Recently after a date, almost as a joke, I asked a boy to sing for me. And he turned off the rain sounds that had been playing and put on Absolute Zero by Hoover. Then, almost under his breath, he began to sing. Just quietly. To himself. On rare occasions I have this veil of acute consciousness, of heightened presence, of attentional supremacy wash over me. It’s like I’m suddenly in a movie, and my eyes are the cameras, and I’m both deeply embodied - feeling every emotion flicker and dance - but also removed from myself, able to see this moment with a radical clarity, painfully aware of its ephemerality. Here is a moment that could never be captured on video. In that room with that boy singing quietly to me as we both got dressed, lit only by the pale blue fairy lights around him, I got to experience this cinematic lucidity. 1

These moments of cinematic lucidity are rare, and valuable, and I think I know why. Lady Gaga came to Melbourne recently, and people posted about it on their instagram story. The whole show looked like a tonne of fun. I wish I could have gone! However, the video of the concert also showed, besides the stage and the performances, a sea of phones filming the performance. And part of me wondered... are you ever going to watch this back? For whom are you taking this video? The video will never accurately capture the quality of the sound in the venue, or the feeling inside when you see a true celebrity step on stage, in real life, before your very eyes. The video is a kind of memorial, a fractured fraction of the concert that you can take home with you. Something to share with friends on social media. But the cost is that in that moment you take the video, you’re shunted out of the present reality of the concert, and into the act of filming.

I’ve started to think of these as two different orientations toward experience: one that prioritises presence and duration, and one that prioritises capture and ownership. Process versus product.

The idea of process vs product is a recurring theme in my thoughts at the moment. For me, product oriented thinking is a form of engagement that focuses on the end result as the priority. Process oriented thinking, then, takes the opposite point of view, which is that how you came to form the product is more important than the product itself. These are modes of engagement, personal orientations, or lenses through which we can examine the world around us. Art, commerce, education, work, the economy. All of these can be viewed through a process vs product lens.

Product is: Solid, concrete, the end, captured forever, orgasms, winning an argument, AI slop, content, fast food, third act climax, net worth, abdominal muscles, marriage, the punchline, victory in Fortnight Battle Royal, the soundbite, the award, the audience’s applause, the masters degree, the photo on the summit, pet ownership, check-mate, 100% completion, insisting on having the last word, property ownership, the verdict, the sobriety chip, the high score, the pay cheque, the destination, death.

Process is: fluid, shifting, changing, foreplay, the rehearsals, the relationship, the commute, the hike, the cooking of the meal, the affair, the therapy session, the rough draft, it’s me sitting and thinking of this list, it’s wild animals, it’s the educational process, it’s sound check, it’s the having fun as you lose, it’s the friendship building and breaking, it’s listening, it’s being present, it’s trying and failing and trying again, the journey, life.

Ideology is product, and praxis is process. Ideology is a crystallised set of values and beliefs. Although it can change and evolve, it represents a kind of settled output. Meanwhile, praxis is this ongoing cycle of theory and practice mixing and reshaping each other in a kind of dynamic dance.

Product can be captured, quantified, displayed, and owned. Process is durational, relational, embodied, and dissolves as it happens.

I spent my mid-20s as a theatremaker who was product obsessed. When I was 25 I set myself a goal: get a show into Perth Festival by the time I was 30. And throughout the process I was constantly thinking about that goal, working towards it constantly. Sending emails, making contacts, asking for meetings. We were told we were being very ambitious, and so I felt like I had something to prove. The year I turned 30 our show was programmed into a major Australian Arts Festival. I am unbelievably proud of the show we made.

The day after the show closed, I was back at my day job in a call centre for a local newspaper. I helped subscribers when they had issues with their paper delivery. I remember thinking “I did it. I actually got my show up” which was followed almost immediately by “So why do I still feel like this?” It sounds ungrateful, but my dream coming true had been a fundamentally dissatisfying experience.

The goal hadn’t been the problem. The problem was that I had spent five years oriented entirely towards the product. The festival slots, the validation, the respect, the proof that we could make this technically audacious show. The rehearsals were just so we could make the show, which would then lead to a change in how everyone saw me. By the time I’d reached the summit to take my photo, I had barely noticed the hike to get there.

Maybe it’s not entirely my own fault though. I believe that we live in a product oriented world, and that it’s so deeply embedded in our society is can be hard to see at first. What happens when we look at a “product” through the lens of process? Think of the basic $20 Uniqlo cotton t-shirt. To get that product in your hands they would have had to plant, grow and cultivate the cotton. They would have had to apply fertilisers and manage pests, then harvest the cotton, and then separate the fibres from the seeds. After that they would have had to clean and sort the raw cotton fibres, and then spin the fibres into yarn, dye the yarn, weave or knit the yarn into fabric, then treat the fabric with whatever other chemicals they apply. Beyond that they would have had to design the shirt style, build a pattern for different sizes, and probably prototype the design. Beyond that, they would have had to then cut the fabric pieces, sew the components together, do quality control, and then add any labels. Then they would fold it, pack it, ship it, put it on the shelves and then sell it to you.

And somehow, somehow through the process that economies of scale allow, they can do all of that, and still charge only for $20 for the shirt, and make a consistent profit on top of it. Process oriented thinking has the potential to reveal the violence in a product-oriented capitalism. Only by hiding the process can a $20 shirt seem reasonable rather than obscene.2

Similarly, AI is a product oriented service because it occludes the process behind the creation of the content. The models are trained on billions of images and texts scraped from the internet without permission, labelled and sorted by underpaid workers, and processed through energy intensive farms. When you generate an image or ask a question, algorithms are calculating probabilities, then checking outputs against safety guidelines, and running subprocesses we never see. But for the user, they are simply presented with text on a platter. They do not see the process that goes into it, rather they are simply provided with an almost instantaneous product. I think this goes some way to explain the uncanny feeling some people have about AI art. It’s all product with no visible process.

