← Back to context

Comment by jappgar

1 day ago

I think there are sadly a huge number of people who don't care about art or creativity at all. They like the idea of AI and sterility and everything else. Increasingly these people dominate the economy because they are the most willing to hurt their fellow man in pursuit of status.

These people don't go to fairs, it's true, but they do bulldoze the fairgrounds to build a data center. To build a semblance of consent, they need to host brainwashing events like "fairs" and so on where they can propagandize and threaten citizens. They can't hire a local artist to advertise it, because literally none of them will do it. AI comes in handy when you're absolute evil.

I would be interested in the income percentile of people visiting fairs, and the prices of items there vs commercial items on a grocery store or mall. I have a feeling 'fairs' are a very different demographic today than 200 years ago.

  • I mean it isn't wealthy people coming to eat fried chicken on a stick or see the show hogs. Sure its a bad and exploitative deal where you probably are out $25 for that fried chicken on a stick but it doesn't mean the underlying demographics have changed from the "people of the earth" as they've always been. If you have to guess, close your eyes and imagine the sort of people that live in the rural townships 40 minutes outside your nearest major city. That is who you will find at your state or county fair, those people and their teenage kids smuggling in booze in gatorade bottles.

    Local farmers market, now thats a dramatically different clientele than the county/state fair. Bread is like $9 a loaf there so you can imagine what sort of individual that selects for.

    • People of the earth don't seem to care much for ai art or not. What I was trying to say is that fairs aren't places targeting the lower classes trying to sell the cheapest items possible. The lower classes are served by industrialized mass production today: injection molding, factory farming, etc. So I don't see why they want to hate one businessman (the builder of a datacenter) over another (the fair shop owners). I also do not understand how he says these people hate fairs or don't go to fairs in a thread about fair stall owners and small business owners using AI to make their shop logos/posters themselves.

Those people run stalls at fairs. The amount of slop I see at fairs is really on the upswing.

  • The people making AI posters are the same ones selling Ali express bulk buys as "hand made jewelry" or selling 3D printed dragons.