bdbeady
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Latest Posts by bdbeady
An explainer for why I don't fuck with algorithmic social media
If you give a pigeon a little button to peck that releases pigeon food, it will push the button when it's hungry.
If you give a pigeon a button to peck that releases food every 5 pecks, it will peck it more often.
If you give a pigeon a button to peck that releases food at a randomly selected, always shifting number of pecks, the pigeon will peck that fucking button all day long.
Algorithm based social media is not set up to give you the best most fun stuff all the time, it is set up to give you a bunch of stress and nothingness with a randomized reward of something that actually makes you happy, because they want you pecking that button all damn day. It is a slot machine of content, meant to keep you putting in quarters made of your time and attention till you've nothing left.
At least if I'm having a shit day on my own Tumblr home feed it's because I've made a bad choice about who to follow and I can fix it.
Unpopular opinion but if you don't enjoy the process you should find a different thing to do.
And I think this is true in general but now I'm talking about it in the context of AI.
If you don't enjoy making art and only care about the end piece and how it'll look and how much traction it"lol get online then making art is not something for you, find something you enjoy from start to finish.
Same goes for writing: if you do not enjoy writing and rewriting and then some more and instead want AI to write for you, being a writer is not something you should pursue.
Sure, not every part of creative process is going to be equally enjoyable but you should get satisfaction from solving the problems along the way and you should get a sense of accomplishment on your way of "making the piece yours" and you should have a sense of ownership once you are done.
None of these things will come from typing in a prompt into chatGPT. And I am sad to see so many people are missing on the opportunity to experience the joy of making something with their own hands and brains.
Just give it a try and if you don't like it don't do it again.
But also don't let the expectations of it coming out perfect ruin the fun you are having while making the thing. Because what if I told you this: having fun while creating is the actual purpose of the creative process, not whatever comes out of it.
Jackie Ormes, the first Black American woman cartoonist
When the 14-year-old Black American boy Emmett Till was lynched in 1955, one cartoonist responded in a single-panel comic. It showed one Black girl telling another: “I don’t want to seem touchy on the subject… but that new little white tea-kettle just whistled at me!”
It may not seem radical today, but penning such a political cartoon was a bold and brave statement for its time — especially for the artist who was behind it. This cartoon was drawn by Jackie Ormes, the first syndicated Black American woman cartoonist to be published in a newspaper. Ormes, who grew up in Pittsburgh, got her first break as cartoonist as a teenager. She started working for the Pittsburgh Courier as a sports reporter, then editor, then cartoonist who penned her first comic, Torchy Brown in Dixie to Harlem, in 1937. It followed a Mississippi teen who becomes a famous singer at the famed Harlem jazz club, The Cotton Club.
In 1942, Ormes moved to Chicago, where she drew her most popular cartoon, Patty-Jo ‘n’ Ginger, which followed two sisters who made sharp political commentary on Black American life.
In 1947, Ormes created the Patty-Jo doll, the first Black doll that wasn’t a mammy doll or a Topsy-Turvy doll. In production for a decade, it was a role model for young black girls. "The doll was a fashionable, beautiful character,“ says Daniel Schulman, who curated one of the dolls into a recent Chicago exhibition. "It had an extraordinary presence and power — they’re collected today and have important place in American doll-making in the U.S.”
In 1950, Ormes drew her final strip, Torchy in Heartbeats, which followed an independent, stylish black woman on the quest for love — who commented on racism in the South. “Torchy was adventurous, we never saw that with an Black American female figure,” says Beauchamp-Byrd. “And remember, this is the 1950s." Ormes was the first to portray black women as intellectual and socially-aware in a time when they were depicted in a derogatory way.
One common mistake that erased Ormes from history is mis-crediting Barbara Brandon-Croft as the first nationally syndicated Black American female cartoonist. "I’m just the first mainstream cartoonist, I’m not the first at all,” says Brandon-Croft, who published her cartoons in the Detroit Free Press in the 1990s. “So much of Black history has been ignored, it’s a reminder that Black history shouldn’t just be celebrated in February.”
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