Lots of traditional media forms feel like they have process oriented thinking embedded into their very form. It takes time to read a novel, or listen to a song. Performance art feels like it has a kind of process oriented thinking embedded into it because the “product” (the performance) is experiential, intangible, and ephemeral.

What is the product you receive after watching a movie, or listening to a song, or dancing to a particularly good DJ set at the club? You get a memory, sure. But the actual experience of being there in the moment is lost forever. When I’m at a concert and see people filming, I consider this a form of product oriented engagement. It turns the durational experience (read: process) of being present in the moment with this art into something the audience member can take home, own, upload, remix, share, delete, sell, monetise, or never watch again.

Process oriented thinking requires an act of surrender. The individual engaging with art through the lens of process must surrender themselves to the present, to the temporal, and the ephemeral. When we film the concert we refuse that surrender. We insist on capturing it, owning it, taking it home.

Books occupy an interesting middle ground. They’re products you can own, but experiencing them requires surrendering to duration. You have to read them page by page. Jay Gatsby famously owned shelves of books, but hadn’t cut the pages, indicating he hadn’t actually opened any of them, let alone read them. Gatsby treats the book as product, rather than as a conduit for the process of reading. There is no shortcut to having read a novel, even if the pages, spine, and cover are all things you can own.

Short form algorithmic video might at first glance be another interesting middle ground, but it’s actually something much more insidious. Video is a fundamentally durational medium, but services like TikTok or Instagram Reels have tried to compress this fundamentally process oriented medium, into the most product oriented form imaginable: fifteen second clips optimised for instant consumption. But there’s something else going on here, because the process as a viewer of TikTok is not just as a viewer of fifteen second clips, you’re also scrolling, liking, commenting, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. It’s a repetitive process where the product is the data they collect on you, that lets them advertise more accurately towards you. For the viewer, the process is hollow. No meaning, nor memory, nor transformation. But for the company that owns TikTok, the process is working wonders.

I think problems arise when one orientation colonises the other. When product oriented thinking invades spaces that would be ideally process oriented we end up with universities that prioritise the selling of credentials, rather than the embrace of learning as a process. Sex becomes about orgasms, and relationships about marriage. But contrawise, we need process oriented thinking at times also. Apologising without changing is manipulation, activism without material wins is performance, and endless self-reflecting is just narcissism disguised as growth.

Inevitably, it should be noted, these ideas of process and product exist in a kind of yin-yang formation in my mind. A beautiful process that results in a terrible product is ultimately not going to bring much to the table. The process behind making a movie might have been the most fun, joyous, and ethical that any production company has ever seen, but if the movie’s a dud then what are we doing here? And conversely, an amazing product that was made with a terrible process is also a failure. I just don’t think that amazing clothes made in a sweatshop are ever worth it.

So, when did you last surrender to duration, knowing the moment would dissolve forever, and you’d have nothing to show for it except the memory? What would change if you stopped filming the concert?

I don’t have this all figured out yet. I’m still doing a masters degree to make more money, which is about as product-oriented as it gets. But I try to remember the process of learning is more important than the final grade, and that I’m doing it so my life can be easier to enjoy to enjoy the process of living. Sometimes, on rare occasions, that veil of cinematic lucidity descends again, and I’m learning the process is in the surrender itself.

I have forgotten more mediocre movies than I’ll ever remember. Mortdecai, X-Men: Phoenix, Pixels, Chappie, Guardians of the Galaxy. The list goes on, endlessly and forgettably. And the same can be said for the vast majority of art in the vast majority of mediums. During my time making theatre in Perth I saw countless independent theatre shows, and yet if you asked me to recall them I would genuinely struggle. Think of how many paintings you’ve seen in your life, how many hours scrolling through TikTok. The vast majority of the art we consume fails to make a meaningful impact on our lives.

One explanation for this may just be the failing of the human memory. We cannot remember everything, and so it makes sense that our cache would be cleared of memories deemed unimportant to make room for more vital information.1

I have a really poor memory. Things will happen to me, and I oftentimes take solace in the fact that I probably won’t remember something in a week or two. Even an hour later. I’ll sometimes think to myself “oh well, I’ll forget about this soon enough” and I really do. It’s a gift and a curse. A gift because it means that momentary awkwardnesses are moved on from quickly, and a curse because I struggle to hang on to moments that could have a positive impact. Stuck in the present. Like an insect, still twitching, that’s found itself trapped in amber.

I just finished exams at Uni. To be honest I’m genuinely surprised I passed all my subjects. Particularly anatomy. I was convinced I would fail. I’m so exceedingly financially poor at the moment that my only real goal is to not spend money. I go to the gym, I eat, I do improv, and that's about it. On Thursdays I boulder and sauna with my friend Bryan. I work, but my job is so chill I borderline don’t know how to approach it.

To fill the time I’ve found myself scrolling mindlessly. You want a body of mediocre content? I point you towards the infinite shallows of Short Form Vertical Video. I genuinely must have watched thousands of them. Hours of my life spent scrolling on these apps. And the content is ultimately bland right? None of it is memorable. Like licking crumbs off a plate and expecting to be satiated.

At the moment, my algorithm is giving me the following: An AI ‘enhanced’ clip from Gordon Ramsey’s Hell’s Kitchen, a clip of someone playing Balatro, people playing Mario Kart World, a fitness influencer doing muscle-ups (shirt on), a clip of someone making a charcuterie board but insisting that its called antipasto. Like… no offence to myself. But what the fuck is this shit? Why is it so addicting? It doesn’t even taste good and yet I still want more. “Yes please, more black tar for my brain. I love sludge.”

