There are quite a few wars out there in the world. Take for example Ukraine: there are millions of people there enduring untold harship, from frontline combat to gathering and knitting together under a heated tent in winter, to avoid freezing alone in their appartment when the electric grid is bombed. I'm pretty sure some of those people will write masterpieces when the war is over. History will not stop and writting will not disapear.
Someone who lives in Ukraine here (currently not there): there's already a whole sub genre of books by our veterans or acting service people as well as civilian writers about their experieces of war, occupation, blackouts etc. It can be hard to read, but it's really important. I wish we didn't have this... source of inspiration, but I get your bigger point. Not everyone lives in the first world and I guess not everyone there is glued to their phones, either. We took a huge hit in terms of human interactions, but we still have a lot to work with. Granted, if we all don't die in a nuclear war, than the issue kinda resolves itself.
@@justwonder1404 Tangent, but are you planning to go back after the war? I made some online friends there last year doing some fundraising, and am considering moving there after the war, since I can do what I do from anywhere in the world with good internet. I think there's going to be quite the post-war cultural boom.
@@justwonder1404 I'm looking forward to read them when they are translated or if I manage to learn Ukrainian some day. My brother works in Ukraine and speaks the langage, he can help me select them! All my support and respect for your people.
@@mythiclore5508 I'm hoping to go back before the winter ends, only moved out cause my family members don't take the nightly shahed attacks very well. This will probably be a problem for as long as Russia has any capacity to do it, but I still have hope to spend a big chunk of the rest of my life in Ukraine. Re-garding your assumption: after 2014, there was a considerable surge in Ukrainian literature and book printing (also movies, probably, but I'm not too focused on them), and even now the book fests taking place in Kyiv seem very popular. God willing, the war will end in a way that will allow for Ukrainian culture to flourish more. As for internet, it's generally pretty good in Kyiv to my knowledge :)
the thing I've noticed from people overly relying on social media for interaction is the growing inability to consider more than one viewpoint in a situation, to look outside of their own box. flat stories with one dimensional villains and "good/justified no matter what they do" heroes are nothing new, and they still get published fairly often, but it wouldn't surprise me if it becomes the bulk of modern fiction from a generation trained to think in that specific way.
Have you read any Pulp fiction from the 1900s-1960s? 1800s penny dreadfulls or dime novels? Cheap simple stories have always been a thing, people thought literacy was permamently ending when the tabloid overtook the broadsheet too
I’m sorry but your username is an innuendo and your avatar is a giant tiddy anime girl. I cannot take you seriously standing up on that self-righteous soap box like you’re not also terminally online.
I agree with this. I am a very isolated person myself, so much that the reminder of it terrified me for a moment. I thought I had no real world experience with the themes in my story and I panicked! It's just one of those days where you periodically forget the root of your motivation for writing your story. Though, I think it would be great to join in-person writing workshops. I am planning to, but this really prioritized it.
There is a saying in my language (vulgar) which says something like: "You shouldn't care and you will get." Meaning is that when you are chill then fate will help you win. Its quite similar to other saying "When you are in a hurry then devil is happy." So... You should learn to stop worrying and love the life. Love the happiness and misery that comes with life.
@@theq6797 Ah are you referring to the idea that if you stop looking for something, it will find you? I agree! I am not in the greatest position to go ballistic and try to absorb every hint of in-person communication I can. I do think there are times where you should chill; there is strength in isolation as well. It is definitely a balance. I think I locked in a little too hard after watching this, so thank you for your gentle reminder.
Consider volunteering. It would help your community and be a far better use of your time than joining a writers group which is often a collection of the blind leading the blind or egos contending for supremacy. There are so many opportunities, several worthy causes, and a hugh need for people who have the time, expertise, willingness. Or you can simply be looking to experience something new. You help yourself most by helping others. Your needs are fulfilled when you fulfill the needs of another.
@@graphicdiviner1497 Haha, yes I agree that volunteering is good. I've done it before. However, I wanted a writers group to meet alike people and to make connections within this specific passion. You can find a similar song within volunteering as well, so I wouldnt weigh one over the other, they both have their highs and lows in a general sense. Altruism can show itself in many ways.
No. Writers will continue to exist and be paid. They will bear witness to the horrors resulting from the actions of those who no longer consider themselves to be human.
Decades ago, I read criticism of then-current television and science fiction writing that stated, in general terms, the writers of the 50s and 60s were World War II veterans, or former police officers, or in some way people who had real and hard lives... A few generations later, most writers were coddled children whose parents had paid for them to take creative writing courses for an MBA and now through nepotism were writing TV shows that reflected nothing they learned in life, but what they had learned from watching television. As you point out, that's devolved further and is now worse as most wannabe writers have only experienced screens. (Insert gif of Grandpa Simpson yelling at clouds)
That's interesting. I first had that thought when I watched an episode of the BattleStar Galactica reboot. That instead of acting like seasoned veterans or people who even had any experience bonding through hardship and observing a chain of command, they were arguing like children. It occurred to me again when I watched the first couple of episodes of Star Trek: Discovery. That the actual warfare/battle tactics and combat doctrine were gone, and in its place, we had people squabbling like they were doing improv for college undergrad. I hate it. I'm an elder millenial but I am really disappointed that will never see anything like M*A*S*H or 90s Star Trek again.
