I just listened to the Sublime interview, and a couple of quotes really resonated with me: “Put your energy into [creating art] instead of putting your energy into hating or trying to fight against AI, because one is creative and the other is reactive. I don’t think you’ll have a happy life if you dedicate however much time to trying to prevent ChatGPT.” and “I wish people spent more time talking about the things they love.”
This is something that has been on my mind recently, especially as I examined my media diet and realized it was overwhelmingly made up of reactive content. None of it was low-quality or inaccurate, yet it was still framed almost entirely in opposition to something.
I think people like Cory Doctorow and Ed Zitron are broadly right about tech, but do I really need to devote hours to understanding the minute details of how AI is being overhyped or how the platform monopolists are enshittifying the internet? I get it, but that time could definitely be better spent elsewhere.
It’s easy to spend the majority of your time cataloging all the ways the people you disagree with are wrong, as if that in itself were some kind of victory. It’s very easy when much of what you believe is outside the mainstream to some degree. (As a leftist, vegan, and recovering hipster, this is, in fact, extremely easy.) But this robs you of the energy needed to create things that matter to you, and ultimately of the will to do anything about the very problems you’re spending your time fixating on.
I would definitely find an entire piece on this concept of creativity vs reactivity useful, if it hasn’t been covered in more detail here already.