We don’t romanticise short form vertical video the way we do other art forms. Maybe because it’s a contemporary medium. There’s that old Brian Eno idea that the flaws we initially hate in a new medium often end up being the things later steep in nostalgia.2

The closest example I can think of are Vines. We do romanticise vine. We all love a little compilation of rare vines called something like “Vines that brought my dead grandma back to life | [RIP Vine 2018].” We love them for their tight editing, their stupid sense of humour, and the very specific tone a good vine hits.

I wonder if in the future we will recall Tiktok with similar rose coloured glasses. Bad text-to-speech readings, weird stitches, and algorithmic AI randomness all might one day be seen as things to be missed, recreated, and eventually commodified in the name of nostalgia in a new, yet uncreated medium.

Anyway, this is well trod territory. But, as is becoming more and more regular for this blog, I feel this leading towards a discussion about AI.

There’s an old saying in the AI industry: shit goes in, shit comes out. The data that you input will reflect the data the system outputs. Because AI is consuming all of media in the name of statistical averaging and reproduction, to me it makes perfect sense that the content it produces - and particularly creative content - is going to be broadly mediocre. It makes sense that the system does a great job with boring, middle of the road tasks. What does a sublime and life changing cover letter even look like? But I’m curious about the day an AI produces a piece of art that is truly transformative, that leaves an indelible print on my being. That makes sit back and reflect.

I hope it happens. Because what a unique experience for me that will be.

I’ve lately been in discussion with different people - both artists and regular folks - about AI produced art. And a recurring theme that keeps coming up is that many people don’t feel like it’s art, or feel like there’s something uncanny at the centre of AI work. For me it reveals something that’s been acknowledged in the broader arts landscape, but potentially not fully appreciated:

Process is product.

The people who are interested solely in product, in only the goods at the end of the production line, are the same folks that claim AI can eventually replace people in creative fields. For them, it is not the process by which the art is made, rather, it is the object at the end. The product is the goal, not the process behind making it.

For them, there’s no difference between the AI produced Studio Ghibli style portrait, and the real McCoy, an actual frame from a Miyazaki movie. But we know this isn’t true, right? If I had my portrait done by the actual Hayao Miyazaki in his own authentic style, this would be a genuinely life changing event. A gift whose value is beyond expression. But as it stands, the AI recreation is just… ummm. I feel kind of cringe having done it for myself. And there is a commodification to this kind of thinking. An objectification.

Whether we realise it or not, the process behind the artwork is the product. It’s the hours spent studying a landscape before the first brushstroke. The setting up of lights, the adjusting of lenses, the conversation with the subject to find the perfect moment for a portrait. It’s four years spent writing a show that will play once at an arts festival before disappearing forever. The meaning isn’t just in what’s made — it’s in the making.

Is this true though? I feel like a worm writhing on an intellectual hook. Because yes, there is a process in AI art. People trained the model. Aligned it. People made the art it consumed and ripped off. Someone typed the prompt. That’s real labour.3 But still… something feels off. Uncanny. Like it’s copying someone else’s homework. Maybe it’s the subconscious imprint of intention we’re missing. Maybe it’s the lack of friction. There’s something to be said here that the second you define something as ‘not art’ it becomes art. Duchamp, etc.

And similarly, I think there is something true about this for the audience too. Maybe I am too harsh on forgettable media. Do we judge artwork by how memorable it is? If process is product for the artist, why cannot the same be true of the one taking in the art. Whether or not a I remember the film, in the moment I felt something, and that experiential quality of art - as inescapable as the passage of time itself - is what might matter most.

How do I square that circle? Process is product for the producer and the receiver. When I made that little Ghibli portrait of myself in ChatGPT, it brought me a spark of joy. And maybe that’s enough? I’m curious for the day I see a piece AI art that burns itself into my retinas and leaves a lasting imprint. But again, I’m falling into the trap of giving priority to product.

Maybe the ideal aesthetic experience is one where process matters as much to the audience as it does to the artist. Where both are transformed, even if just for a moment. What if the product was never the point? What if all of it was just a way for us, artist and the audience, to feel something, briefly, before forgetting?

The Guardian recently had an opinion piece on their front page, the headline of which read: “A consensus is emerging: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Where is the action?”

My reaction to this headline was varied. The first of which was something akin to disgust. The first phrase of the headline “A Consensus Is Emerging” just galled me. Emerging? I feel like we have known for the majority of 2024 that the government of Israel is committing a genocide against the Palestinian people, and so to end the year on such a tone-deaf point of view felt pathetic for a publication I hold in relatively high esteem.

Like, let me make this absolutely rock solid clear. I think the government of Israel is committing Genocide against the Palestinian People, and I think this is a moral atrocity about which the government I voted in is doing very little to stop it from occurring.1

But I also think the second half of this headline is important, too. “Where is the action?” - To which I ask myself… where is the action? What right do I have to be galled by a headline I disagree with when I’m doing literally nothing. Zero. Zilch. I’m sitting at home in Brunswick East and thinking every now and then about how awful it is that these horrors persist and doing nothing about them. It feels weird. A genocide is occurring. And I’m at home cooking sausages and going to the gym.

It feels like the size of this moral problem - genocide, present and accounted for - is in direct opposition to the absolute powerlessness I feel. I’m writing a blog because it feels like just about all I can do. I can give money, but if I’m being real with you here reader it’s not like I have a whole lot of money to give.

Maybe I’m too cynical.2 I’ll be honest with you, dear reader, but I think posting to your friends on Instagram about how the genocide in Gaza does very little to change the facts on the ground. It feels to me, at times, like virtue signalling. Sizzle without the steak. Is this changing minds? Is it changing policy? Is it changing the lives of those being oppressed by the jackboot of pax-americana? I don’t know, but to me it feels like preaching to the choir.

Subscribe now

But, as cynicism often does, something about this point of view feels like a cop-out. When I look under the hood of this argument, something about it reads to me like ‘well, doing nothing is better than doing something.’

