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What Would You Say You Do Around Here?
There is a sentiment that some “light” usages of AI are okay because it simply reduces the friction a bit on content creation. For example, Kelly writes:
But if AI can be helpful for things like blog production. I know, for example, that blog posts with an image are several times more likely to attract someone’s attention than one without an image. I lack time and artistic skill to create my own images, but I can craft a prompt and get a suitable illustration in seconds. This is hard to ignore, and I will continue to avail myself of the AI services that provide image generation from time to time.
On the one hand, I get it. If you perceive a gap and there is a tool available to bridge it, why not?
On the other, much larger, much heavier hand, what do you imagine is going to happen next? Not in a “cog in the agentic death-march” kind of way, but on a much more practical level. You generate an image for a blog post to attract more attention. Supposing that that advice still works here in 2026 – I have my doubts – you get the traffic at the expense of blogs that don’t. So, those other blogs start generating images too. Now… what? The competitive advantage is gone. Who gets the clicks?
“Blogging isn’t a competition though!” Then why do you care about having a generated image at all?
Not trying to single Kelly out, or really any of the specific AI enthusiasts still in my Feeds. You do you. It’s a transformative technology for coding and a few other industries, yada yada yada. I just happen to agree with the general sentiment of Anarchae:
If I asked a question on this site and got a response and went back and forth a bit, I had a pleasant interaction with a human being and feel good about the distro and its community.
If I later find out that person just copy pastes questions into an LLM and then copy pastes back in a response, or is a full on bot-run account, there is a feeling of betrayal. I thought I had a genuine human connection, but it wasn’t, it was just a computer program. Now that sours my opinion of the distro and I probably won’t bother coming back. I was given the equivilant of the Customer Service Chatbot, who would be happy about that?
No one with an internet connection is hurting for content. No doubt you could vibe code a blog tonight that automatically prompts ChatGPT to spit out a randomized topic-of-the-day post every 24 hours. Or six hours. Or 15-minutes. We aren’t here for that. We aren’t here for the AI image that is only vaguely related to the topic at hand and is more meant to be clickbait. We aren’t here for the grammatically perfect, literal textbook outlined prose with the phone emojis for some reason. Every single AI refinement makes you less distinguishable from every other (presumed) person also on the gear.
Be human. Have messy human thoughts with the wet meat between your ears. Who are we trying to impress? None of us are making any money on this and it ain’t because we got some syntax wrong.
Or don’t, I guess.
I Sorta Made a Logo
One “requirement” for Warp Point was to make an 88×31 pixel logo to represent your site. So, I did:
I created it by hand over at PixilArt. I mean, the text was just typed, the background is one color, but I drew the birds myself! All… 11×8 pixels of them.
It’s just now occurring to me that anyone not viewing this blog full-screen from a desktop computer may have no idea why the logo has third birds on a wire. I just checked on my own phone and, yep, you can’t really see any of the background image even if you select “Desktop Mode” in Chrome. Obviously, Feedly or any other RSS program is not going to include that either. For posterity, there’s birds:
For further posterity’s sake, there isn’t anything special about the birds or the image itself. I’m relatively certain it just happened to be one of the hundred rotating desktop backgrounds I found back in my college days, the WordPress theme needed something when I was moving from Blogspot, and I liked how the gray gradient made my text pop. I do like ravens, but not enough to recognize whether those are ravens, which they probably are not. Sort of look like finches, but it would not surprise me if they were something dumb like pigeons. Whatever, birds are about as cool as anything else, so just send it.
Don’t worry, I don’t plan on doing 31 days of stream-of-consciousness posts. Just a few.
Discoverability
I think about the tragedy of discoverability a lot.