It doesn't really have to do with experiencing hard lives or not, there were great authors before major wars, or ones that never participated in them; I also read authors that traveled all over the world and experienced all kinds of cultures and still made AWFUL books (Starters by Lissa Price is an example of a ultra generic YA novel from a writer that traveled many places). The problem is simply that writing 'dilutes' over time. Tolkien learnt from Beowulf, Norse/Celtic Mythology, from the Bible itself, was inspired by Lord Dunsany (who was also inspired by similar stuff); authors that came after him were inspired by Tolkien only and wanted to mimick him without understanding his inspirations; even newer authors learnt from all the mistakes those authors made, but they are still only learning from already simplified ideas (of Tolkien's ALSO simplified ideas of pre-existing mythologies). You can always research what you don't know about, there's great examples of authors like that (Susanna Clarke, for example, a modern author who obviously never fought any war, yet her writing has a lot of nuance and makes you feel like she actually lived during the era she talks about in her books). If you read modern fantasy you'll see what I mean, new fantasy is very 'precise', everything has an explanation (even magic), everything falls perfectly into place, and the books are overall entertaining, but there's nothing deep about them, themes are barely explored more than on a surface level that made you say "oh yeah, this book's theme is x, I guess", prose doesn't seem to matter that much nowadays, dialogue is just functional and nothing more. Literature was considered an artform because it made you think, it made you see complex matters in different ways, it challenged you. Nowadays books are simply entertaining, and there's nothing wrong with that, but they are hardly 'literature' anymore, they are just stories told in book format.
I never cease to be amazed at the great pen and ink authors of the past: without Word editing, they must have edited in their minds. I’m old: the pre- tv generation and grew up with a rich interior world, but I can’t begin to approach the fringes of word artistry of Shakespeare Wyatt and John Donne
They edited on paper. You can find their old manuscripts and see all the edits, changes, and revisions made with various drafts. There were also plenty of typos. Writing hasn’t really changed that much, as someone who both types and hand writes.
I personally think it's easier not to keep editing over words when writing by hand. You can just get that draft done and dusted. Problem is wasting ink and paper on something that will likely get trashed or thrown in a box never to see the light of day until your best friend publishes it for the world to see your cringe 😂
Literature was dead before the advent of AI. I point the finger at the incestuous literary awards and publishing industry in the west. They have killed the creativity by collapsing the field of writing through jury process and monopoly.
Have you read any Pulp fiction from the 1900s-1960s? 1800s penny dreadfulls or dime novels? Cheap simple stories have always been a thing, people thought literacy was permamently ending when the tabloid overtook the broadsheet too. We're probably just in another printing boom type period, honestly the idea that modern stories are uniquely unreal and derivative reads both like Ancient Greek philosophers complaining about the youth these days, and like 1950s lit professors complaining that the novel is dead and no one reads anymore
The subject of this video is pretty relevant to the novel I wrote. The protagonist is an ex-corpo slave whose task in his company was to watch surveillance monitors and the shadows playing on them. Like plato's cave and the internet, but worse. The ravages of that kind of life nearly decimated his humanity and drove him to run into the desert and seek death. It's not the main theme of the story, but it's pretty important. Because I grew up on the internet and I saw what it did to people. It wasn't by choice for me (I wasn't allowed to go outside, and no one interacted with me, neither at school or at home) but man. I spent nearly 20 years of my life on the internet. I'm lucky I'm among the few who used online roleplaying as a simulation with the intent to one day enter the real world, but it wounds me to watch these young people (and an increasing amount of older people) fall for the shadows playing on their monitor. I dread the day the algorithms become so good at personalizing digital reality that every individual will be trapped in his own custom echo chamber, and shared reality becomes a thing of the past. I'm trying so hard to live an analog life. But there's almost no one still here on planet earth. At least here in the West. Maybe I will have to move to a developing country where the phantoms of digital life have yet to possess the people.
I think another good argument to be had here is that the newer generation has such a low attention span that they can barely stand to read at all. It's like they need to hear or see something to bother paying attention. Also the rise in kids who can't read by the time they hit middle school. One other one that I'm surprised has destroyed writing in general a couple decades ago is that you barely get paid ANYTHING for months if not YEARS of work. It's like everyone else gets paid for your work and you get next to none of the pay for what keeps publishers and other in a job at all. If they didn't have us then they wouldn't have a job at all, but we get paid the least.... With how many hours a person has to work to stay alive and how many of us work from paycheck to paycheck. I can't imagine that people are able to write enough to really make ends meet. Then if you consider being paid as if you're just volunteering then why bother at that point? Why give everyone else your time and money when you worked so hard on it? It just makes your time, effort, and creativity darn near worthless.
I don't buy it completely but there's a grain of something in what your saying, I live in the north of the UK and in a pretty 'working class' area, there are kids outside all the time, many doing petty crime, shoplifting, dealing soft drugs, or doing risky things on their bikes, pulling long wheelies in the busy road, climbing the scaffolding in the town centre, throwing fireworks at each other....
I will never stop reading, no matter what, nor will I ever stop writing. I have been writing since I was 11 and that was a very long time ago. But you are right about isolation, etc. I can't say this was what I needed today considering I live in the US and am experiencing extreme electoral anxiety with no choice but to hold my own hand through it in hopes I'll still be sane on election day when I next see my therapist, which is either a simple coincidence or a godsend, I'm not sure which. I write because (and here I'll paraphrase RFK, the OG Bobby, not his son) some people see things as they are and say why, but I dream of things that never were and ask why not?