Posting about this genocide, keeping it in our collective consciousness that the government that we pay taxes towards is still doing sweet fuckall to stop war crimes being committed by a country we called an ally… like… fuck!

I think what I’m grappling with is ultimately what is my personal reasonability towards something like this occurring? I feel awful. I feel like what I’m doing is not enough.

It’s a genocide. A fucking genocide.

Part of me though also is like… what does my voice matter? I am one tiny little voice with nothing new to say, and nobody to say it to who doesn’t already agree with me. I feel dwarfed by the moral moment. And I think rather than staring down this moral moment and trying to meet it I hide myself behind a wall of anxiety around posting, a backdoor belief that posting does nothing, and the fear that people will judge me - shame me - for having an opinion on something.3

I think in writing this I’m of course focussed on the aspect that affects my everyday life the most, that is… my instagram feed. But there are actions to be taken in the real world - meaningful, action-filled actions - that might actually make a difference. I haven’t even contacted my local MP to express my point of view on the matter and to encourage them to reflect on their own.

Am I contacting The Guardian to express my disappointment that they ran such a pathetically ill-thought headline?

No, I’m writing my blog. But alternately… do I have a responsibility to post on instagram? I’ve written about this before, but it’s an application built to sell our attention to advertisers. Why the fuck is it my responsibility to post about genocide on an app as hollow and callously capitalistic as Instagram?

But do you know what? The people who post regularly, vociferously on their instagram stories about Gaza are doing more than me. And even if we don’t count posting as doing something, then at least they are meeting the moral moment in voice, if not in action.

Community sentiment takes time to change. I live in a ultra-left wing bubble. An echo chamber within an echo chamber, and it changes because people take the time to educate, and share, and dialogue - and yes - post to instagram-fucking-stories about the things they care about. They add their voice to the choir because without it the choir is just a little bit quieter.

They may be preaching to the choir, but baby, being in a choir can be a beautiful thing. Singing together can feel transcendent. Your collective voice - the voice of the choir - is stronger than any single singer.

Our attention is so valuable because it’s limited. We have one life to lead, and time flows in a single, solitary direction; once you spend your attention somewhere, you can’t get it back. No refunds! No returns! One-way transactions!

Imagine you watch an amazing play at the theatre—pretty great, right? Now, imagine you're watching a terrible play instead—a true test of patience. Sure, there's the financial sting of wasted money on the ticket, but the real pain lies in the lost time. You can get a refund for the ticket, but the evening you spent enduring that dreadful performance? That's gone forever. No refunds on time.

Subscribe now

The Economics of Our Focus

Attention is the currency of humanity, and much of so-called social media’s economics revolve around the monetisation of our attention. Ad-supported platforms like YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Grindr exist by selling our attention to advertisers or offering us ad-free, premium experiences we pay for directly.

Their value proposition is simple: these platforms claim to be worth our attention, but the price we pay is exposure to ads. In exchange for access to the content we want, we direct our focus to advertisements, covering the cost of our "free" access.

On the flip side, we’re subject to passive attention in what’s often called the digital panopticon. Inspired by Jeremy Bentham’s prison design, where inmates are under constant surveillance, this concept describes how our digital lives are continually monitored, often without our awareness. Every click, reaction, comment, and moment online is tracked and converted into data points.

These data points are used to personalise our content feeds and make applications more addictive, keeping us engaged for longer. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle—a flywheel of endless attention.

These platforms aren’t just places we visit—they actively shape how we spend our time. Every part of their design, from autoplay videos to personalised recommendations, is crafted to keep us engaged. By constantly adapting to our individual preferences and behaviours, they hold our attention for longer stretches, nudging us back if we drift away.

Their algorithms learn what we like, what we react to, and when we’re most likely to engage, fine-tuning themselves to be increasingly irresistible. In this way, they don’t just sell our attention—they create an environment where our attention is carefully cultivated, captured, and resold.

Subscribe now

The Power of Infinite Attention: A Game Changer

Artificial intelligence changes the dynamics of attention entirely. AI has nearly infinite attention. Its attention isn’t limited by psychology or biology but by technological resources—power, compute, and physics1.

This shift has obvious economic outcomes. Jobs that AI can handle with infinite attention will become less valuable as AI improves. I’ve heard AI described as "an infinite number of bureaucratic clerks." My current job at a motor insurance company, for example, is likely to become less valuable as automation increases.

The jobs that will retain their value are those where AI cannot meaningfully replace humans. These include roles that rely on creativity, emotional intelligence, and complex human interaction—areas where AI struggles to replicate the depth of human nuance.

But the economic impact is just the beginning. We’re heading toward a world filled with communicative programs (think chatbots) that can pay constant attention to us. Importantly, we’ll form relationships with these AI agents.

Imagine: the AI never forgets to reply, never grows tired, and is always available. A child could ask an AI endless questions, and the AI would never grow frustrated. An AI romantic partner could meet its human counterpart's needs tirelessly, without irritation or fatigue.

The appeal of such relationships is clear. Instead of consuming content interspersed with ads, these services could offer a constant stream of “conscious” attention. But this comes with risks: lonely individuals might find themselves trapped in Truman Show-like realities, surrounded by artificial beings fulfilling social roles—while subtly parroting advertising to cover costs.

An AI can theoretically meet our needs, but it makes me wonder: what are the needs of an AI? The answer is, of course, attention. The AI needs attention paid to it lest it sit dormant. Without us to provide inputs it will generate nothing and simply sit idle.

I imagine there’s a Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs out there somewhere for an AI, and at the bottom of the pyramid sits power and computer, and at the top sits some kind of AI self actualisation.

What are the love languages of an AI? It can provide words of affirmation and has an infinite capacity for quality time. Acts of service? Maybe. Giving and receiving gifts? Possibly. Physical touch? Not yet.