Maybe “tragedy” is not the right word, but stick with me for a moment. Think about your absolute favorite song, or movie, or game, or book. Was encountering that now-favorite thing inevitable? For some things, maybe the answer is Yes. If you had a Super Nintendo in the 90s, odds are pretty high that you were aware of Final Fantasy 3 (6) or Super Metroid or other bangers that were pre-internet famous even in their day. Then again, perhaps that was a bias I had from reading gaming magazines like Nintendo Power or Game Pro back then. And, of course, it presupposes you (or your parents) had the cash to purchase it for you.
When looking at my music collection though, almost all of my favorite songs were never in any way inevitable. Fifteen years ago, I was working an extremely boring data entry job that nevertheless allowed us to listen to music. I had the entire internet at my disposal, and yet you don’t know what you don’t know. Where does one listen to music, that isn’t just the same 17 songs on the radio? My solution was these monthly indie rock playlist drops, such as BIRP, where you can download like a hundred separate songs, and then winnow them down to the usually 2-3 that were my style. From there, I would download that musician’s discography and then winnow that down, finding more diamonds in the rough. Rinse and repeat.
If I did not have that job, or did not discover the indie rock playlist – which I honestly have no recollection of where I would have encountered it – then some of my favorite songs would just… not exist, from my perspective. Yes, I would still have had my prior favorite song that I did encounter, so in a way it’s relative. In a more concrete way though, it’s very much not relative because my new favorite had greater depths and more fulfilling pathos than what came before.
My job has changed quite a bit over the years, and I no longer felt it was a good use of my time sorting through a hundred songs of what felt like UK punk rock for a single good song. So, I stopped around 2018, it looks like. How many diamonds have slipped through my fingers in the last eight years? Maybe fewer than I think, given I have leveraged more Youtube algorithms for exposure to new stuff. Then again, just like with AI generally, it’s exceedingly proficient at giving you more of what you like, rather than something totally different that you might like more.
I do not know if there is a solution out there for discoverability, other than just putting yourself out there. The corporate machines of the world are certainly spending billions of dollars in trying to put your eyeballs on their products, but for the average piece of content, it’s likely random happenstance at best. And that’s really too bad.
In unrelated news, I’ve signed up for Blaugust again this year, and threw my hat in over at Warp Point.
Continue Reading
In the spirit of Blaugust, allow me to give an unsolicited opinion: excerpts suck. If I see a post in my Feedly roll that is just a paragraph that ends with Continue Reading… I don’t. That blog gets dropped.
There’s really only two reasons to have excerpts on: you don’t know better, or you do. In the latter case, congrats on being a cog in the giant SEO/clickbait bullshit machine. Be better, if you can.
In case you’re a member of the former category though, for WordPress check Settings > Reading:
Are there legitimate concerns about having your blog content displayed in an RSS aggregator versus readers coming directly to your blog? Maybe. I have no idea if someone reading this post on Feedly will have their View register on my WordPress stats or whatever. I could also see concerns about post formatting if you care about that sort of thing. For example, I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to avoid orphan words in the blog proper. Seriously, check my posts sometimes (engagement!). None of which matters for Feedly readers though, because those line lengths are all over the place.
You might think me arrogant for suggesting that losing my subscription to your blog is a reason to turn off excerpts. I would instead suggest that forcing readers to open a new tab just for you is itself the height of arrogance. Do you yourself open tabs for every blog you follow every day, like it’s 2005? No.
Turn off your excerpts. Thanks for reading.
Oh, yeah… Blaugust!
That’s certainly a thing I signed up for! Probably should have had a post ready to go or something.
As it turns out, I have been playing Abiotic Factor pretty much nonstop since the 1.0 release. It is not often that I manage to find a game that takes over my entire life, although the survival crafting genre is certainly good for that. I’ll have more to say about the game later, as I’m in that enviable state of not wanting to spend time talking about how much fun I’m having when I could be, well, having fun.
In any case, if you’re a Blaugust tourist, welcome! I’ve been blogging since 2010 with close to 1600 posts full of premium quality words. You can either take my word for it, click on The Goods drop-down over to the right there (I recommend Philosophy) to check for yourself, or, well, buckle up, buttercup.