People read a lot more nowadays than before (memes, reddit, social media posts, etc), but they seem to pay absolutely no attention to what they are reading. A few months ago I did an exam for the Judicial Power of my country, it was divided in two parts, the first being a grammar test that was meant to filter a lot of people, I thought it would be hard as hell considering it was allegedly meant to eliminate a lot of aspirants, but when I did it, it turned out to be stupidly easy. Yet, out of 12 thousand people who signed up only 30% approved, and all of us who did are all in our thirties and onwards.
One issue that does make it easier for AI to take over: In the last few years, writing has become ever more technical. The number of supposed writing rules has increased. The Hero's Journey archetype has been overused to the point everyone is a chosen one. There is no Talk about the art of it, just formulas for stuff to sell. And because success is increasingly defined by Sales, it "works". Just look at movies to See where this ends: So many movies follow the same ever-repeating pattern and have nothing to actually say because why something is being written has never been a consideration in service of the mythical escapism - and money, of course. I mean look at Avatar 2, the Jurassic World trilogy, Star Wars sequels, the current Phase of Marvel; barely anything there is even attempting to have a reason to exist. These are written by humans but they no longer feel like it.
__ Good point, Carl. It's good to be reminded of this lack of socializing in light of the threat of AI. A parallel danger that could prove to be at least as bad as AI. And you're right--the solution isn't some degraded politician or more laws. With hundreds of thousands of laws, the last thing we need is more. The solution is humans getting more human. For my part, I've never owned a phone in this century, and I'm an extrovert, so the trick isn't to get me talking but to shut me up.
I'm blessed to be part of an ONLINE writing group, through ONLINE writing classes and workshops I take, and while some of us are oldies and have a lot of "pre-internet" life experience, the young-uns are writing good stuff, too. Our writing group is a community, we're a little family, we care about each other and our non-writing lives, too. There is a way to do this that works, and this online university has figured it out. I'm never impressed with gloom and doom scenarios. Life is nuanced. Every generation has thought the younger generations are going to hell in a handbasket and that the world will end because they're not like us. Bullshit. All that happens in this kind of scenario is that the good writers will stand out and the bad ones will winnow out. The same truth has been around as long as there has been writing. Frankly, I'd be grateful to have fewer novels being dumped into the publication stream, because there's just too much these days, and that makes it harder for the good writers to be seen. Of course it's valuable to live your life and make in-person connections and not just stay isolated, if you can. Of course that will enable rich writing. But this apocalyptic view of "those young folks" is ridiculous.
@0:14 And it seems all of that was true, to some extent. At the very least, the rise of TV coincides with the fall of pulp magazines. And the rise of the internet coincides with the fall of regular magazines.
I hear you… But maybe this will bring about new, unexplored so far aspects of the human condition? We were used to being top of the chain, connected with others. AI has already learned from that and it can recycle this endlessly. What it cannot do is explore this new condition.
The biggest issues when it comes to the quality of human central writing is the narrative structure. Interestingly enough, narrative structure talks about the age we are in, and while I LOVE this video, I think one thing that is missing is that both the quality of life and story is not the advent of technology, but new conflict that reflects the age we are in. This means writers will still be fine if they stay true the conflicts and connections in life.
I'm a young writer, from a very new generation. I always hated my generation in the first place, and watching this makes me even more sad. I was born in the wrong generation if it was that good back then. You make a great point in this video
Being othered and lonely is one of the experiences many of us writers and artists draw from for various reasons. If the loneliness of this world and the way humans are changing speaks to you, then I’m excited to read your writings one day, as a fellow writer. Know that many others are lonely and isolated too, but don’t always have the words to reflect or hold their misery and their joy. That is the gift that we can and will bring.
Broadly speaking I agree with all this. I knew I would be a writer from when I was five, but I figured out by the time I was twelve that I would be a crap writer if I didn't have anything to write about. So, I learned trades, I became an EMT, I roughed it in Africa and Alaska. And that world still exists, but few of the people who live in it engage with fiction ^at all* anymore, even television, in part because they're too busy but mostly because the narrow caste that produces that stuff consists of people whose experiences are entirely derivative. They're vapid little morality plays written by people who have never faced a real moral dilemma. I'm speaking generally, of course. There are still a few old farts around who remember what it was like to be conscious. The reason a lot of people think AI writing is as good as human writing isn't because it's good, it's because most human writing might as well have been written by AI.
This is a deep subject and I'm sorry, I'm trying to keep up, but I'm admiring that regal picture on the wall behind you and the model in front of you on the desk and I find my mind wandering. I might have to rewatch this one.
Most people in my opinion are reading romance, fantasy, contemporary, self help and philosophy nowadays. Think about booktok, I'm not familiar with it but I know that it exist because people popularizing smut. As for myself, I'm into writing slice of life and stories revolving around the theme of absurdism but I don't have reads mainly because my writing style is not compatible with today's writers.
