u/Informal-Writing3421

...opened Instagram and I'm just inundated with ads. I am SICK of it. Everything is an ad, everything wants your money, everything is performative.
On top of that, there was a pretty significant fire in my hometown yesterday and the first post I see this morning is an AI-generated image with a fucking praying pig and this melancholy music playing over it and an obviously AI-generated caption. Complete with a fireman's uniform that had a name of a person who isn't even on our squad. It was so corny and performative it honestly just pissed me off so much. I have lived here since I was born and these are locally owned businesses and to turn what actual real people are going through into absolute cringeworthy slop like that just made me so mad. That combined with the onslaught of ads is just too much. It honestly sent me into a rage.

I guess there's no real point to this post other than commiserating and just being fully aware that I absolutely HAVE to get off social media and my phone as much as possible. Like, it HAS to happen.

It also put me in mind of this smart post I saw on Substack a while back (credited to Anuradha Pandey):

"If we stop calling it “social media” and instead said “ad platforms”, many ridiculous aspects surface:

1. We construct whole identities on ad platforms
2. We get the ‘news’ from ad platforms
3. We see ad platforms as a medium to demand positive social change
4. We excuse our usage of ad platforms so we can “keep up with our friends”
5. We let ad platforms degrade our attention to the extent that we insist podcasts and hearing a book are equivalent in cognitive effect to reading an actual book.

Precision when discussing social problems can surface a lot of work that euphemisms do."

Never thought I'd say this but I think I'm crushing on him harder than Bill. Nighthawk is a hell of an album!

Will probably get down voted like hell but is anyone else sick of the commodification of their music? Every time I open this sub its a sticker for this, a shirt for that, to me it just takes away so much from the actual craft to make commodities of every song that's written. I wish I could put this more succinctly but there's gotta be someone out there that gets what I'm saying and agrees with me.

Edit: I'm including the definition of commodification here because I'm apparently coming across clear as mud with this post: "Commodification is the process of transforming goods, services, ideas, or people—previously valued for their intrinsic worth—into commodities that can be bought and sold for profit."

Edit 2: im adding this comment i left here cause im tired. This has ZERO to do w artists getting paid and i have nothing against lot vendors just to make that abundantly clear.

I never ever ever said the artists shouldn't be paid. all im saying is I dont get why we have to make 57 different shirts with a goat. 12 different hats with some form of red daisy. 25 different shirts with trains. Its just exhausting. I thank God that there's not this level of STUFF surrounding Dr. Ralph and the other giants. At least there's that.

I was gifted about a pound of dried stinging nettle, and I'm wondering what I could do with it, and its benefits? The herbalism books I have really only mention dead nettle. Thanks all!