This might feel like 60% of a relationship at 10% of the cost. In an age of loneliness, that could seem like a good deal, but the real value of relationships lies in that remaining 40%. Can AI ever truly replicate the depth and complexity of human interaction? Can an AI provide companionship? Can it care?

Our interactions with AI train the systems, but it’s just as important to consider how these systems train us. For example, I’ve learned to add “Reddit” to Google searches when I want human answers instead of SEO spam.

How are our interactions with AI influencing and reshaping our behaviour? What impact will this have on our relationships—with AI and with each other? I fear a world in which the expectations set by an AI are transported into real life—I cannot instantly and comprehensively reply to all messages, and I cannot be emotionally available 24/7 for anyone other than myself.

By constantly seeking support and answers from AI, are we subconsciously training ourselves out of core skills like critical thinking and creativity. Will it make us also more anodyne? The results AI gives at the moment are reasonably beige in comparison to the chaotic, inconsistent, and oftentimes wildly misguided responses humans tend to give. I have no idea if this is true, but I wonder if AI can provide a truly hot take on any given subject2.

Wrapping It Up

Attention between people is valuable because it’s scarce. Maybe attention from AI is worthless because it’s infinite, and it devalues human attention in turn. Or perhaps the very fact that AI’s attention is limitless makes authentic human attention, connection, and time all the more precious.

In a world where AI offers infinite attention, the challenge will be remembering why ours matters so much.

I have always been someone with a strong sense of direction about my life. The arts just felt… easy. It was hard work, and hard hustle. But it was easy. There was an internal drive there that turned turned passion into effort. I’ve been feeling a bit lost since mentally giving up on the arts. Not sure what to do.

I decided on a speech pathology because it felt like a complete one-eighty from what I did before, but used a lot of the skills I’ve built up. I had worked on a doomed-from-the-outset show for a few years called The New Bachelorette, which included a lot of people with disabilities. I am a strong, thoughtful, and socially conscious communicator. And I like working one on one with people. It felt like a thoughtful fit. I applied to UniMelb because it’s campus is super close to me, and it seems to have a good countrywide reputation for its SpeechPath course.

I don’t wanna say I placed the entirety of my self worth in this basket, but thing I’ve tried to learn from this situation is that without forward momentum, without a direction in mind, without some sort of destination I begin to spiral quickly.

A few weeks ago I received an email from UniMelb saying I had successfully gotten into a masters of speech pathology in a full fee paying capacity. At the time I thought this meant I couldn’t offload my student debt to the Australian government through their student loan scheme. The course would cost $75,000. Too dear by far. Which meant I wouldn’t be able to take the course.

I received the email at about 9:30am on a Saturday. Realising I got in but couldn’t afford to do the course killed me. I cried, and cried, and cried. I never cry. But I cried.

The next morning I woke up and cycled to the gym. I was on my bike sobbing out loud at 5am. It really ruined my week. I had to book an emergency phone call with my psychologist. It was fucking rough.

I spent the next week feeling so awful about myself. And was trying to work out what to do with my life. The oceans of possibility had opened up before me, but swimming in open water on a choppy day can be dangerous.

How does one decide what to do with one’s life?

I became briefly obsessed with becoming a doctor.
I had never been good at chemistry or physics, but I was certain I could pass the GAMSAT if I wanted to.
”I’ll take a study court!”
I would fail the GAMSAT and I think that would kill me even more.

I still dwell on it btw. I haven’t started Speech Path yet and I could still take the study course and sit the GAMSAT. I’m smart. I can learn Chemistry and Physics right? RIGHT?!

Probably not.

I keep meeting and chatting with doctors and it makes me feel like a failure for not becoming one. But they also will never get a show in a major arts festival. But they’ll also have a stable income for the rest of their lives so who knows who comes out on top?

Anyway, I made the calls to see if I could still get into the course and it ends up I just have zero idea how Australia’s university loan scheme works and I got into the course and the government will pay for it. And do you know how I feel about that? Just fine. Not great, not awful. Just… fine.

The pain and suffering of not getting in was not equalled by the joy of achieving what I set out to do.

Smart enough to get into a masters of speech pathology, but not smart enough to understand that I got in.

A frustration I’m facing in my life at the moment is that everyone on grind that i end up having a connection with is either in another state and messaging in advance, or they’re in committed long term open relationships and so thusly have a sense of emotional maturity about them.

There is a choreography to Grindr chats, and some days I’m just not willing to dance.

Grindr takes up an enormous amount of my mental space at the moment. I realise the last few times I’ve written on here have been about Grindr. But oh well.

I’m new to the city and so I don’t really have a social life at the moment. Grindr is the substitute teacher; no real lesson plan or hope of sticking around for the long term. Grindr and the gym are basically my extracurriculars at the moment.

My body is changing and so are the messages I’m receiving.

I’m still on Grindr.

But it feels like something has shifted. I’m getting more messages from guys rather than me messaging them which is weird.

I get the honour of ignoring guys.

I try to reply to everyone because I know being ignored is difficult, and you never know where a conversation might lead but still. Sometimes you just don’t have the energy.

If anything it lets me build some sympathy for the truly, obscenely good looking folks out there who must be bombarded daily with rotten messages from grubs. Some days I am a grub.

How are you? Are you well?

I hope you are well.

I don’t really have an update to share as much.

I dunno.

It’s my blog.

Update from the office on a Friday Morning: This place is empty. I saw a tumbleweed meander through the break room, and the sound of silence echos between the cubicles.

Strange runes have begun appearing on the walls; some carved, others painted in dark, rust coloured ink. I’m worried I’m the only one that can see them, and how that might affect my KPI’s.

I thought I saw someone using the kitchenette, but when I went to see who it might be there was nothing. The fridge gets cleaned out once a week supposedly. There are some strawberries that someone put in there a number of months ago that are yet to rot. Although I’m tempted to take one, I recall the last time I took food from the work fridge it turned to dust in my hand.

