but hardly anybody is getting bankrolled, so that leaves almost nobody to zealously wipe themselves out in the coming decade.
We're also past the peak of polarization and civil chaos, as of the early 2020s, so there will be fewer and fewer kneejerk partisans going forward.
Salaried take-meisters can whine, nag, and attempt to shame all they want, but the American people only care about results, and relocating factories from high-tariff Vietnam to low-tariff Honduras is not something we will consider a win for the American worker.
Just as "another war in the Middle East" became toxic waste after George W. Bush, so will "tariff war" after Trump.
Not to say there's no potentially good / just war in the Middle East that America could wage -- but it would have to be against Saudi Arabia or the UAE, to get revenge for 9/11. However, even that justifiable war can no longer be pursued, cuz of the negative halo-effect of Bush's "wars in the Middle East".
Likewise, there could be a potentially good / just use of a tariff -- if it targeted goods or industries, not countries, and was something we already did produce domestically or could produce in the future. But even those good tariffs will leave a bad taste in America's mouth, due to the negative halo-effect of "Trump's tariff wars," which targeted tropical agriculture that America cannot even hypothetically produce domestically.