The parasitic model

My post yesterday, about how the profit motive in (and corporate control of) media has annihilated any hope of getting accurate representation of the news, was almost immediately followed up by my running into a story about how the same forces in creative media are working to strangle creativity at its source.

The article was from Publishers Weekly, and was about an interview with HarperCollins CEO Brian Murray.  It centered largely on the company's whole-hearted endorsement of AI as part of its business model.  He describes using AI to take the place both of human narrators for audiobooks and of translators for increasing their sales in non-English-speaking countries, which is troubling enough; but by far his most worrisome comment describes using AI, basically, to be a stand-in for the authors themselves.  Lest you think I'm exaggerating, or making this up entirely, here's a direct quote from the article:

The fast-evolving AI sector could deliver new types of formats for books, Murray said, adding that HC is experimenting with a number of potential products.  One idea is a “talking book,” where a book sits atop a large language model, allowing readers to converse with an AI facsimile of its author.  Speculating on other possible offerings, Murray said that it is now possible for AI to help HC build an entire cooking-focused website using only content from its backlist, but the question of how to monetize such a site remains.

Later in the article, almost offhand, was a comment that while HarperCollins saw their sales go up last year by only six percent, their profits went up by sixty percent.  The reason was a "restructuring" of the company -- which, of course, included plenty of layoffs.

How much of that windfall went to the authors themselves is left as an exercise for the reader. 

I can vouch first-hand that in the current economic climate, it is damn near impossible to make a living as a writer, musician, or artist.  The people who are actually the wellspring of creativity powering the whole enterprise of creative media get next to nothing; the profits are funneled directly into the hands of a small number of people -- the CEOs of large publishing houses, distributors, marketing and publicity firms, and social media companies.

I can use myself as an example.  I have twenty-four books in print, through two small traditional publishers and some that are self-published.  I have never netted more than five hundred dollars in a calendar year; most years, it's more like a hundred.  I didn't go into this expecting to get rich, but I'd sure like to be able to take my wife out to a nice restaurant once a month from my royalties.

As it is, we might be able to split the lunch special at Denny's.

Okay, I can hear some of you say; maybe it's not the system, maybe it's you.  Maybe your books just aren't any good, and you're blaming it on corporate greed.  All right, fair enough, we can admit that as a possibility.  But I have dozens of extraordinarily talented and hard-working writer friends, and they all say pretty much the same thing.  Are you gonna stand there and tell us we're all so bad we don't deserve to make a living?

And now the CEO of HarperCollins is going to take the authors out of the loop even of speaking for ourselves, and just create an AI so readers can talk to a simulation of us without our getting any compensation for it?

Ooh, maybe he could ratchet those profits up into the eighty or ninety percent range if he eliminated the authors altogether, and had AI write the books themselves.

Besides the greed, it's the out-of-touchness that bothers me the most.  Lately I've been seeing the following screenshot going around -- a conversation between Long Island University Economics Department Chair Panos Mourdoukoutas and an ordinary reader named Gwen:

The cockiness is absolutely staggering; that somehow it's better to put even more money in Jeff Bezos's pockets than it is to support public libraries.  They've already got the entire market locked up tight, so what more do the corporate CEOs want?  It's flat-out impossible as an author to avoid selling through Amazon; they've got an inescapable stranglehold on book sales.  And, as I found out the hard way, they also have no problem with reducing the prices set by me or my publisher without permission, further cutting into any profit I get -- but, like HarperCollins, you can bet they make sure it doesn't hurt their bottom line by a single cent.

And don't even get me started about the Mark Zuckerberg model of social media.  When Facebook first really got rolling, authors and other creators could post links to their work, and it was actually not a bad way to (at the very least) get some name recognition.  Now?  Anything with an external link gets deliberately drowned by the algorithm.  Oh, sure, you can post stuff, but no one sees it.  The idea is to force authors to purchase advertising from Facebook instead.

Basically, if it doesn't make Zuckerberg money, you can forget about it.

If I sound bitter about all this -- well, it's because I am.  I've thrown my heart into my writing, and gotten very little in return.  We've ceded the control of the creative spirit of humanity to an inherently parasitic system, where the ones who are actually enriching the cultural milieu are reaping only a minuscule percent of the rewards.

The worst part is that, like the situation I described yesterday regarding the news media, I see no way out of this, not for myself nor for any other creative person.  Oh, we'll continue doing what we do; writing is as much a part of my life as breathing.  But isn't it tragic that the writers, artists, and musicians whose creative spirits nurture all of us have to struggle against seemingly insurmountable odds even to be seen?

All because of the insatiable greed, arrogance, and short-sightedness of a handful of individuals who have somehow ended up in charge of damn near everything that makes life bearable.  People who want more and more and more, and after that, more again.  Millions don't satisfy; they need billions.