I think it's because people don't want to be unnerved, and most importantly want to fit into trends, subconsciously want to be part of the flock because they know nothing else. But, let's face it, Hoffmann is still a genius even though Goethe said he needed a psychiatrist, and without him we wouldn't have horror, and thus no German Expressionism and thus no Cinema as we know it. We need art because we need to be disturbed, we need art that challenges morality, that challenges authority, that challenges rationality, sanity, decency and even humanity itself, that makes people come into contact with the strange and unacceptable. I mean, Crime and Punishment follows the story of a man killing two old ladies and then being torn between the fear of being caught and sent to Siberia, the regret for his actions in how they might impact his mother and sister, and even his justification for the murder, which is that great leaders like Alexander the Great, Caesar and Napoleon killed millions and are considered the greatest in history and thus he by killing wanted to see whether he was one of said greats or just a tick Challenge the norm, writers! Be weird! Be creepy! Be strange! If they call you psychos, remember what Goethe told Hoffmann, remember how important Hoffmann is, and then have a laugh
It's funny because I've never been afraid of AI. The more industries depend on AI, the higher the value of human-created fine art gets especially among middle to upper class because they love to own things that are less easily accessible to lower class people. There will never be a sufficiently large threat to artists because there will always be an audience. Commercial art, perhaps... logos, copywriting, that stuff, but not fine art. There is, however, a threat to writing as an art in that if this keeps up, we will run out of writers.
As a teacher, parents NEED to limit screen time. My students are horrified that I read for fun, and write for fun, and it is the systematic stupefying of our society that is truly scary. These kids can't read and they don't like or want to. This is a larger societal and political and parental issue, because schools themselves and teachers themselves cannot be tasked to fix this problem. Many parents are too lazy/permissive or too busy (this is a WHOLE wider issue unto itself) to actually parent, certain political interests have been actively doing all they can to erode and destroy public education for decades, and tech companies have built machines that children have in their hands ALL DAY with the same addictive dopamine reactions that we find with the use of hard drugs. You're not wrong in your approach, but we also do really need to look at these wider issues and do more to actively fix them. Read at your libraries. Make sure your kids have books. TAKE AWAY THEIR CELL PHONES. My kiddos that read are leagues and leagues ahead of my students that don't--they're more mature, pleasant, kind, capable, polite, decent and they actually want to learn. I wish I had more of them.
Most kids always struggled to read. Students that would read decently in primary school were a minority and ones that were good readers were, like, 20%.
@fuzonzord9301 I understand that, reading is not something human brains were really designed to do. It's the hatred and dismissal and not even engaging with the stories when read aloud that is truly so sad. The things in my comments also affect general attitudes toward education as a whole, which is not as valued and esteemed as it should be as the ladder of social and economic mobility that it is. Just because it is a struggle doesn't mean it is not valuable and doesn't mean there aren't supports to make it more accessible.
So, if human interaction is going down and there are bigger relationships made with electronic devices, wouldn't it mean that people that live this way will resonate with others that live this way? So, wouldn't their stories become a popular style amongst their own? It's like those mindless t.v. shows that many find captivating. There's always going to be an audience for stories no matter how little experience the author has had in life.
This is why we are getting crappy romance novels like Fourth Wing and other Twilight knock-offs. Women who never experienced a toxic relationship think it is hot, but it damaging people.
this must be true more for America than for other countries. i think it is highly bloated to think that increased screen time is infringing upon our reading and interacting time. everything will get better, and even if writers disappear, another bunch will grow up.
There will always be storytellerz, for some it doesnt matter what they lived through, becouse they can mimic the emotion by playing a senario in their heads. Ww are living in the golden age for authours, there is 0 problomes getting youre book published, and there is cross countury communication with agients and editors.
Thanks Carl. I always tell people my past is written like a story, and the unworldly experience I have gotten puts me tiers different from most people. Was groomed for most my childhood Was trafficked most of my teenhood Was arrested for a failed school shooting when I was 14 Locked in psyche wards from age 13 Had a marijuana sales monopoly over all the highschools in my city by age 16 Blah blah blah blah blah Escaped a 15 year prison sentence Can I write my novel yet? I dont want to trauma anyway. 😭 No but seriously, The Ancient Wold 24-book multi-series is a generational story. Its the Millennial generations book series. All generations have theirs. Caaaazzzzz I gaaawwwtttt experience on experience ooonnnnnn experience aaaaaawwwwnnnnnn experience. And I dont wanna do anything else in life-except write books. 📕 I say this cautiously. But the reason most authors are annual book authors is cause they dont have enough trauma or life suffering to be a generational writer. You have generational writers that companies bank on, then you have annual authors that… the companies need to survive the often 5-20 year break inbetween generational writers. You need to have exp brutal raw pain to be a magnificent writer. Wilde, Hemmingway, Tolkien, JK Rowling. All the legends went to through absolute hell from war to homelessness to mental disorders and true suffering-thats how you write unignorable titles.
There are quite a few wars out there in the world. Take for example Ukraine: there are millions of people there enduring untold harship, from frontline combat to gathering and knitting together under a heated tent in winter, to avoid freezing alone in their appartment when the electric grid is bombed. I'm pretty sure some of those people will write masterpieces when the war is over. History will not stop and writting will not disapear.
Slava Ukraini
Someone who lives in Ukraine here (currently not there): there's already a whole sub genre of books by our veterans or acting service people as well as civilian writers about their experieces of war, occupation, blackouts etc. It can be hard to read, but it's really important. I wish we didn't have this... source of inspiration, but I get your bigger point. Not everyone lives in the first world and I guess not everyone there is glued to their phones, either. We took a huge hit in terms of human interactions, but we still have a lot to work with. Granted, if we all don't die in a nuclear war, than the issue kinda resolves itself.
@@justwonder1404 Tangent, but are you planning to go back after the war? I made some online friends there last year doing some fundraising, and am considering moving there after the war, since I can do what I do from anywhere in the world with good internet. I think there's going to be quite the post-war cultural boom.