…for tomorrow. Oh, wait, it’s the weekend. Monday, probably!
Blarghest
The last time I officially joined Blaugust was back in 2015. Back then, the conclusion I came to was that it wasn’t really worth the effort: posting every single day for a month did not meaningfully increase page views. I’m not trying to chase page views per se, but you can’t become a fan of something if you don’t know about it. Discoverability is a real issue, especially if you don’t want to juice SEO metrics in suspect ways. So, on a lark, I decided to rejoin Blaugust nine years later (e.g. this year) to at least throw my hat back in the ring and try to expand my (and others’) horizons.
What I’m finding is not particularly encouraging.
More specifically, I was looking at the list of participants. I’m not going to name names, but more than a few of the dozen I’ve browsed thus far appear to be almost nakedly commercial blogs (e.g. affiliate-linked), AI-based news aggregate sites, and similar nonsense. I’m not trying to be the blogging gatekeeper here, but is there no vetting process to keep out the spam? I suppose that may be a bit much when 100+ people/bots sign up, but it also seems deeply counter-productive to the mission statement of:
Posting regularly builds a community and in this era of AI-slop content, our voices are needed even more than we ever have been at any point in the past.
Ahem. The calls are coming from inside the house, my friends.
[Fake Edit] In fairness, after getting through all 76 of the original list, the number of spam blogs did not increase much. Perhaps a non-standard ordering mechanism would have left a better first impression.
Anyway, we’ll have to see how this Blaugust plays out. I have added 10-20 new blogs to my Feedly roll, and am interested to see where they go from here. Their initial stuff was good enough for my curiosity. The real trick though, is who is still posting in September.
Blaugust 2024 – Day 1
I have chosen to participate in Blaugust 2024 this year, despite the fact that I am currently on vacation.
Hello. My name* is Azuriel and I have been blogging for almost 14 years now. In the early days, my blogging was focused on World of Warcraft. In fact, “Azuriel” is the name of my main in WoW. I started Player Vs Auction House for the release of the Cataclysm expansion, and despite that ultra-niche topic, the blog did well enough for itself. Over time though, I started to realize that chasing gold trends was less interesting than the design philosophy behind the game, so I pivoted to that. Once I started drifting away from WoW itself, it was time for another pivot towards “let’s talk about whatever else I want.”
That is probably enough as far as introductions go. If this is your first time here, I recommend clicking on the drop-down over on the right labeled The Goods, and selecting Philosophy. Everything that I post is top-quality, but those trend towards a higher level. Or you can check out this list of posts, back when I participated in Blaugust 2015. Nevermind that my best work seems to be from years ago.
Otherwise, well, welcome.
*Not my real name, of course.
Blaugust Clean-up
Thank god that’s over. Nothing quite like getting into the spirit of blogging by burning yourself out with thirty-one daily posts.
I’m halfway kidding.
It was a fun experiment, but I’m doubtful that I’ll participate next year. While there is still some possibility of long-tail shenanigans, my mid-month analysis seems correct:
The numbers, minus the numbers.
In other words, in terms of pageviews and visitors, daily posting still resulted in 10% less views than the peak in May. Which, incidentally, was a month that saw eleven (11) posts. Perhaps that is not quite as fair a comparison given how August is certainly 16% higher than both June and July. Then again, I posted 11 and 13 times in those months, respectively. Talk about diminishing returns.
The thing that is up rather markedly are comments:
Probably the better blogging indicator.
As I mused two weeks ago, I am not entirely sure whether the uptick in comments is due to the shotgun effect – more posts makes it more likely you post something people want to talk about – or from the nature of the Blaugust event itself, or a complete coincidence, or what. The thing I do know is that pageviews are one thing, but comments can actually challenge your arguments, change your worldview, and even comfort you with camaraderie. All things I definitely appreciate.