As psychologist Erich Fromm put it, "Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever actually reaching satisfaction."

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Inside the bubble

A couple of nights ago, my wife and I watched the latest episode in the current series of Doctor Who, "Dot and Bubble."  [Nota bene: this post will contain spoilers -- if you intend to watch it, you should do so first, then come back and read this afterward.]

All I'd heard about it before watching is that it is "really disturbing."  That's putting it mildly.  Mind you, there's no gore; even the monsters are no worse than the usual Doctor Who fare.  But the social commentary it makes puts it up there with episodes like "Midnight," "Cold Blood," and "The Almost People" for leaving you shaken and a little sick inside.

The story focuses on the character of Lindy, brilliantly played by Callie Cooke, who is one of the residents of "Finetime."  Finetime is basically a gated summer camp for spoiled rich kids, where they do some nominal work for two hours a day and spend the rest of the time playing.  Each of the residents is surrounded, just about every waking moment, by a virtual-reality shell showing all their online friends -- the "bubble" of the title -- and the "work" each of them does is mostly to keep their bubbles fully charged so they don't miss anything.

The tension starts to ramp up when the Doctor and his companion, Ruby Sunday, show up unannounced in Lindy's bubble, warning her that people in Finetime are disappearing.  At first she doesn't believe it, but when forced to look people up, she notices an abnormal number of them are offline -- she hadn't noticed because the only ones she sees are the ones who are online, so she wasn't aware how many people in her bubble had vanished.  At first she's dismissive of Ruby and downright rude to the Doctor, but eventually is driven to the realization that there are monsters eating the inhabitants of Finetime one by one.

Reluctantly accepting guidance from the Doctor, she runs for one of the conduits that pass under the city, which will give her a way out of the boundaries into the "Wild Wood," the untamed forests outside the barrier.  Along the way, though, we begin to see that Lindy isn't quite the vapid innocent we took her for at first.  She coldly and unhesitatingly sacrifices the life of a young man who had tried to help her in order to save her own; when she finds out that the monsters had already killed everyone in her home world, including her own mother, she basically shrugs her shoulders, concluding that since they were in a "happier place" it was all just hunky-dory.

It was the end, though, that was a sucker punch I never saw coming.  When she finally meets up with the Doctor and Ruby in person, and the Doctor tells her (and a few other survivors) that they have zero chance of surviving in the Wild Wood without his help, she blithely rejects his offer.

"We can't travel with you," she says, looking at him as if he were subhuman.  "You, sir, are not one of us.  You were kind -- although it was your duty to save me.  Screen-to-screen contact is just about acceptable.  But in person?  That's impossible."

In forty-five minutes, a character who started out seeming simply spoiled, empty-headed, and shallow moved into the territory of "amoral" and finally into outright evil.  That this transformation was so convincing is, once again, due to Callie Cooke's amazing portrayal.

What has stuck with me, though, and the reason I'm writing about it today, is that the morning after I watched it, I took a look at a few online reviews of the episode.  They were pretty uniformly positive (and just about everyone agreed that it was disturbing as hell), but what is fascinating -- and more than a little disturbing in its own right -- is the difference between the reactions of the reviewers who are White and the ones who are Black.

Across the board, the White reviewers thought the take-home message of "Dot and Bubble" is "social media = bad."  Or, at least, social media addiction = bad.  If so, the moral to the story is (to quote Seán Ferrick of the YouTube channel WhoCulture) "as subtle as a brick to the face."  The racism implicit in Lindy's rejection of the Doctor was a shocking twist at the end, adding another layer of yuck to an already awful character.

The Black reviewers?  They were unanimous that the main theme throughout the story is racism (even though race was never once mentioned explicitly by any of the characters).  In the very first scene, it was blatantly obvious to them that every last one of Lindy's online friends is White -- many of them almost stereotypically so.  Unlike the White reviewers, the Black reviewers saw the ending coming from a mile off.  Many of them spoke of having dealt all their lives with sneering, race-based microaggressions -- like Lindy's being willing at least to talk to Ruby (who is White) while rejecting the Doctor (who is Black) out of hand.

When considering "Dot and Bubble," it's easy to stop at it being a rather ham-handed commentary on social media, but really, it's about echo chambers.  Surround yourself for long enough with people who think like you, act like you, and look like you, and you start to believe the people who don't share those characteristics are less than you.

What disturbs me the worst is that I didn't see the obvious clues that writer Russell T. Davies left us, either.  When Lindy listens to Ruby and rejects the Doctor, it honestly didn't occur to me that the reason could be the color of his skin.  I didn't even notice that all Lindy's friends were White.  As a result, the ending completely caught me off guard.  As far as the subtle (and not-so-subtle) racist overtones of the characters in the episode, I wasn't even aware of them except in retrospect.