@@justwonder1404 I'm looking forward to read them when they are translated or if I manage to learn Ukrainian some day. My brother works in Ukraine and speaks the langage, he can help me select them! All my support and respect for your people.
@@mythiclore5508 I'm hoping to go back before the winter ends, only moved out cause my family members don't take the nightly shahed attacks very well. This will probably be a problem for as long as Russia has any capacity to do it, but I still have hope to spend a big chunk of the rest of my life in Ukraine. Re-garding your assumption: after 2014, there was a considerable surge in Ukrainian literature and book printing (also movies, probably, but I'm not too focused on them), and even now the book fests taking place in Kyiv seem very popular. God willing, the war will end in a way that will allow for Ukrainian culture to flourish more. As for internet, it's generally pretty good in Kyiv to my knowledge :)
the thing I've noticed from people overly relying on social media for interaction is the growing inability to consider more than one viewpoint in a situation, to look outside of their own box. flat stories with one dimensional villains and "good/justified no matter what they do" heroes are nothing new, and they still get published fairly often, but it wouldn't surprise me if it becomes the bulk of modern fiction from a generation trained to think in that specific way.
Yea, media literacy is truly declining.
Have you read any Pulp fiction from the 1900s-1960s?
1800s penny dreadfulls or dime novels?
Cheap simple stories have always been a thing, people thought literacy was permamently ending when the tabloid overtook the broadsheet too
I’m sorry but your username is an innuendo and your avatar is a giant tiddy anime girl. I cannot take you seriously standing up on that self-righteous soap box like you’re not also terminally online.
I agree with this. I am a very isolated person myself, so much that the reminder of it terrified me for a moment. I thought I had no real world experience with the themes in my story and I panicked! It's just one of those days where you periodically forget the root of your motivation for writing your story.
Though, I think it would be great to join in-person writing workshops. I am planning to, but this really prioritized it.
There is a saying in my language (vulgar) which says something like: "You shouldn't care and you will get." Meaning is that when you are chill then fate will help you win. Its quite similar to other saying "When you are in a hurry then devil is happy."
So... You should learn to stop worrying and love the life. Love the happiness and misery that comes with life.
@@theq6797 Ah are you referring to the idea that if you stop looking for something, it will find you?
I agree! I am not in the greatest position to go ballistic and try to absorb every hint of in-person communication I can. I do think there are times where you should chill; there is strength in isolation as well. It is definitely a balance. I think I locked in a little too hard after watching this, so thank you for your gentle reminder.
Consider volunteering.
It would help your community and be a far better use of your time than joining a writers group which is often a collection of the blind leading the blind or egos contending for supremacy.
There are so many opportunities, several worthy causes, and a hugh need for people who have the time, expertise, willingness. Or you can simply be looking to experience something new.
You help yourself most by helping others. Your needs are fulfilled when you fulfill the needs of another.
@@graphicdiviner1497 Haha, yes I agree that volunteering is good. I've done it before. However, I wanted a writers group to meet alike people and to make connections within this specific passion. You can find a similar song within volunteering as well, so I wouldnt weigh one over the other, they both have their highs and lows in a general sense. Altruism can show itself in many ways.
There are also Zoom writer's circles. Will Greenway's Spring Valley Writer's Group is one example. They are brutal, but very instructive.
Part of the benefit of being an old (73) fiction writer is that I have tons of life experiences. And yes, I do incorporate them into my writing.
I hear you.
Yeah for us old fogies!
Im the exact opposite! I just lived 14 years in this world 😅
I was skeptical when I clicked on this video, but this is actually an amazing message!
In other words, people will stop being writers because people will stop being human.
No. Writers will continue to exist and be paid. They will bear witness to the horrors resulting from the actions of those who no longer consider themselves to be human.
Decades ago, I read criticism of then-current television and science fiction writing that stated, in general terms, the writers of the 50s and 60s were World War II veterans, or former police officers, or in some way people who had real and hard lives... A few generations later, most writers were coddled children whose parents had paid for them to take creative writing courses for an MBA and now through nepotism were writing TV shows that reflected nothing they learned in life, but what they had learned from watching television.
As you point out, that's devolved further and is now worse as most wannabe writers have only experienced screens.
(Insert gif of Grandpa Simpson yelling at clouds)
That's interesting. I first had that thought when I watched an episode of the BattleStar Galactica reboot. That instead of acting like seasoned veterans or people who even had any experience bonding through hardship and observing a chain of command, they were arguing like children. It occurred to me again when I watched the first couple of episodes of Star Trek: Discovery. That the actual warfare/battle tactics and combat doctrine were gone, and in its place, we had people squabbling like they were doing improv for college undergrad. I hate it. I'm an elder millenial but I am really disappointed that will never see anything like M*A*S*H or 90s Star Trek again.
It doesn't really have to do with experiencing hard lives or not, there were great authors before major wars, or ones that never participated in them; I also read authors that traveled all over the world and experienced all kinds of cultures and still made AWFUL books (Starters by Lissa Price is an example of a ultra generic YA novel from a writer that traveled many places).
