massraider
Footballguy
Two days ago I tried to get to page 2 of Google search results. Really not easy. Now you are just scrolling endlessly past all the crap you are talking about
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Sports Illustrated Published Articles by Fake, AI-Generated Writers (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter NewlyRetired
- Start date
NewlyRetired
Footballguy
ChatGPG is a big part of the problem IMO. It effectively steals everything it does (words, art, images etc) from other peoples work with out any credit to the original owner.
We are eventually going to get into a loop where people stop creating content, and the AI's just steal from each other in an endless loop where quality slowly diminishes.
FairWarning
Footballguy
Visible and profitable. It’s very hard to do both.
Phil Elliott
Footballguy
Did AI send the notices to the staff?
Last edited:
Leroy Hoard
Footballguy
Something like this?
"Dear valued ex-employees,
We are writing to inform you that, unfortunately, we will be facing the difficult decision to lay off a large portion of our workforce in the coming days. It is with a heavy heart that we have to tell you that approximately 100% of employees will be terminated by this decision.
We understand that this news will come as a shock and will likely be met with sadness, frustration, and uncertainty. Please know that this decision was not made lightly and was only arrived at after careful consideration and a thorough analysis of our financial situation.
Good bye, and good luck."
"Dear valued ex-employees,
We are writing to inform you that, unfortunately, we will be facing the difficult decision to lay off a large portion of our workforce in the coming days. It is with a heavy heart that we have to tell you that approximately 100% of employees will be terminated by this decision.
We understand that this news will come as a shock and will likely be met with sadness, frustration, and uncertainty. Please know that this decision was not made lightly and was only arrived at after careful consideration and a thorough analysis of our financial situation.
Good bye, and good luck."
rockaction
Footballguy
I don't want to sidetrack this too much, but I was reading an article from 1977 in Time today. I was so impressed with the writing that I couldn't believe it has been nearly fifty years since the publication of the article I was reading. Full of life, bon mots, and a generally discerning and withering eye, the writer was tasked with covering punk rock in the '70s. No small task and no small minds required, he turned three pages of copy into probably the greatest two-page primer of punk you could imagine.
content.time.com
Some nuggets:
'ITEM: In London, Singer Johnny Rotten spits at the audience and cries out, "I hate you!" Sizing up Johnny's four-letter words, tattered clothing and generally repugnant personal deportment, the British Establishment decides that it hates him."
"The music comes in fast, short bursts of buzz and blast. Some groups have but two or three chord changes at their disposal, occasionally less: last week at CBGB's a fledgling group set several unofficial records for length of time played without changing chords at all."
"Even on the Bowery, lyrics are not as rowdy as in Britain. Punk there is a protest by Britain's working-class children, who have no memory of swinging London and cannot find jobs. Detractors of punk would argue that these children are coddled by a very expensive welfare state and are feeling sorry for themselves."
"Despite some of the revolting accouterments, there is real musical value in much of punk rock . . .Television, which got its start at CBGB's, wraps its big beat in mellifluous instrumental colors. Lead Singer Tom Verlaine's lyrics, like the following from Venus, are among rock's finest in years:
Tight toy night; streets were so
bright.
The world looked so thin and
between my bones and skin
there stood another person who
was a little surprised
to be face to face with a world so alive.
I fell.
Anyway, the article goes on. It packs a wallop in two and a half pages. It's a stunning example of an adroit mind covering a very new subject. I can't find a byline anywhere on it. Too bad. It's also too bad journalism has died this way. It just . . . I'd like to think there's a public that reads and wants to read great stuff like this. I'm not sure what else to say about it. We've gone downhill fast.
Music: Anthems of the Blank Generation
ITEM: In London, Singer Johnny Rotten spits at the audience and cries out, "I hate you!" Sizing up Johnny's four-letter words, tattered clothing and generally repugnant personal...
Some nuggets:
'ITEM: In London, Singer Johnny Rotten spits at the audience and cries out, "I hate you!" Sizing up Johnny's four-letter words, tattered clothing and generally repugnant personal deportment, the British Establishment decides that it hates him."