But that's one of the hallmarks of privilege, isn't it?  You're not aware of it because you don't have to be.  As a White male, there are issues of safety, security, and acceptance I never even have to think about.  So I guess like Lindy and the other residents of Finetime, I also live in my own bubble, surrounded by people who (mostly) think like I do, never having to stretch myself to consider, "What would it be like if I was standing where they are?"

And what makes the character of Lindy so horrific is that even offered the opportunity to do that -- to step outside of her bubble and broaden her mind a little -- she rejects it.  Even if it means losing the aid of the one person who is able to help her, and without whose assistance she is very likely not to survive.

For myself, my initial blindness to what "Dot and Bubble" was saying was a chilling reminder to keep pushing my own boundaries.  In the end, all I can do is what poet Maya Angelou tells us: "Do the best you can until you know better.  Then, when you know better, do better."

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Words as edged tools

Words matter.

This comes up because of a couple of unrelated social media interactions that got me thinking about the fact that many people use words and then want to avoid the implications and consequences of how they're perceived.  The first was a post from the Reverend Doctor Jacqui Lewis that (hearteningly) got a lot of responses of the high-five and applause variety, which said, "You don't 'hate pronouns.'  You hate the people who are using them.  If that makes you feel uncomfortable, then good.  It should.  You either respect how people are asking you to know and name them, or you don't.  But stop pretending it's about language."

The other was in response to a TikTok video I made for my popular #AskLinguisticsGuy series, in which I made the statement that prescriptivism -- the idea that one dialect of a language is to be preferred over another -- is inherently classist, and that we have to be extremely careful how we characterize differing pronunciations and word usages because they are often used as markers of class and become the basis for discrimination.  Most people were positive, but there was That One Guy who responded only with, "Great.  Another arrogant preachy prick."

Now, let me say up front that there are perhaps times when people are hypersensitive, and infer malice from the words we use when there was none intended.  On the other hand, it's critical that we as speakers and writers understand the power of words, and undertake educating ourselves about how they're perceived (especially by minorities and other groups who have experienced bigotry).  If someone in one of those groups says to me, "Please don't use that word, it's offensive," I am not going to respond by arguing with them about why it was completely appropriate.  I would far rather err on the side of being a little overcautious than unwittingly use a word or a phrase that carries ugly overtones.

Let me give you an example from my own personal experience.  I grew up in the Deep South -- as my dad put it, if we'd been any Deeper South, we'd'a been floating.  And I can say that it really pisses me off when I see a southern accent used as a marker of ignorance, bigotry, or outright stupidity.  I was appalled when a local middle school here in upstate New York put on a performance of Li'l Abner, a play written by Melvin Frank and Norman Panama (both northerners native to Chicago).  The entire play, in my opinion, can be summed up as "Oh, those goofy southerners, how comically dim-witted they are."  If you've never seen it, you'll get the flavor when you hear that it features characters named Mammy Yokum, General Bullmoose, and Jubilation T. Cornpone.  I don't blame the kids; they were doing their best with it.  I blame the adults who chose the play, and then chortled along at sixth and seventh graders hee-hawing their way through the lines of dialogue with fake southern accents, and acted as if it was all okay.

People who know me would readily tell you that I'm very comfortable with laughing at myself.  My reaction to Li'l Abner wasn't that I "can't take a joke" at my own expense.  The problem is that the show is based on a single premise: characterizing an entire group, rural southerners, using a ridiculous stereotype, and then holding that stereotype up for a bunch of smug northerners to laugh at.

And if taking offense at that makes me a "woke snowflake," then I guess that's just the way it has to be.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Kevin C Chen, SnowflakesOnWindshield, CC BY-SA 2.0 TW]

If, in your humor or your critical commentary, you're engaging in what a friend of mine calls "punching downward," you might want to think twice about it.

The bottom line, here, is that what I'm asking people to do (1) can make a world of difference to the way they come across, and (2) just isn't that hard.  When a trans kid in my class came up to me on the first day of class and said, "I go by the name ____, and my pronouns are ____," it literally took me seconds to jot that down, and next to zero effort afterward to honor that request.  To that student, however, it was deeply important, in a way I as a cis male can only vaguely comprehend.  Considering the impact of what you say or what you write, especially on marginalized groups, requires only that you educate yourself a little bit about the history of those groups and how they perceive language.

Refusing to do that isn't "being anti-woke."  It's "being an asshole."

Words can be edged tools, and we need to treat them that way.  Not be afraid of them; simply understand the damage they can do in the wrong hands or used in the wrong way.  If you're not sure how a word will be perceived, ask someone with the relevant experience whether they find it offensive, and then accept what they say as the truth.

