Added to post, thank you!

To be fair, people are choosing capitalism because they have to make money, buy food, and pay rent.

Graphic designer, writer, commissioned artist, were jobs people could do entirely online. And a lot of highly online people did one or the other, or have friends who did one or the other, and they see AI as the existential threat to their livelihoods that it, in fact, is.

And I feel for them. I really do. If you bought food and paid rent by making art online - especially if you’re neurodivergent or disabled or trapped in an abusive relationship and couldn’t hold a normal job - AI tools have destroyed your career. And it sucks. There’s no getting around that.

But the core of the problem is not AI. The core of the problem is the lack of a safety net. Some of the enormous profits from the AI boom should be funneled back into society to support the people who are put out of business by the AI boom. But they won’t. Because capitalism.

Generated output is a gimmick that will be used by people who have no intention of making art.

Without getting into the definition of “art”, yes, people will use generated output for purposes other than “art”. And that’s not a gimmick. That’s a valuable tool.

Rally organizers can use AI to create pamphlets and notices for protests. Community organizers can illustrate broadsheets and zines. People can add imagery and interest to all sorts of written material that they wouldn’t have the time or money to illustrate with traditional graphic design. AI can make an ad for a yard sale or bake sale look as slick and professional as any big name company’s ads.

AI tools will make the world a more artistic place, they will let people put graphic art in all sorts of places they wouldn’t have the time or money or skill to do so before, and that’s a good thing.

It may have suffered, but it’s distinctive.

The webcomic space is flooded with generic “good art”. If you want to stand out and build or maintain your brand - you need a unique look. Artists want their audience to be able to look at a character and instantly know they drew it.

(The best example of this is perhaps the worst human being in webcomics today. You can recognize his style in the first three lines of a face.)

I think PA was in kind of a bad place, because they were popular so early in the webcomic boom and so many people copied their style that their original art became generic. What’s going to attract a new teenage reader to PA if it looks just like every other crappy “two guys on a couch playing video games” webcomic they’ve seen?

So PA had to change their style. And say what you will about it, there’s no doubt who drew (or had an AI tool draw) those characters.

I agree. Times change. Putting people out of work is not inherently a bad thing. How many oil workers and coal miners will be out of work when we ban fossil fuels? How many jobs emptying chamber pots and hauling dung were lost when cities installed sewer systems? Hell, how many taxi drivers were put out of work by Uber, and how many Uber drivers are about to be put out of work by self-driving vehicles? When specialized labor is replaced by technology that can do it faster and cheaper, that’s good for society as a whole.

The problem is, society also needs better support for people whose jobs are replaced by technology, and that’s something we don’t have. The logic of capitalism requires unemployed people to suffer, so workers fear losing their jobs and don’t oppose their bosses. OP’s comic shouldn’t be read as an attack on AI, but as an attack on capitalism.

Same as when one of the big name hosting companies takes a site down. You hope it’s archived, and if it was important enough to you, hopefully you saved it to your personal server.

What you’re describing is a major benefit of federation. Any site can be taken down. But when a federated server goes down it’s because the site owner exercised their control over their own data. If Google or Amazon takes a site down, you lose your data, but they keep copies to use however they want.

Those are examples, not requirements. Do what you can. Anyone who judges you for not doing enough while you’re struggling to merely survive is a shit person.

If there are small changes you can make to live a more sustainable life, do them. If there’s nothing you can do, that’s okay too. And if you’re so weighed down by the struggle of mere existence that you don’t have the mental energy to think about ways to change - that’s okay too. We who have the privilege to act should act, and when we do, we carry the aspirations of those who wish they could act but can’t.

If I meant to criticize anyone by this post, it would be the people in wealth and privilege, who could change their lifestyle to be more sustainable - who could be an example to their friends and family and neighbors by living their values - but who choose not to, because they believe personal sustainability is irrelevant when political and corporate actions have so much more impact on the world.