"The music comes in fast, short bursts of buzz and blast. Some groups have but two or three chord changes at their disposal, occasionally less: last week at CBGB's a fledgling group set several unofficial records for length of time played without changing chords at all."
"Even on the Bowery, lyrics are not as rowdy as in Britain. Punk there is a protest by Britain's working-class children, who have no memory of swinging London and cannot find jobs. Detractors of punk would argue that these children are coddled by a very expensive welfare state and are feeling sorry for themselves."
"Despite some of the revolting accouterments, there is real musical value in much of punk rock . . .Television, which got its start at CBGB's, wraps its big beat in mellifluous instrumental colors. Lead Singer Tom Verlaine's lyrics, like the following from Venus, are among rock's finest in years:
Tight toy night; streets were so
bright.
The world looked so thin and
between my bones and skin
there stood another person who
was a little surprised
to be face to face with a world so alive.
I fell.
Anyway, the article goes on. It packs a wallop in two and a half pages. It's a stunning example of an adroit mind covering a very new subject. I can't find a byline anywhere on it. Too bad. It's also too bad journalism has died this way. It just . . . I'd like to think there's a public that reads and wants to read great stuff like this. I'm not sure what else to say about it. We've gone downhill fast.
massraider
Footballguy
They'll probably keep it going with the FanSided type vibe.
SI died, and look, Boomer and Gen X don't care.
rockaction
Footballguy
I consume tons of free content from magazines. If The Atlantic were a more reasonable price point, I'd be a subscriber, and that's not even my taste in politics. But I read. Quite a bit, actually. I hate watching these magazines go under.
GroveDiesel
Footballguy
I actually like something physical as well and enjoy more long form stuff. But the reality is that magazines made a substantial amount of their money from advertising and advertisers found that their dollar went a lot further and online than in print. Combine that with most people preferring “free” immediate content online versus paying for content that isn’t as “up to date” and magazines just can’t compete.
It’s sad. The excitement of getting that week’s SI, seeing the covers, diving into the news, getting the inside scoops, etc was awesome.
It will be interesting if some niche markets can be created again though. Vinyl is big right now because a lot of people have realized that they love having the artwork, the lyrics on the sleeves, and just something physical to connect them to the music.
There’s probably an interesting bigger discussion just around the fact that as a society we’ve clearly decided that what we want is more stuff in general even if it’s lower quality, rather than having less stuff in general but if higher quality. People would rather pay $18 a month for a ton of streaming content at lower video and audio quality on Netflix than pay $20 for a 4k UHD Blu-ray disc with a better quality picture and sound. They’d rather pay $10 a month to Spotify for crappy compressed audio of a billion songs than $15 for an uncompressed disc that’s a single album. Etc etc. I get why people have made that choice and have largely made the same choices, but it still saddens me that the vast majority of people choose “good enough” most of the time and the demand and accessibility of truly great art ever decreases.
Or maybe I have it all wrong and more art is more accessible than ever before. I just see things like how crappy Amazon has become to use and how dominated it is by cheap crap with fake reviews and it frustrates me that that seems to be where we’re headed in general.
IvanKaramazov
Footballguy
I still get Reason magazine printed on actual paper. I signed up for automatic renewal probably 20 years ago, and I kind of like having a paper magazine laying around. I don't read The Atlantic as much as I should, but my sense is that it's still very good.
The one I can't get over is The New Republic. It didn't align with my politics of course, but it was sort of a crown jewel of political journalism that any educated person could enjoy. It got sold a couple of decades ago, became Newsweek, and now apparently still survives in some weird husk form. I understand that the internet was destined to kill off magazines, and that's okay. It does make me nostalgic for the olden days though.
rockaction
Footballguy
These aren't mutually exclusive. I think your inkling about more art being accessible than ever before is correct. I also think your suspicion that we're being somewhat dominated by cheap crap and fake reviews is also correct.
If you talk to any American homeowner, you'll hear them decry how bad appliances are. You used to buy a refrigerator that would last twenty to thirty years. Now you're lucky if you get ten out of one. It's really sad. I don't know when or why it happened, but it seems to be the case that the stuff we're making and consuming is of a cheaper quality in general.