The problem is simply that writing 'dilutes' over time. Tolkien learnt from Beowulf, Norse/Celtic Mythology, from the Bible itself, was inspired by Lord Dunsany (who was also inspired by similar stuff); authors that came after him were inspired by Tolkien only and wanted to mimick him without understanding his inspirations; even newer authors learnt from all the mistakes those authors made, but they are still only learning from already simplified ideas (of Tolkien's ALSO simplified ideas of pre-existing mythologies). You can always research what you don't know about, there's great examples of authors like that (Susanna Clarke, for example, a modern author who obviously never fought any war, yet her writing has a lot of nuance and makes you feel like she actually lived during the era she talks about in her books).
If you read modern fantasy you'll see what I mean, new fantasy is very 'precise', everything has an explanation (even magic), everything falls perfectly into place, and the books are overall entertaining, but there's nothing deep about them, themes are barely explored more than on a surface level that made you say "oh yeah, this book's theme is x, I guess", prose doesn't seem to matter that much nowadays, dialogue is just functional and nothing more.
Literature was considered an artform because it made you think, it made you see complex matters in different ways, it challenged you. Nowadays books are simply entertaining, and there's nothing wrong with that, but they are hardly 'literature' anymore, they are just stories told in book format.
I never cease to be amazed at the great pen and ink authors of the past: without Word editing, they must have edited in their minds. I’m old: the pre- tv generation and grew up with a rich interior world, but I can’t begin to approach the fringes of word artistry of Shakespeare Wyatt and John Donne
They edited on paper. You can find their old manuscripts and see all the edits, changes, and revisions made with various drafts. There were also plenty of typos. Writing hasn’t really changed that much, as someone who both types and hand writes.
I personally think it's easier not to keep editing over words when writing by hand. You can just get that draft done and dusted. Problem is wasting ink and paper on something that will likely get trashed or thrown in a box never to see the light of day until your best friend publishes it for the world to see your cringe 😂
Thanks for the solid content; thanks for keeping the cat.
Literature was dead before the advent of AI. I point the finger at the incestuous literary awards and publishing industry in the west. They have killed the creativity by collapsing the field of writing through jury process and monopoly.
Thanks for discussing the larger picture. We could use more of that.
Have you read any Pulp fiction from the 1900s-1960s?
1800s penny dreadfulls or dime novels?
Cheap simple stories have always been a thing, people thought literacy was permamently ending when the tabloid overtook the broadsheet too.
We're probably just in another printing boom type period, honestly the idea that modern stories are uniquely unreal and derivative reads both like Ancient Greek philosophers complaining about the youth these days, and like 1950s lit professors complaining that the novel is dead and no one reads anymore
The subject of this video is pretty relevant to the novel I wrote. The protagonist is an ex-corpo slave whose task in his company was to watch surveillance monitors and the shadows playing on them. Like plato's cave and the internet, but worse. The ravages of that kind of life nearly decimated his humanity and drove him to run into the desert and seek death. It's not the main theme of the story, but it's pretty important. Because I grew up on the internet and I saw what it did to people. It wasn't by choice for me (I wasn't allowed to go outside, and no one interacted with me, neither at school or at home) but man. I spent nearly 20 years of my life on the internet. I'm lucky I'm among the few who used online roleplaying as a simulation with the intent to one day enter the real world, but it wounds me to watch these young people (and an increasing amount of older people) fall for the shadows playing on their monitor. I dread the day the algorithms become so good at personalizing digital reality that every individual will be trapped in his own custom echo chamber, and shared reality becomes a thing of the past.
I'm trying so hard to live an analog life. But there's almost no one still here on planet earth. At least here in the West. Maybe I will have to move to a developing country where the phantoms of digital life have yet to possess the people.
I think another good argument to be had here is that the newer generation has such a low attention span that they can barely stand to read at all. It's like they need to hear or see something to bother paying attention. Also the rise in kids who can't read by the time they hit middle school.
One other one that I'm surprised has destroyed writing in general a couple decades ago is that you barely get paid ANYTHING for months if not YEARS of work. It's like everyone else gets paid for your work and you get next to none of the pay for what keeps publishers and other in a job at all. If they didn't have us then they wouldn't have a job at all, but we get paid the least....
With how many hours a person has to work to stay alive and how many of us work from paycheck to paycheck. I can't imagine that people are able to write enough to really make ends meet. Then if you consider being paid as if you're just volunteering then why bother at that point? Why give everyone else your time and money when you worked so hard on it?
It just makes your time, effort, and creativity darn near worthless.
I don't buy it completely but there's a grain of something in what your saying, I live in the north of the UK and in a pretty 'working class' area, there are kids outside all the time, many doing petty crime, shoplifting, dealing soft drugs, or doing risky things on their bikes, pulling long wheelies in the busy road, climbing the scaffolding in the town centre, throwing fireworks at each other....
Great crime memoirs coming our way in ten years...
I did almost all those things and more and those were glorious days. I wasn't working class though; just a constant truant.
I've never seen a cat less interested in a mouse in my life.
I will never stop reading, no matter what, nor will I ever stop writing. I have been writing since I was 11 and that was a very long time ago. But you are right about isolation, etc. I can't say this was what I needed today considering I live in the US and am experiencing extreme electoral anxiety with no choice but to hold my own hand through it in hopes I'll still be sane on election day when I next see my therapist, which is either a simple coincidence or a godsend, I'm not sure which. I write because (and here I'll paraphrase RFK, the OG Bobby, not his son) some people see things as they are and say why, but I dream of things that never were and ask why not?
