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I’ve noticed a multitude of professionals and amateurs alike bemoan and question the absence of collabs, these people should shut up cause collabs are still here they’re just in a different spot than they are. Collabs are still here of course. And I think they’ll be here until the end of time. Most of the people I’ve met that bemoan their absence are professionals and, while they’re frothing at the bit for free work, they're in spheres or communities where that isn't viable. If we take it as true that there is a decline in the amount of collabs I think I have some ideas as to where they went. Define Collab But first. Definitions. Webster’s first definition of collaborate is: “1. to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor” For our purposes I’ll be using the following definition. To work jointly with others without charge. I’m sure the astute among you already see a problem proposed with my definition. We need money to live, and since that’s true, working for free can be detrimental to our survival in the worst case. Which is an easy explanation for them falling out of favor since our particular flavor of capitalism is especially ruthless here in America. That said, there are yet more reasons I’ve found for why collabs seem to have vanished. God Awful Climate Anecdotally speaking, the internet is more hostile than it’s ever been. Companies are more draconian with their policies and surveillance, people are worse, bots are getting better at rage baiting people, and that’s making more people worse. It’s bad dude. It used to be that you'd say and do terrible things for the love of the game. Now there are monetary incentives for doing that. Online visibility can legitimately be an occupational hazard, and plenty of people are abstaining from participation for that reason. Said abstinence has and will decrease the labor pool for collabs. Chambers and Boxes One of the bigger hits/boons to collaborations is the great online segmentation.(ryhme good) More specifically, I’m referring to the further segmentation of online spaces. To be fair, internet pockets, sub pockets, and dom pockets have been a thing since the internet has existed, and when the air turns to poison and the water turns to piss some cockroach will activate an ancient tumblr server and find a way to accuse a dung beetle of being microaggressive. I only have my eyes and vibes to track this change, but I can’t think of a reason to go on twitter while the CEO is openly hostile, while said CEO’s sycophants can pay to make your experience worse, when you can go to blue sky or tumblr or instagram. And if those are too algorithm heavy for you you can just join a discord. People are finding their own funnels and finding sub niches within those and that's before lack of access/ education. That said, I think you’ll find the most active and cool collabs out there in these pockets. Fandom based zines and fanworks live in the pockets made by special interests and the active repelling of people from other sites. Artists being Insufferable/Capitalism Rearing It’s Ugly Head I’m a writer, there are those that think my contribution to comics/ visual mediums is the most important. There are just as many that disagree (anecdotally). I don’t have a means I’d be happy with to measure who does the most work between writing and illustration, (Not because I want my work to be valued more, but because people often try to use effort as the measurement between difficult and I think thats dumb since the effort required to do certain tasks varies from person to person. Anyway) I think it’s less important to find out who does the most work,and more important that everyone involved is made as comfortable as possible while working together, money or no. And I think the underlying disrespect for different disciplines can easily lead to a climate where interdisciplinary collaboration is more rare. And to be entirely clear, no one is owed free work. End of sentence. The idea that we are owed the labor of someone else for nothing can and has been used to cause harm. Which is yet another reason collabs are fading. So what do we do? If you want collabs back, it’s farily easy, offer your time and abilities to people/ projects your like. Be nice. Have friends. Cultivate mutually beneficial relationships That’s kinda it man. Okay, post over. Good bye. Note This was a bad essay. This was more about finishing a non comic piece of writing than it was about being coherent.
If I was not coherent, I apologize. If I was coherent, I apologize. I stand by most of the points here and lament that I didn’t get more graphs and tables and interviews to illustrate my points. That said if anyone wants to talk to me about their appreciation or violent hatred of collabs, hit me up, I’ll listen. Alright, bye for real.
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I’ve seen two or three obviously AI projects on kickstarter recently and what bothers me about them is that of the three I’ve seen. two are using ai images as placeholder but in the campaigns themselves they clame that they have assembled or will assemble a team once they get funding.
To offer my take on AI, As it stands, and assuming I haven’t missunderstood how it works, AI art is theft, and enviromentally harmful, AT BEST. I’m less bothered by the use of AI art as placeholder for personal projects becasue at least nobody is trying to make money off of it. But in the cases I’ve seen they’re using AI as a pitch deck of sorts for their project that they intend to use humans for later which bothers me becasue if you know you’ll need human labor why not get it now? There are plenty of legitimate reasons as to why they might not be able to get assets made right this moment, but the strat at that point is to wait until you can get assets that you can actually use, that are indicitive of the final product you want to make. So yeah…learn to draw, learn to write, hire people to do the jobs you don’t want to do. That's kindof it. Normally I’d do a whole list of detailed reasons as to why but this is a short little excercise so that I don’t forget how opinions work. I do see people argue about the artistic merit of AI and I think it’s an important argument to have but most of the people I’ve seen argue about it. At least anecdotally are bad it it. The key issue is that people don’t want to call people that use AI art artists. and I understand that desire to keep out those that don’t do the same labor as you. But most of the arguments I’ve seen for what does and doesnt constitue art, from these AI art people excludes digital artists. I’ve only got two minutes left on the clock so I won’t elaborate much further but if you’re concerned about how you’re arguing with AI bros on the internet. First, don’t do that, Second I suggest foccusing on the theft and enviromental harms element of AI art use as to force these people to reconcile the terrible terrible things they’ve done. The end of the world bit has no bering on this short peice I just thought it would be a cool title for this thing. This will be left up with spelling errors and all as a testimate to my shame and inability to write. timer went off as I wrote that last line I’m so good at this. |
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