Severin Matusek

Generative AI is disruptive, is transformative, and is reducing friction, but the economic incentives for using it are geared far less toward supercharging human potential and much more toward producing abundant slop.

There’s a sense of omnipotence: where Talos was powered by “divine ichor”, the blood of the immortal gods”, AI is powered by vast amounts of data collected from billions of (non-consenting) internet users which is then processed and stored in vast facilities such as OpenAI’s Stargate I in Abilene, Texas.

Labubu and Fartcoin are the economy people can actually participate in.

The internet solved distribution for many types of creative work but it never solved monetization. Media was distributed at scale on ad-based platforms and streaming services, so in that sense it was monetized, but not in a way that meaningfully accrued to artists themselves.

A decade ago, lorecraft was largely limited to edgelords haunting online fora thinking up the next troll for lulz and electoral mayhem. Now lorecraft is being used to manage treasuries worth millions, launch complex commercial projects, and design automation deathstars for fun and profit.