A while ago, I received a question about flooding AI-generated creations. Those products started to intrude on our creative activities. Let’s talk about it.
How to accept the unreasonable reality
Sometimes, we want to know how to convince ourselves when people start intruding on our peaceful, enjoyable activities.
One typical example is a trend followed by the majority of people.
If we are empathic and logical, we may often want to distance ourselves from crowds. We love a peaceful life. Continuous social stress exhausts us. That makes us seek quiet places and live frugally, even if it is inconvenient.
However, the crowd sometimes suddenly floods into the places we have secured. Although we understand that we cannot change the masses, we often cannot accept it right away. That is why we want to convince ourselves.
The perspective of the painter
The person who asked me the question described that situation well. She was a painter who was active on the internet. She took orders from her creations and enjoyed them peacefully. However, AI-generated works have suddenly flooded over the past two years.
Although AI-generated pictures are similar to real ones, they slightly differ from the real ones. Even if ordinary people don’t notice, artists with a keen sense can discern them. They perceive such unnaturalness multiple times more sharply than ordinary people.
That suffered her as well. Imagine her situation while considering her artist’s sensibility. It was as if the internet world became an unnaturally strange and terrible place. Non-humans that disguise as humans have suddenly increased everywhere. Even when she searched for reference images, only unnatural AI-generated ones came up. They are not real. Even when she was walking through town, she often encountered the advertisements with models who seemed inhuman. Even though the world had changed entirely, no one noticed it.
It seemed to be the reason that she asked me the question. Since we have a different sensibility from the majority of people, we cannot live the same way as them.
The trends of the masses are often irrational. They sometimes begin to appreciate what they once looked down on. That confuses us. That makes us want to resolve that confusion and respond to social changes.
One solution is to understand that the environment will become dirty when people rush into our peaceful places. That allows us to distance ourselves from it temporarily. Today, I will explain the logic.
What happens when many people rush in
When people rush into our peaceful places, it is usually inevitable that the environment we love will become ruined. Since we cannot change the masses, it is more reasonable for us to respond by following their movements.
That awareness allows us to convince ourselves and start to discover another place to live comfortably.
To make it easier to understand, let’s look at an example.
Suppose we love a peaceful park. It is a beautiful and quiet place full of nature, such as a lake, trees, and several benches where no one is sitting. Having an afternoon tea there every day is our happiest moment.
However, the major media featured the park. It suddenly became popular. Many people rushed to the place we love.
When crowds gather, it is natural that the environment becomes dirty. The once quiet park is now filled with trash, the unpleasant smell of food scraps, the noise of cars, and the loud voices of people. Some people cut tree branches for the photo shoot. The natural place we loved suddenly fell into a miserable state.
If we are empathic and logical, we sometimes experience similar things in our lives. We often discover hidden gems that bring us new value. It is a unique ability that many people envy.
Since we know we cannot change the masses, all we can do is to leave that place and look for somewhere else. It might be one of the saddest moments in our lives if we are not rational enough.
However, recognizing it as a periodical trend convinces us. Social trends change in cycles. Our leaving that place is temporary.
That awareness tells us we don’t have to keep watching the park’s deterioration. Its ruin is inevitable. It is more reasonable to make an early decision to move to another place and try to discover how to enjoy our afternoons there.
Deciding rationally
The same goes for the flood of AI-generated creations.
Originally, we started sharing our work on the internet because we could not become professionals in the real world. In my case, book publishers didn’t recognize me. I didn’t have the ability that publishers require. That was one reason why I started writing and selling books online. It was a sad reality. However, interestingly for me, that brought me more profits. I was able to ride the trend of rising e-books.
Now, the people on the internet no longer recognize us. On the other hand, local activities in rural areas are the least popular, and no creator tries to participate in them. That was why I started to live locally and sew bags.
Interestingly, that brought a peaceful enjoyment that I could not obtain through digital creation. Crafting something tangible is also fun. Being rejected on the internet made me realize that activities on the real side are more effective.
Society is fundamentally unreasonable. People sometimes act righteously and take pleasure in public executions. They sometimes disguise themselves as creators and continue to reproduce the same things. Their words and actions are contradictory.
On the other hand, we are neither good at crowds nor at such social enjoyment. It means that we always have to consider the movement of the masses.
That awareness enables us to predict that the place we loved will remain dirty for a while. That tells us that it is more efficient to make decisions to move on to another place.
Conclusion
That is how we can convince ourselves when people intrude on our peaceful places.
It is usually inevitable that the environment we love will become dirty in such a situation. Since we cannot change the masses, it is more reasonable for us to respond by following their movements.
That awareness might allow us to distance ourselves from it temporarily and discover a better place for the next leap.
Thank you for reading this article. I hope to see you in the next one.