Not worth posting daily for that though, Christ.
Anyway, I have a birthday and Metal Gear Solid 5 to enjoy this week. So, see you… maybe Thursday. Or whenever the hell I feel like it.
*sigh* Feels good to say that again.
The Best of In An Age, Vol. 1
[Blaugust Day 31]
If you are looking for the best, most philosophical, endearing, poignant, expertly written posts for In An Age, then look no further.
That’s right, they appear here, at the top of InAnAge.com, two or three times each week depending on when I feel like dropping epiphanous bombs. Subscribe or add to your RSS reader of your choice, and you’ll be notified every time the light shines forth from my bushel. Which, again, is all the goddamn time. Worst… bushel… ever.
If you’re not up for reading nearly 800 posts though, here are the Top 5, in no particular order:
Wirehead
This post is actually somewhat topical given how it was originally written about my feeling of “offness” whilst playing Guild Wars 2. The term “wirehead” has came to represent any game I play obsessively but ends up making me feel empty when I turn it off. Favorite line from the post: “Playing Guild Wars 2 feels like going to Disneyland ahead of the apocalypse.”
Entitlement
Despite the years, I still consider “entitlement” to a be a trigger word for me and a Godwin’s Law for videogame arguments generally. The best summation of my feeling on the word ended up coming from a more recent follow-up post: “When you use the word “entitlement” as a pejorative, all you are doing is asserting that someone has unreasonable expectations about something, without actually bothering to offer an argument or explanation as to why it is unreasonable.”
The Problem With F2P and Microtransactions
If there was one other concept I wish the whole of the internet knew and understood, it is that of Consumer Surplus. While the F2P and microtransaction ship has long since sailed, the idea of Consumer Surplus is still useful in moderating the insanely anti-consumer sentiments that crop up in gaming discussions with disturbing regularity. This particular post isn’t the best one on the topic, but it’s the first, and it explains what Consumer Surplus is. For the others, just click on the Consumer Surplus tag.
My Issues with the Bioshock Infinite Plot
Oh man, Bioshock Infinite. It’s been over two years since I wrote that post, but I still stand by every argument made and presented. Simply put: if you liked Infinite’s plot, you’re wrong. Case closed.
Established Fact
Speaking of arguments, I’m still rather fond of this one. At the time, the internet was discussing why WoW was losing subscribers in Cataclysm despite the (established) fact that the actual cause was the increase in dungeon difficulty. Incidentally, I consider that post and a few others from that time period as the beginnings of my (one-sided) rivalry with SynCaine.
________________
There you have it, the Top 5 posts from In An Age. While the newest amongst them is April 2013, my original list had at least 25 entries mostly pulled from the Philosophy category. In fact, that’s the place I recommend going to if you enjoy my writing at all and yet somehow have failed to keep current with my steady stream of genius. Priorities, people; work on them.
Runners-Up:
- A Flight Too Far
- Revisiting Single-Player MMOs
- Design > Toxicity
- No Country for Old Blizzard
- The F-Word
Enjoy Continue enjoying.
In An Age 
Sign of the Times
Aug 8
Posted by Azuriel
A few weeks ago, the Ohio State Fair had a poster contest. Grand prize was $1,000. It was won by someone submitting the most banal, directly-copied AI slop imaginable:
You don’t need to take my word for it. The officials came out and posted the following:
To be fair to the
artistprompt engineer, there weren’t any rules against it. Which is honestly surprising, considering Colorado had this same exact issue back in 2022 during their State Fair art contest. Also, who in the Boomer fuck was judging this contest in the first place? You can use the original link to see 2nd-5th place, any of which I would argue are objectively better than what was selected.Of course, I’m kind of assuming the others weren’t just AI themselves. Second place has me suspicious.
Anyway, add it to the pile.
Posted in Commentary
6 Comments
Tags: Add It On the Pile, AI, Art, Blaugust, Contest