Surviving The AI Apocalypse
Sometimes you need to sit down in an aggressively air conditioned restaurant and have someone on Zoloft bring you an ice cold Dos Equis and a basket of chips.
Salsa is important. In the time honored tradition of Mexican food Friday night, it should be a little bit soupy. So you have to race that chip to your face or be forced to confront a Dexter kill room situation.
One of my local spots decided to upgrade to a thicker salsa recently. And it almost ruined my weekend.
I go to dip a chip and it breaks off. So I grab another chip to send in like a recon chip. To rescue the broken chip. And that one breaks off too. It was a complete catastrophe that turned what should have been a relaxing evening into an absolute hellscape I barely made it out of.
All because they “upgraded” their salsa.
Every few generations, humanity discovers a faster way to fuck things up.
The Industrial Revolution gave us factory goods so efficient and affordable we all became convinced that mass production was spiritually kindred to craftsmanship.
“Why would I buy a handmade chair,” asked a man sitting on a plywood rectangle assembled by a dusty child named Oliver, “when this one was stamped out by a steam powered death engine in four seconds?”
At some point, people are going to realize that everything looks like absolute ass.
Right? No? Okay.
Fuck Art Nouveau right in it’s pretty little mouth.
Fast forward a century.
Everyone has a 4k camera in their back pocket.
With great power comes great responsibility. And we beckoned the call. By filling feeds with millions of blurry pictures of fireworks.
We didn’t stop there. Documenting appetizers like forensic investigators at a crime scene takes us into a brave new era of being more performative than a Mummenshanz charades battle.
Then Instagram filters appear and every soft six with an emotional hole left by their deadbeat father becomes a “visual storyteller.”
Culture barely survives. And we’re kind of okay with that.
Now we have AI image generation. Which is basically clip art on dirty paper acid after a gravity bong hit.
If typing prompts equals having taste, PornHub is a think tank.
If using Midjourney makes you an art director, then I coach the Kansas City Chiefs every Sunday morning.
Run the fucking ball is the solution for all of life’s problems, by the way.
I’m not saying that making it easy to pretend is a bad thing. I’m just saying that convenience dressed up as innovation is a really weird way of fisting yourself in the ass.
AI design is now firmly settled in this uncanny valley where everything looks expensive and cinematic. And emptier than an October Fest in downtown Miami.
If you’re designing a logo you really only have a few choices. You can make it look like a luxury crypto hard seltzer marketed by Vikings. Or a podcast hosted by a warehouse pop up DJ explaining “high performance mindset psychology” from the comfort of his studio apartment.
Aesthetics are collapsing into some kind of communist breadline soup.
All in the name of progress, and it’s happening in tattooing.
Clients are showing up with AI generated designs that feature all kinds of amazing things.
Seven conflicting light sources. Smoke that doesn’t obey the laws of thermodynamics. And at least one hand looking like a starfish that got expelled from clown school for having a gypsy curse.
Tattooing used to have regional fingerprints. You could tell who tattooed somebody. What city they learned in. Whether they come from biker culture, punk culture, Japanese influence, Chicano black and gray, East Coast traditional, prison work, street shop flash, whatever man.
Now portfolios are out here looking like a Netflix thumbnail generator got possessed by the same ghost that told Howard Hughes to piss in milk bottles.
Branding is on par too. Looking like ethically harvested mushroom coffee at a content strategy retreat where everyone walks on hot coals to “get their life together” is totally normal.
You see, there are rules now. That we must follow. Or get sent away to be Gary Busey’s personal fuck toy.
Minimal typography, earth tones, sad serif fonts, and a mission statement that’s both intentional and vague.
Death metal festival or Croatian vape company? We don’t know. Because it doesn’t matter.
Making images is easy. Making decisions? Not so much.
When everyone has the power to produce things that are infinitely “a whole lot of okay,” originality becomes a by-product of restraint.
The future premium won’t be access to tools. Or machines that average preferences.
It will be proof of humanity.
Which is more sad ironic than funny ironic.
After centuries of automation, optimization, outsourcing, filtering and streamlining, what will people end up craving the most?
I say it’s evidence that an actual person made something.
Preferably one with flaws.
That and chips and salsa.
