Skip Navigation

The way the right-wing uses bad AI art for everything is really interesting

I've noticed every chud grifter and politician (same thing, am I right? HAW HAW dad joke owl) seems to use AI art. For memes, for video thumbnails, for their dumb articles that only your 60 year old estranged relative reads, for their shitty Twitter "gotchas". They love that shit. The uglier the AI generated slop is the better. Why do you think that is? Lack of talent? Hatred of artists? What drives this love of poor quality?

25 comments
  • They simply lack creativity, which requires some level of empathy, and empathy generally leads people to... not be chuds.

    They see comedy, and try and do comedy. However, they're not really funny, and their idea of what is "funny" is to attack a group that isn't themselves. What happens is they just say some offensive shit, someone objects, they claim they're being silenced and/or cancelled or are too controversial despite the fact that 90% of people wouldn't have laughed even if they didn't find it offensive.

    They see fine art, and try and do fine art. However, they're not really creative, and their idea of what "good art" is is just photorealistic paintings or sculptures of pretty women or masculine men or whatever. They like surface level stuff because they can only observe surface level stuff. Art is a tool to show off a message, be it how dumb [insert minority] is or how good "western civilization" is.

    They see entertainment, and try to do entertainment. However, they have no idea how to entertain, and their idea of what's "entertaining" is just some self insert protagonist who is very funny and/or strong and/or smart and/or cool who overcomes obstacles, gets whatever they want and credits roll. They try and create adult animation and come up with Mr Birchum, just stereotype characters with 0 depth where the protagonist learns nothing and defeats a strawman version of "wokeness" that doesn't exist in real life and everyone cheers. They try and create drama and it's the same shit except with fewer jokes.

    In all these examples, they simply use art as a tool to get to the important part: a vessel for themselves and their personal beliefs to be broadcast to a wider audience. It's the Freudian Id wanting to come out to play and they're upset other people aren't lapping up their every word. They can only co-opt, corrupt or cry foul.

  • I don't think this accounts for all of it (I think the other posts here have a lot of valuable insight) but one little note I'd make is that I think right-wingers tend to be very uncritical in their consumption of art and often have a very poorly developed ability to evaluate something as art. Art is often 'good' if it has a surface-level moral that is good, or if it is 'pretty' in a nondescript way. The point of art is to be didactic and AI can achieve that very low standard, so there's nothing to sound any alarms about how ugly or ridiculous the imagery actually is; that would require paying attention to the image longer than they are willing to think about it.

    I think it's the logical conclusion of the same phenomenon someone like Big Joel is always observing in the media right-wingers produce. Art is shackled to their messaging and their messaging sucks. With rare exceptions this is the obvious result of that process. AI generated images take the amount of effort they would willingly put into their messaging to create.

  • The gish gallop is their primary method of argument, so having a shitty image generator that can keep pace with their shitty arguments is a match made in heaven

  • It's instant gratification from a glorified gacha machine. Since the heart of American reaction is libertine treat lust a magic addictive treatbox that gives them pictures on demand with the cost of a brief delay and a likely need to keep hitting the treat button several times is something they become addicted to and start trying to use for everything.

  • Beyond the practical reasons, I think the default AI art look shares an aesthetic value with stuff like Ben Garrison drawings and Facebook Minion memes, a sort of maximalist ugliness that feels like a subversive rejection of some common aesthetic value I am too close to to be able to name. That kind of thing works well with the current right-wing populist ideology.

25 comments