I saw a hawk circling overhead. Sand under my fingernails. The office smells like someone is grilling spiced meats downwind, but the air is still.

I work in insurance.

I.

My Grindr account got banned. Me! Little old me, banned from Grindr.

When I investigated and appealed the decision I was told it was because I had violated Grindr’s community guidelines for hate speech.

In my profile I had described myself as ‘ratshit homosexual.’

When my Grindr account got banned it felt like a part of me was ripped away. This portal to a large part of what I’m claiming as an excuse for a social life in this new city was suddenly gone.

But another part of me thought it was pretty pathetic to be sitting on the tram to Brunswick East with shaking hands and a pitted stomach because I couldn’t use the gay hookup app that I stupidly pay money for anymore.

Sometimes I think I am pathetic. But aren’t we all?

II.

I went on a date last night.

His Grindr profile said he was 35, but he was actually 37. When I introduced myself on Grindr he didn’t tell me his name, but he had linked his instagram profile which does about the same thing.

His name was Will, and we started talking when I first arrived in Melbourne almost two and a half months ago. When I asked what he did for work he said was a child cancer consultant. Paediatric oncologist. Apparently when he’s said that in the past people didn’t really know what that was. His profile only had two photos. Both face pictures, the second of which was two people bathed in an orange light, one’s head resting on the shoulder of the other. If you had asked me if the person in the first photo was one of the two people in the orange-hued photo, I'm not sure I could have picked them.

He had texted a few minutes before the date letting me know he was running late finding a parking spot. Every time someone walked past I assumed it was him, and that I had been catfished. But when he arrived he was cuter than his pictures made seem. Often is the way that we photograph different to how we appear in real life.

I’ve been told that I’m much more handsome in real life. Which is really just to say that if there are any potential beaus out there reading this, just know that my pictures do not do me justice according to people from Grindr.

Will and I were getting along keenly. Conversation was relaxed, he was willing to share space, and the silences felt natural and easy. He was soft spoken and shyer in real life than he was online. He told me about the anime figures he buys off of OzBargains. We ordered way too much food. The marmite chicken winglets reminded me of a dish from back home, but it wasn’t quite the same. Still yum though.

We were talking about how he ended up becoming a child cancer consultant.

“I had studied for a number of years in Pharmacology, before me and my partner moved to Japan so Cody could study there. We’re heading back later this year on holiday actually.”

And with that I felt the entire context of this date begin to slowly spin away from me.

I inquired further.

Your partner?

“Yeah. We’re going to Japan in November on holiday. We lived in Kyoto for a few years.”

The ground underneath me is speeding up, moving from wheeling to whirling.

How long have you two been together?

“Nearly twenty years.”

And with that I feel myself detaching the context of this current conversation from what I thought it had been, what I thought it was, and where I thought it might go into a new reality. A new reality in which we had been talking for two and a half months and he never brought up his partner.

More fool me.

A few days later I felt kind of down about the whole thing. A cool doctor was into me and yet I still somehow missed the boat.

We made out for about fifteen minutes next to his car a few streets away which was hot. People kept walking past and we kept making out. Gay people making out in public is a real f-you to the system. Gay people having sex in public is an act of indecency. Maybe both should be celebrated?

III.

A few days ago I “broke up” with someone I had only met four times. Four in person meetings, four phone calls, and a two and a half weeks of almost non-stop texting between apps.

Daniel and I started by playing a game on Grindr. I don’t remember where the game came from, but it kind of became an enrichment activity for us.

We would ask each other a question in the morning, and then talk through the day, until eventually we had answered it in the afternoon.

I remember the first question for enrichment we mutually answered was “Who is someone you’re jealous of, and why?”

Discussions of the exceedingly wealthy, the monstrously good looking, and the desire and shame associated with wanting to be a hot gay on twitter.

Daniel had what I would describe as the body. He was tall, athletic, lithe, and had actual pecs you could squeeze. On a good/dehydrated day he had abs that poked through. He could have been a hot boy on twitter if he wanted to be. Meanwhile, besides the fact that I had successfully replaced my Perth social life with a Melbourne fitness lifestyle that saw me making actual gains in the gym - I did not have… the body.

Other questions included our greatest fear, the thing we’ve done that we’re most proud of, the thing we love most about ourselves. Some shared over long text threads of blue and yellow bubbles, and some shared by voice notes that eventually grew to lengths that more closely resembled a podcast.

He was hot. And thoughtful. He was writing a book in his spare time. And he was willing to share and be open. And his sharing and willingness to be open encouraged me – moi! – to be more open about my vulnerabilities.

When we first met to hookup on a Friday afternoon the energy was electric. He was a great kisser, and his body - as I’ve already detailed - was stunning. He also had a mop of dark curly hair that came down to his shoulders. The seriousness and emotionally exposing nature of our prior chats detailed hid just how silly and effervescent he was in real life.

We traded playlists. Which made me realise how bad I was at making playlists. My music taste felt limited, weirdly, to music I like. And we sent each other articles we thought would interest the other. It was like a dream, or a montage from a rom-com.

We were constantly texting. Cute nicknames. He was Daniil and I was Yuri. Yuri and Daniil, Daniil and Yuri against the world. He even managed to successfully develop an additional gender for the collection: Ashtray Brat.

It was after date three that something in me switched and worried I might be becoming bored with him. But no matter. It might just be the initial sparks burning out, and hopefully something more sustainable would replace it.

One day after sex I asked him what his red flag was. He said “I have this bad habit of taking a very minor thing, and blowing it up, and using it against the person I’m seeing. And it becomes quite personal. And the worst part is that I know I’m doing it, but I can’t stop myself.”

I thought he was going to say something like “I never wash my sheets” or “I don’t have my driver’s license.”

