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Computer History by Balenciaga

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48 pointsjanpaul12326 comments

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The two videos that started the meme:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE39q-IKOzA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipuqLy87-3A

> Master has presented Dobby with Balenciaga. Dobby is... free.

These videos I feel were the first to really give a glimpse into the weird and surreal future we're heading into.

The whole Balenciaga shtick felt like a metaphor for the rising tide of machine-generated content— and I tried to weave this narrative through the quotes of this computer history version, "the balenciaga revolution is far more important..." yada yada, while ostensibly about the history of computing, it is moreso intended to let us ponder its future.

> The whole Balenciaga shtick felt like a metaphor for the rising tide of machine-generated content (..)

To me it just looks like plain old guerilla marketing devised to force a specific brand under the pretext of "AI".

I mean, fair. My first impression of the harry potter one was that it was some high-budget ad, but it's just some guy making weird mashups and exploring what's possible with AI. The balenciaga one just stuck because it was a perfect collision of familiar (harry potter) and uncanny (luxury fashion).

It might be the cynic in me talking, but I doubt this wave of Balenciaga ads is just the outcome of a random guy overusing a set of parameters. It would be trivial to find any other theme to exploit, but this is too focused on a single brand and relentlessly pushing it's name. It's guerilla marketing no matter of where you look at it.

Do you have any proof? Everything about it seems like it's a naturally-occurring meme. Nobody pushed it until it went viral 2 weeks after the original video, and the channel has clear history of many different experiments that didn't go viral.

> Do you have any proof?

You only see a single and very specific brand name being pushed, and pushed relentlessly.

I repeat, this is blatant marketing even if it's a single person effort working pro bono. There is no way around it.

I have also seen Versace and Gucci versions, maybe some others I don't recall. I think they chose Balenciaga because the name itself feels kind of unusual and it fits the wizarding theme.

That being said, if it's an actual marketing campaign, then it's been quite successful at least in my case, as I never even knew Balenciaga existed before seeing these vids... Then I took a look at what they actually sell and promptly concluded I would never buy from them, even if I had the money lol.

https://www.balenciaga.com/en-us/trash-bag-large-pouch--whit...

There‘s no marketing conspiracy behind this. The Balenciaga meme is an homage to a quote from the first scene in the movie „Triangle of Sadness“. This scene contrasts H&M‘s commercial appeal with Balenciaga‘s contempt for the consumer. The meme even paraphrase the dialog from the movie.

It's not a single person working relentlessly. It's many different people doing one or two joke videos, not that much effort at all.

This seems like "organic" marketing in the sense that an individual is parodying a brand but as a consequence giving the brand lots of exposure. This is no more guerrilla marketing than if a food reviewer gave exposure to McDonalds.

For those interested about the tools used: https://youtu.be/TGD8zKvRxc4 - how to make a "balenciaga" style video.

Honestly this should be the main link. That process is really interesting.

We’re now living in a time where you can generate entire videos without leaving the browser.

Without even leaving the phone:

> "I'm more comfortable doing this on my phone" https://youtu.be/TGD8zKvRxc4?t=331

was kind of blown away by that thought, having had the pleasure of using Premiere-type suites on a desktop computer just to edit a simple timelapse

Here's a YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Xj_IOl-GcY

In the debate of "can generative AI make Art", this is Art, but the artist is the person steering the AI tools to create this.

Love it.

I wonder if you could make an AI that could generate likely meme ideas and then remove people from the equation completely. Seems pretty doable, if not already possible.

The problem is that memes, at least the ones that really take off, work because they are creative and funny, and so far that is probably the area AIs like GPT4 struggle the most with. It makes sense when you think about it, a technology that is built around the idea of predicting likely continuations will struggle with learning what is 'likely' in a context that asks for an element of surprise.

I.e., you'd probably need a pretty deep model if you want it to be able to understand that 'okay usually I combine likely concepts, but _now_ I need to combine unlikely concepts that still make sense together on a lower level'.

GPT4 can definitely write jokes, even today

same as it ever was!

This has all the artistic value of an advice animal template

Tim Dillon's (Comedian) take on Balenciaga:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-VGv0rRrqU

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