People read a lot more nowadays than before (memes, reddit, social media posts, etc), but they seem to pay absolutely no attention to what they are reading. A few months ago I did an exam for the Judicial Power of my country, it was divided in two parts, the first being a grammar test that was meant to filter a lot of people, I thought it would be hard as hell considering it was allegedly meant to eliminate a lot of aspirants, but when I did it, it turned out to be stupidly easy. Yet, out of 12 thousand people who signed up only 30% approved, and all of us who did are all in our thirties and onwards.
One issue that does make it easier for AI to take over: In the last few years, writing has become ever more technical.
The number of supposed writing rules has increased. The Hero's Journey archetype has been overused to the point everyone is a chosen one. There is no Talk about the art of it, just formulas for stuff to sell. And because success is increasingly defined by Sales, it "works". Just look at movies to See where this ends: So many movies follow the same ever-repeating pattern and have nothing to actually say because why something is being written has never been a consideration in service of the mythical escapism - and money, of course.
I mean look at Avatar 2, the Jurassic World trilogy, Star Wars sequels, the current Phase of Marvel; barely anything there is even attempting to have a reason to exist. These are written by humans but they no longer feel like it.
__
Good point, Carl. It's good to be reminded of this lack of socializing in light of the threat of AI. A parallel danger that could prove to be at least as bad as AI. And you're right--the solution isn't some degraded politician or more laws. With hundreds of thousands of laws, the last thing we need is more. The solution is humans getting more human. For my part, I've never owned a phone in this century, and I'm an extrovert, so the trick isn't to get me talking but to shut me up.
I'm blessed to be part of an ONLINE writing group, through ONLINE writing classes and workshops I take, and while some of us are oldies and have a lot of "pre-internet" life experience, the young-uns are writing good stuff, too. Our writing group is a community, we're a little family, we care about each other and our non-writing lives, too. There is a way to do this that works, and this online university has figured it out.
I'm never impressed with gloom and doom scenarios. Life is nuanced. Every generation has thought the younger generations are going to hell in a handbasket and that the world will end because they're not like us. Bullshit. All that happens in this kind of scenario is that the good writers will stand out and the bad ones will winnow out. The same truth has been around as long as there has been writing. Frankly, I'd be grateful to have fewer novels being dumped into the publication stream, because there's just too much these days, and that makes it harder for the good writers to be seen.
Of course it's valuable to live your life and make in-person connections and not just stay isolated, if you can. Of course that will enable rich writing. But this apocalyptic view of "those young folks" is ridiculous.
@0:14 And it seems all of that was true, to some extent. At the very least, the rise of TV coincides with the fall of pulp magazines. And the rise of the internet coincides with the fall of regular magazines.
I hear you… But maybe this will bring about new, unexplored so far aspects of the human condition?
We were used to being top of the chain, connected with others. AI has already learned from that and it can recycle this endlessly.
What it cannot do is explore this new condition.
Preach 👏🏿
It is also seems that less people are reading and a good percentage of those that do read, they read less each year.
The biggest issues when it comes to the quality of human central writing is the narrative structure. Interestingly enough, narrative structure talks about the age we are in, and while I LOVE this video, I think one thing that is missing is that both the quality of life and story is not the advent of technology, but new conflict that reflects the age we are in. This means writers will still be fine if they stay true the conflicts and connections in life.
We are no longer the knights that say Ni. We are now the knights who say socialize!
I'm a young writer, from a very new generation. I always hated my generation in the first place, and watching this makes me even more sad. I was born in the wrong generation if it was that good back then. You make a great point in this video
Being othered and lonely is one of the experiences many of us writers and artists draw from for various reasons. If the loneliness of this world and the way humans are changing speaks to you, then I’m excited to read your writings one day, as a fellow writer. Know that many others are lonely and isolated too, but don’t always have the words to reflect or hold their misery and their joy. That is the gift that we can and will bring.
2:15 Correction: It would take at least 60 minutes to destroy the entire world. 😐😳😳🥺😦
Broadly speaking I agree with all this.
I knew I would be a writer from when I was five, but I figured out by the time I was twelve that I would be a crap writer if I didn't have anything to write about. So, I learned trades, I became an EMT, I roughed it in Africa and Alaska. And that world still exists, but few of the people who live in it engage with fiction ^at all* anymore, even television, in part because they're too busy but mostly because the narrow caste that produces that stuff consists of people whose experiences are entirely derivative. They're vapid little morality plays written by people who have never faced a real moral dilemma. I'm speaking generally, of course. There are still a few old farts around who remember what it was like to be conscious.
The reason a lot of people think AI writing is as good as human writing isn't because it's good, it's because most human writing might as well have been written by AI.
This is a deep subject and I'm sorry, I'm trying to keep up, but I'm admiring that regal picture on the wall behind you and the model in front of you on the desk and I find my mind wandering. I might have to rewatch this one.
I disagree with you.
Human experience is transforming and creative writing will transform with it. It's not going to disappear
Thats why the older gen has to keep writing
that won't solve the problem though, the older generation won't be around too much longer, children are the future
@CanyonF true, I'm 39 right now I just look at it as I need to do my part ❤️
Excellent
Most people in my opinion are reading romance, fantasy, contemporary, self help and philosophy nowadays. Think about booktok, I'm not familiar with it but I know that it exist because people popularizing smut.
As for myself, I'm into writing slice of life and stories revolving around the theme of absurdism but I don't have reads mainly because my writing style is not compatible with today's writers.