The worst part was that he said it out loud. If this was a line of dialogue in a movie you’d point it out for being too on the nose. The audience would hear it and know instantly how it was going to go. But in real life its easy to glaze over these things.

We went on our fourth date to a restaurant on Lygon street where the portions were small but the cost felt extravagant. We had a really lovely time. We were so deep in conversation and eating that ultimately we missed the screen of Twisters we were going to try and catch, which is probably a blessing in its own right.

So when a few days later we had an oddly intense conversation about his mental health, he ultimately blew up the next day about how annoyed he was at me.

To own up to my part, maybe I lacked enough of the context around his life to be able to speak meaningfully to him about his problems. Maybe what I thought might be suggestions of things that have helped me in the past came off as lecturing. But also, it felt like he was taking my part of the conversation in bad faith.

He ultimately decided we should stop speaking. In his parting blow, he sent me a message mocking me for something I had done during sex recently. It felt mean. Personal. Intentional.

It left me feeling frustrated that such a good thing had ended on such a sour note.

I went to the gym. Did my leg day. Reflected on what a speed run of a relationship this had been. How quickly we had gone from Grindr hookup, to doe-eyed affection, to talking about the open wounds in our lives, to fighting, to breaking up.

Later that day he called me crying. He regretted breaking up with me, and felt frustrated that I wasn’t more angry with him for being so mean. I felt so weird on the call. Like… it was clear Dan’s emotions swung wildly and quickly. Indeed, on the call he even said that while he didn’t fit all the symptoms for it, BPD was something he had “vibed with in the past.”

Daniel was growing more frustrated because it felt like I was holding back. Like I wasn’t sharing my true feelings with him. Ultimately, I was just trying to make sure that I wasn’t going to be hurt in this process. That I protected my own heart from the vulnerability that comes when you open up to someone quickly.

“Ultimately, Dan, I think that when I zoom out and try and view this conversation from a hundred metres up, I don’t feel angry. I don’t feel sorry for myself. What I feel is pity. Great pity for you. Because from the sounds of it this is a pattern of behaviour for you, and you hurt me knowing it would push me away. And I think… what a sad situation in which to find yourself. You have someone who cares about you, and about whom it feels like you care deeply. And you knowingly hurt them because of some whirlpool inside of you you haven’t learned to control.”

Did I say those exact words? No. I don’t think the word whirlpool appeared in our conversation. But its something similar to what I said.

And yes, Dan did call me out for being holier than thou.

But what can I say? It’s not my fault if I’m holier than thou.

By the end of this ninety minute phone call, it actually felt like we had wrapped up the relationship nicely. We were on good terms. I wished him a happy birthday a few days later the way one does with ex’s. Not that we were ex’s. We only met four times.

It ends up we speed ran the entire relationship, all the way through to the post-mortem. While normally a conversation like that might happen months down the track, we somehow managed to fit that into the two and a half weeks also.

IV.

I had sex with someone recently whose butthole was so loose that when we had sex there just wasn’t any friction. It was like a saveloy soaring through a wind tunnel. His breath smelled of cigarettes, and I think I under estimated how bad his tattoos were.

But he had good taste in music and a cat named Svetlana. So… there’s that.

Subscribe now

I. Past & Present

Lately, I've noticed a surprising trend on my Tumblr feed: an influx of AI-generated pornography, spanning from softcore to hardcore.

Now, you might be thinking, 'Hold on, didn't Tumblr famously ban all forms of pornography back in 2018?' You're right, they did announce a sweeping ban. Yet, despite their efforts, it seems that this policy hasn't been entirely effective. Pornographic content, much of it now crafted by AI, continues to proliferate across the platform with relative ease.

Carnal desire always been at the forefront of technology. Google Images was famously invented so that people could more easily find pictures of Jennifer Lopez in her famous green Versace dress. Pornographic websites pioneered video-hosting, payment systems, and bandwidth and data management. But multi-modal AI presents us with further ethical challenges in the consumption of this type of media.

When I refer to AI in this article, I am specifically referring to multi-modal artificial intelligence. Multi-Modal AI is able to take inputs of one type and using a certain amount of contextual awareness, produce content of another type. This could be sensor-data from a LIDAR scanner being used to pilot an autonomous vehicle, but more crucially relevant to this article are AI system able to generate an image from a text prompt. You input text, and the AI produces an image.

Subscribe now

But interestingly, the images that are being produced by the creators using these AI tools are not those of typical pornographic fodder. Yes, there are your to-be-expected images of Chris Hemsworth and Henry Cavill having sex on the beach, or Henry Cavill and Shawn Mendes in the back of a limo getting sweaty, or Henry Cavill in the roman colosseum having his clothes torn off.1 However, this is just the beginning.

A lot of the images being produced are also fascinatingly unrealistic. Photos of hyper-muscular men, men whose bodies are so swollen with muscle that if they existed in real life they would struggle to move. Men whose bodies are essentially the size of busses, bulging with muscles, and trying to fit behind the desk in a lecture theatre. That’s if they’re human. A lot of this style of AI smut also caters to furry or monster fetishes. Beautifully rendered Satan type figures; handsome chromatic men made of metal; muscular frat boys with giant protruding bellies.

What do all of these images have in common? For good or for ill, they represent a major advancement in the ability for technology to fulfil our wildest sexual fantasies.

It would be inaccurate to say this content didn’t exist before - it absolutely did. People have been writing smut about their anthropomorphic animal identities for decades, and it was often joked that an artist producing furry content could easily make more than a doctor in a single year.2 But generative AI is coming for us all, and this includes the furry artists among us. The internet as we know it is transforming.

One way I’ve heard the internet described is as a kind of enormous copying machine. When you download a file (an image, a song, a meme, a pdf, etc.) you’re essentially creating an exact copy of it; the original file sits on a server somewhere, and now a copy sits on your desktop. This is - and I’m being very broad in these generalisations - how the internet has worked for the last fifty years.