Now, we have extraordinary purchasing power to go about it this way, but the actual quality of the purchases has gone down. Unless you're talking computers or phones. Then, of course, all bets are off. They have folding phones with serious gaming screens now. It's unbelievable.
Now to magazines. The New Republic is a travesty. What used to be a beacon of democratic thought is really just a shell of itself. I used to subscribe, believe it or not, and I was stunned when they let go of staff and it began to look like the newspapers of today look—sparse, uninspired, and with articles that didn't provoke any thought but were a reflexive progressivism that the online culture had influenced, rather than the other way around.
But I'm not sure the internet was destined to kill the magazines off. I think it was people's preference in what they consumed that killed the magazines. People don't really want to be challenged in what they read. I'm sure there are houses now with nary a dictionary to speak of (and the internet doesn't get used for that purpose, either). It's a lack of intellectual curiosity, I think. Getting back to what Grove wrote, the internet is akin to music format. It can broadcast myriad things. It can certainly handle long-form journalism. I mean, what better place to put it to be seen, right? It's that people aren't choosing to read those types of articles. And nobody is paying for it. So it's not the internet as a conduit, really. It's what we're choosing.
And off of the soapbox and into the fire. I learned that Pitchfork is dying, too. So even the online publications are closing up shop. Pitchfork will be run by the people running Gentleman's Quarterly, a magazine whose existence surprises me greatly. I learned this when I had to sign up to read an article, something I'd never done before with them. Then I found out they were basically unprofitable and dying, like so many others.
Sad days.
Pip's Invitation
Footballguy
The difference between vinyl being revived and magazines not is that listening to music is an experience and reading articles is about getting information. There’s no “experience” to revive with magazines. On the other hand, physical books, especially fiction, do survive, because there is some sort of experience component with them. You are reading them for reasons beyond gathering information.
dickey moe
Fingerpicker
Save your books.
IvanKaramazov
Footballguy
For me, The New Republic was like having a book of essays delivered every two weeks. There was a little bit of news, but mostly it was analysis, long-form argumentation, tons of cultural criticism, etc. It wasn't just acquiring information.
(I get your point -- just explaining the motivation of this particular reader).
Ramsay Hunt Experience
Footballguy
There was definitely an experience with receiving SI. Web images don't pop like glossy magazine photos do. When you combined that with the quality of the articles from SI's golden era,, it was a unique experience for any budding sports fan. For me, it was often about reading about sports that I knew, but not on the level of the big leagues. Tennis. Boxing. Even horse racing or IndyCar. SI had great writers on those sports who did great features.
The New Yorker, which really hasn't changed that much, was another magazine I used to feel was kind of an experience. Some news. Some fiction. Some cultural criticism. At the very least a few cartoons that would make me chuckle. All delivered in a format that is kind of hard to replicate online.
You just don't read a web publication "cover to cover" the way I used to read SI or The New Yorker.
The New Yorker, which really hasn't changed that much, was another magazine I used to feel was kind of an experience. Some news. Some fiction. Some cultural criticism. At the very least a few cartoons that would make me chuckle. All delivered in a format that is kind of hard to replicate online.
You just don't read a web publication "cover to cover" the way I used to read SI or The New Yorker.
IvanKaramazov
Footballguy
"I wish I was taller?"
Leroy Hoard
Footballguy
Ziggy always delivered.
johnnycakes
Footballguy
I'd rather read one of Mike Barnicle's plagarized columns.
Capella
Footballguy
I wish somebody like Bezos or one of those insane billionaires would buy SI and return it to prominence. Full weekly magazine with glossy photos, long form articles and great recaps of events as they happen. I’d pay like 25-30 a month for that to land in my mailbox weekly. What a damn shame.
titusbramble
Footballguy
Used to be able to get copies of this over in the UK back in the day when print media was still a relevant thing and when we still had a great sports bookshop in town. Was a good read then. Now, they chose poorly on numerous things and are paying the consequences