And always, always, in everything: err on the side of kindness and acceptance.

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The last gasp

I have a question this morning: is it a good sign when people defending counterfactual or morally reprehensible claims start resorting to idiotic arguments?

I kind of think the answer is "yes."  If you look at our history, there are many examples of humanity shedding prejudices, oppression, and cruelty.  At first, those things are taken for granted, and are so entrenched that no one questions them (publicly, at least).  Opposition builds, but at first is quelled by "don't be foolish, we've always done it this way."  Once the people favoring the bad old system realize the opposition isn't backing down -- i.e., the system status quo is losing -- they become desperate, sometimes violent.

And toward the end, all that is left is a few wacko extremists, spouting off ridiculous nonsense that would only appeal to other wacko extremists.  After that, the bubble bursts, and lo!  Social sea-change has occurred.

I'm neither a historian nor a social scientist, so I can't say this with any kind of academic certainty, but from what I've read, many of the biggest social changes -- the breaking of the church's control over governments in Europe, the improvement in race relations and civil rights in the United States and elsewhere, our acceptance of the science as a way of knowing -- have followed this pattern.

If I'm right, we are on the cusp of a change in our attitudes toward homosexuality.

I say this because when you consider what has been written and said recently on the topic, most of it boils down on analysis to bizarre paranoia.  Take, for example, what Renew America columnist A. J. Castellitto wrote this week:

If one were determined to take down America; if it were not possible by force; the secret weapon would come from a surprising place.... 

From out of the closet... 

Based on the expressed concerns and priorities of the current administration, it's almost as if they are living in an alternate universe.  In fact, one could argue that both the media and our president have been willfully negligent (considering alternative media reports of increased persecution and hostility against Christians worldwide).  Meanwhile, religious conservatives, especially those of the Judeo-Christian persuasion, have been experiencing a hostility of a different sort, pertaining to their reluctance to embrace non-traditional marriage. 

However, if we take it back to the "hypothetical," it would seem as if the same-sex marriage phenomenon has proven an exceptionally effective tool in uprooting our fundamental foundations. 

When applied to the "takeover" agenda, it could be perceived that American homosexuals are merely commie pawns unknowingly being used for the hat-trick trifecta destruction of freedom, faith, family..... 

What if individuals with same sex desires are merely being held up and exploited as objects of intolerance? What if they are just the means to a much greater and darker end-game agenda.....?

Yeah.  Right.  What?

Now we're supposed to be against gay marriage because all gay people are secretly communists?  Or, maybe, that they're being manipulated by communists?  It's hard to tell what he's talking about, frankly.  It sounds a bit like he's run out of any reasonable arguments (not that there were many to start with), and just figured that it was time for some shock tactics.  "I know!  Let's link the gays to the communists!  That'll get people's hackles raised!"

Then, of course, we have Rick Santorum, who can always be counted on for a loony commentary:  "If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery.  You have the right to anything...  In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality.  That's not to pick on homosexuality.  It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be.  It is one thing."

Sure.  Because two consenting adults having sex is exactly the same as cheating on your spouse, or victimizing a child or an animal, and will lead to having "the right to anything."

Just two days ago, Santorum said what may be his most mystifying pronouncement on the issue yet, with the claim that legalizing gay marriage will lead to more single mothers raising children.  Yeah, Rick?  How's that supposed to work?  Because, you know, gay sex has a 100% success rate in not leading to conception.

Maybe he never took biology in high school.  Probably trying to avoid that uncomfortable unit on evolution, but he missed the chapter on human reproduction as well.

In all seriousness, though, I think a lot of this furor harkens back to the Puritan days:

For some reason, these people can't stand it that folks might be having sex because it's fun, and that therefore there might be other valid expressions of our sex drive than making babies.  And not only do they feel that this should apply to their own lives -- to which I say, well, okay, if you want to live like that, fine, but kind of sucks to be you -- but they feel the desperate need to force everyone else to conform to the same rigid standards.

But my hope is that this last, bizarre outpouring of lunacy might signal the fact that we are on the verge of a cultural shift.  A Gallup poll found in May that American support of gay marriage had reached a new high of 55%.  This certainly seems like a foundational change to me, and one that might well be unstoppable.

And high time.  What consenting adults do in their bedrooms is absolutely no business of mine, nor of A. J. Castellitto's or Rick Santorum's.  It does not devalue my marriage to my wife; it does not increase the likelihood of pedophilia or bestiality; it does not alter people's political beliefs; it does not rip up the fabric of society.

All it does is give loving adults the right to express that love publicly without fear of repercussion, and have the social benefits that have been conferred to married straight people since the dawn of the institution.

And there honestly is no rational argument against that.