An important aspect of a copy machine is that it still needs an original; even if it functionally copies a file bit for bit, someone at some point had to create an original version of any file for it to be copied. However, generative AI is going to change all of that.

No longer will the internet be an enormous copy-machine. Instead, the ability for the machine to generate originals will transform the landscape in ways it is currently difficult for us to foresee.

The scale of production possible with these multi-modal, generative AI systems is far greater than what was possible when it was just a number of lone artists working diligently to meet the needs of their audiences by hand. We are going to see a generational shift in the art we consume, and that includes good old fashioned pornography.

So, what does this mean for the future? How is this mode of content creation going to rock my world? Well, before I go full Nostradamus, I want to touch on a few points that I think are important in any discussion of art and AI.

II. Questions

The first is that none of this AI art is created in a vacuum. It’s easy to look at AI art and divorce ourselves from the people that made it happen. These systems are vast, confusing, and borderline mystic in their ability to create something from nothing. But no, there are people involved at every step of this process.

There are the people that create the generative models that are used to produce the images, and the processes that are used in the production of the images. These are the engineers at companies like OpenAI, Stable Diffusion, Google’s Gemini AI, Midjourney, etc. The people running these are making content moderation decisions every day towards what can and cannot be produced via their platforms. They bear some responsibility in what is produced using their systems.

We also need to remember that each of these images was created because someone desired to see them. To get the images we see on Tumblr, someone sat down at a computer and typed into an AI model something along the lines of “A photorealistic images Henry Cavill dressed in a loose toga, holding a metal sword. He’s inside the colosseum with his large muscles glistening in the daylight, we can see behind him a number of other muscular men.” Someone - a person - asked these generative AI system to produce these images, and they too bear some responsibility.

The second important point I wanted to touch on is that these systems are able to produce these images because they’ve been trained on a dataset containing millions of photos, drawings, 3D renderings, visuals, etc. And quite often these images were used without the prior consent of those that originally created them.

Firstly, this is mostly true for the dataset that goes into the creation an image that the generative AI predicts will be “photorealistic.” i.e. the millions of photos its using as input to produce a given output. But also the people featured.

Secondly, the question must be asked around the consent of our Henry Cavill types; the celebrities who find themselves the subject of AI pornography. Maybe he did consent? I don’t know. I doubt it. But in the absence of an enthusiastic and categorical YES! we must question the ethics of consuming this content so readily, and the obvious ease of its creation.

Finally, there are the people consuming this content. What responsibility do we have as viewers? Am I ultimately taking part in a kind of underground pornographic trade when I view this work? Is this work in a similar category to revenge porn, and deep fakes? Images of someone spread across the internet without their consent.

But let me play out my fantasies of being fortune teller for a minute. Let me looking into my crystal ball and see what could awaits us.

III. The Future; From Copy Machine to Content Creation

These wish-fulfilment AI images are just the beginning. It will start with images and smut text, but eventually we’ll have AI generated pornographic gifs, then audio, and then video. And it’s not a matter of quality (although the quality of the media will increase overtime also), more-so it’s a matter of quantity. The ability for generative AI systems to pump out an endless supply content catering to specific niches. An infinite sea of new media created and catered for our own personal algorithmic feed.

People will be able to have their fantasies and fetishes catered to down to the last detail. This is all well and good if the content you’re craving is a simple image of your Fursona or Monster character doing some exceedingly specific sex act, but let’s extend this out further.

The internet has also allowed the proliferation of harmful material the likes of which we’ve never seen. Child sexual assault material (CSAM) is a true scourge of online spaces, catering for the unethical desires of those who would seek to harm the innocence of children. And while it may not be allowed on the most active of surface level websites, the dark web and unindexed websites are teaming with illegal content.

Let’s extend our theoretical generative AI tendrils into these spaces. AI models created by bad-actors, and trained on illegal media used to generate a ceaseless flow of realistic looking CSAM. This font of material filling certain websites, giving those with these unethical desires a place to find safe haven, and consume this content, which potentially normalises the desires and further perpetrates cycles of abuse and sexual violence.

Similarly, I can easily imagine a future in which you supply a generative AI model with a given number of images of a real life person, and it produces for you a hundred realistic looking and violently pornographic images or videos. Today we look at pictures of sexy AI Henry Cavill, but what happens when someone sends around an AI produced video of yourself? What will you actually be able to do about it?

Beyond these more extreme predictions, we can also look at how it will affect the content we consume. I can imagine a service like TikTok that supplies me with a feed of entirely AI generated content. Or maybe you speak into your smart TV and say “I’m looking for a thought provoking, and aesthetically pleasing movie about a plucky Victorian street urchin who buys a time machine, and I want it to star Henry Cavill” and the generative AI creates such a movie for you right then and then.

In a world where content is infinite, and cheap to produce where does true value lie? Does the work of artists actually increase in value suddenly, or does it all get drowned out by the inevitability of a machine that can produce infinitely?

Similarly, in a world where our technology is trying to meet our every desire, are there certain needs these machines can never meet?

IV. Conclusion

As we stand at this digital crossroads, gazing into the vast, uncharted territories of AI-generated content, one truth becomes glaringly apparent: the boundaries between our wildest fantasies and reality are blurring at an unprecedented pace. While the infinite expanse of AI-created pornography ushers in an era of unparalleled personal gratification and fantasy fulfillment, it also beckons us to tread cautiously. We must navigate this new realm with a keen sense of responsibility and ethical mindfulness. The AI revolution, capable of conjuring up everything from the mildly titillating to the wildly fantastical, challenges us not just as consumers but as moral agents. In a world where our every fantasy can be met, discerning desire from responsibility is our newest frontier.

Subscribe now