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Comment by asmnzxklopqw | Hacker News Reader

What I have seen is that the Internet doesn’t attract interesting people anymore and such, the time they spend creating “content” is drastically reduced compared to, let’s say 20-25 years ago. And by “content” I don’t mean tiktok or youtube shorts, but code, blogs, demos or contributing to larger projects. The dynamic is different now, people are working disconnected and from time to time they might release ready projects that previously were seeing their development cycle happening online. Otherwise, there are many projects that don’t make it on the Internet anymore.

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I get the point you are trying to make but I will push back on one little part. I think lots of people are putting in more time and effort than ever BUT they have become victims of 'Audience capture'. They are out to do what others want rather than what they want, and that is the death bell of a creative person.

It is no big secret, but it is said quietly, that the most popular creators online are generally fairly anxious people as they are always afraid that they could bomb their entire house of cards in a single day.

Use a bit of AI somewhere without thinking too much and now the whole younger generation thinks you're Hitler.

Pretty much. While I get the general vibe against using too much AI, many are over correcting.

I saw a story recently about a school in Kentucky that published student agendas with AI and apparently no human supervision, and it had hallucinated states and elements on the periodic table and the like[0]. This shouldn't happen, even with the most optimistic estimates of AI's capabilities being true, yet there is a cultlike mentality around it that leads people to lose their minds and throw even basic common sense out the window. It's being used to publish garbage scientific papers [1] and rewrite the historical narrative [2]. AI is being used everywhere, with abandon, and seemingly little to no oversight or plan to manage the inevitable consequences of the flood of slop and bullshit that it creates. And then on top of that there is the environmental and economic impact of data centers, the social alienation, deskilling and intellectual rot its use creates, and the fact that the big AI companies all seem to be run by a cult of technofascist psychopaths. And the cherry on the dystopian sundae being that we're told we have no choice, that it's inevitable regardless of the consequences and we just have to adapt to whatever future these psychopaths create for us and whatever role they decide we have in it.

I don't think it's overcorrection so much as a proportional backlash against society losing its mind over this thing.

[0] https://www.fox5vegas.com/2026/08/14/middle-school-student-a...

[1] https://scienceintegritydigest.com/2024/02/15/the-rat-with-t...

[2] https://marinaamaral.substack.com/p/ai-is-creating-fake-hist...

Yeah, we're all aware of these drawbacks. Does it mean I deserve all the hate in the world if I use AI to make graphics for my hobbyist video game? Without AI, I would simply just not make the game, so no graphic designer is losing their income here.

If you're aware of all of the negative externalities of using AI and just don't care as long as you get some mediocre and badly designed graphics for a game you aren't even trying to sell because you refuse to pay someone or take advantage of the universe of free assets out there then yes, I think you deserve some criticism. Hobbyist game development existed before AI and people still managed without the Torment Nexus.

I hope you are as passionately against other harmful things like flying and animal agriculture. Otherwise this is just blind fanaticism, exactly the same phenomenon we were discussing.

I don't think that choosing not using an AI to generate game code and graphics versus using existing tools and talent is "blind fanaticism" but clearly for some reason you consider doing so to be the moral high ground. I don't know why this is a hill you want to die on but I'll leave you to it.

Refusing to show the process is more of a generational culture difference than an indicator of how much effort actually went into the work.

The younger audience is the majority. They want to see effortless cool. They want their hero to be out there "aura farming".

Despite what they may say in words, they don't really want authenticity because it's "cringe". Everything that you consider uplifting, inspirational, community-focused, introspective, etc. comes off as pretentious and corny. They have a more cynical take on life and prefer fake drama and subtle quirkiness. They grew up watching "authentic" people get canceled left and right. You might as well just be a shameless actor then.

They want main characters. They want the whole song and dance. They are far from the first generation to be this way and it goes in cycles. Look at old Hollywood.

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