I think it's because people don't want to be unnerved, and most importantly want to fit into trends, subconsciously want to be part of the flock because they know nothing else. But, let's face it, Hoffmann is still a genius even though Goethe said he needed a psychiatrist, and without him we wouldn't have horror, and thus no German Expressionism and thus no Cinema as we know it. We need art because we need to be disturbed, we need art that challenges morality, that challenges authority, that challenges rationality, sanity, decency and even humanity itself, that makes people come into contact with the strange and unacceptable.
I mean, Crime and Punishment follows the story of a man killing two old ladies and then being torn between the fear of being caught and sent to Siberia, the regret for his actions in how they might impact his mother and sister, and even his justification for the murder, which is that great leaders like Alexander the Great, Caesar and Napoleon killed millions and are considered the greatest in history and thus he by killing wanted to see whether he was one of said greats or just a tick
Challenge the norm, writers! Be weird! Be creepy! Be strange! If they call you psychos, remember what Goethe told Hoffmann, remember how important Hoffmann is, and then have a laugh
Lots of food for thought.
It's funny because I've never been afraid of AI. The more industries depend on AI, the higher the value of human-created fine art gets especially among middle to upper class because they love to own things that are less easily accessible to lower class people.
There will never be a sufficiently large threat to artists because there will always be an audience. Commercial art, perhaps... logos, copywriting, that stuff, but not fine art.
There is, however, a threat to writing as an art in that if this keeps up, we will run out of writers.
My mind works exactly like an AI anyway, so my writing resembles what an AI would produce
As a teacher, parents NEED to limit screen time. My students are horrified that I read for fun, and write for fun, and it is the systematic stupefying of our society that is truly scary. These kids can't read and they don't like or want to. This is a larger societal and political and parental issue, because schools themselves and teachers themselves cannot be tasked to fix this problem.
Many parents are too lazy/permissive or too busy (this is a WHOLE wider issue unto itself) to actually parent, certain political interests have been actively doing all they can to erode and destroy public education for decades, and tech companies have built machines that children have in their hands ALL DAY with the same addictive dopamine reactions that we find with the use of hard drugs.
You're not wrong in your approach, but we also do really need to look at these wider issues and do more to actively fix them. Read at your libraries. Make sure your kids have books. TAKE AWAY THEIR CELL PHONES. My kiddos that read are leagues and leagues ahead of my students that don't--they're more mature, pleasant, kind, capable, polite, decent and they actually want to learn. I wish I had more of them.
Most kids always struggled to read. Students that would read decently in primary school were a minority and ones that were good readers were, like, 20%.
@fuzonzord9301 I understand that, reading is not something human brains were really designed to do. It's the hatred and dismissal and not even engaging with the stories when read aloud that is truly so sad. The things in my comments also affect general attitudes toward education as a whole, which is not as valued and esteemed as it should be as the ladder of social and economic mobility that it is. Just because it is a struggle doesn't mean it is not valuable and doesn't mean there aren't supports to make it more accessible.
So, if human interaction is going down and there are bigger relationships made with electronic devices, wouldn't it mean that people that live this way will resonate with others that live this way? So, wouldn't their stories become a popular style amongst their own? It's like those mindless t.v. shows that many find captivating. There's always going to be an audience for stories no matter how little experience the author has had in life.
Yep. AI is just a reflection of the contemporary isolation and dehumanization of experience.
Ah Mr Duncan, this is why God invented alcoholism, I promise come the day alcohol will intervene and save us all!
Thanks adult human being for being adult.
Kids thinks that they know stuff, because they saw it on internet. No experience, no life.
This is why we are getting crappy romance novels like Fourth Wing and other Twilight knock-offs. Women who never experienced a toxic relationship think it is hot, but it damaging people.
this must be true more for America than for other countries. i think it is highly bloated to think that increased screen time is infringing upon our reading and interacting time. everything will get better, and even if writers disappear, another bunch will grow up.
Touché !
I don't think doesn't need to experience things to understand them, if it can study enough information then it can write a conpelling story
I am a writer exactly to avoid talking with people!
There will always be storytellerz, for some it doesnt matter what they lived through, becouse they can mimic the emotion by playing a senario in their heads.
Ww are living in the golden age for authours, there is 0 problomes getting youre book published, and there is cross countury communication with agients and editors.
Thanks Carl. I always tell people my past is written like a story, and the unworldly experience I have gotten puts me tiers different from most people.
Was groomed for most my childhood
Was trafficked most of my teenhood
Was arrested for a failed school shooting when I was 14
Locked in psyche wards from age 13
Had a marijuana sales monopoly over all the highschools in my city by age 16
Blah blah blah blah blah
Escaped a 15 year prison sentence
Can I write my novel yet? I dont want to trauma anyway. 😭
No but seriously, The Ancient Wold 24-book multi-series is a generational story. Its the Millennial generations book series. All generations have theirs.
Caaaazzzzz I gaaawwwtttt experience on experience ooonnnnnn experience aaaaaawwwwnnnnnn experience. And I dont wanna do anything else in life-except write books. 📕
I say this cautiously. But the reason most authors are annual book authors is cause they dont have enough trauma or life suffering to be a generational writer. You have generational writers that companies bank on, then you have annual authors that… the companies need to survive the often 5-20 year break inbetween generational writers.
You need to have exp brutal raw pain to be a magnificent writer. Wilde, Hemmingway, Tolkien, JK Rowling. All the legends went to through absolute hell from war to homelessness to mental disorders and true suffering-thats how you write unignorable titles.