Tragic Blue Check, Made With AI & Retro Gaming
5 in 5 - Brave & Heart HeartBeat #198 ❤️
This week we’ll be talking the tragedy of the blue check, Meta’s new “Made With AI” disclaimer, and the retro gaming boom sweeping through the generations.
Plus, is a soft life for you, and should you swap your to-do list for a did list?
Let’s get into it.
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#1 - The Blue Tick Saga Becomes Tragic
Back in the day, in the stone age of Twitter, the blue check was created as a way to “verify” users of the platform, basically to prove that they were who they said they were. By being awarded a blue check, you were not only verified as being who you said you were, but as being someone worth impersonating. And so the blue tick check status was born.
Elon Musk was upset about this, for reasons Elon Musk alone will every truly comprehend, something to do with lords and peasants… and when he bought Twitter and began turning into X, decided that anyone could have a blue check, if they simply paid him for one.
Nobody wanted to, some relented, and then to try and force everyone else’s hand, Musk then took away what was referred to as “legacy blue checks”, meaning that anyone who had one when it was Twitter and not X got it taken away – paid checks only remained.
Then, out of the blue (literally), after years of trying to get people to pay for it, Musk announced that “premium” status would be granted for free to anyone with over 2,500 subscribers, and “premium+” given to users with 5,000 subscribers and over. Included in that service, is the blue tick.
However since then, the blue tick has come to mean something else.
Someone who pays for X, meaning that one – they are willing to pay to promote their own tweets, and two – that they think X is a platform worth investing in. Not only are they subscribing to X, they’re subscribing to Elon Musk.
And most people in their right minds, don’t want to be seen doing that.
Some people who woke up to find they’d been blue checked against their will literally tweeted out messages to give a disclaimer that they hadn’t given any money to Elon Musk.
He asked cool and influential people to pay for the blue check, they refused. He gave it to them for free – they don’t want it anymore.
Ouch.
#2 – Made With AI
Meta have announced that they will start applying “Made with AI” labels in May to AI-generated content featuring on Facebook and Instagram.
The changes are based on feedback from their oversight board and “extensive consultations with experts and the public”, apparently, although we don’t remember being consulted. Seems like an oversight, but fine…
The oversight board are described as “thought leaders from around the world” who are independent from Meta, and review the content decisions they make to see if they act in line with their policies, values and human rights commitments.
The wider context around this decision is the US presidential election in November and the rapidly developing technology around deepfakes and voice replication. There have been warnings from tech researchers that AI technology might transform the elections completely, and Meta are among the platforms where that could happen.
Meta’s oversight board called their existing rules on manipulated media “incoherent”, and the new rules will see them adding the label to content made with AI rather than potentially removing it – apparently aiming to give users context rather than interfering in freedom of speech.
Will this mean we’ll have to trust people to read the small print? Let’s hope they use a huge font…
“Retro Gaming” is having a moment, despite, or more likely because, of our current technological advancements.
The hashtag #retrogaming has over six billion views on TikTok, uploads of videos on the subject have increased x1000 on YouTube, and even on Spotify, users are creating twice as many retro-gaming themed playlists than this time last year.
The theory is that the popularity of retro gaming content is due to the appeal of the “comfort and simplicity of the past”. The characters in Zelda can’t create never-ending conversational options using AI – they always say the exact same things to you, it’s predictable.
In a world where OpenAI announce a new AI-powered technology every two and a half minutes, The Guardian suggest that younger generations are finding “stability” in retro gaming when their lives have been defined by the constant evolution of technology.
Sure, the graphics might be pixelated and you have to actually put a cd into a physical games console – an action which seems almost anologue in the world of online gaming and esports – but you know it’s not going to change into something else tomorrow.
Plus, you can use all that loading time like meditation… Unless you’re trying to download the Sims onto your PC, then just take a nap.
#4 - The Soft Life
The younger generation are giving up “hard work” for living a “soft life”, and rather than writing this off as a lack of ambition or drive, if we look closer it may be more of a rebellion against a system that they don’t think will serve them.
The “soft life revolution” is about living a less stressful life with more time and energy for what makes you happy and as little time as possible focusing on what doesn’t – and for some people, their jobs fall into that.
For millennials and generations Z and Alpha, there’s an increasing feeling that the effort they put into the corporate world doesn’t come back to them – if they’ll never be able to buy a home or retire, why not stop grinding and enjoy life now, not after they’ve finished their career?
However, ambition and softness can coincide, too. CEO of diversity & inclusion training company Hustle Crew, Abadesi Osunsade, worked hard to build her business, and now she has seen success at age 37, has decided to wind down her work output a little bit and make more time for relationships, exercise, and travel – the things that make her happy.
She says the key is not to conflate productivity with fulfilment completely – being busy all the time shouldn’t be the end goal in itself.
Plus, working for a company that values your work goes a long way to reducing burnout, especially in a context where salary is no longer everything.
You don’t have to cut yourself off from the world completely to live a soft life, we can all introduce a bit of softness into our lives without having to give up on goals completely, by remembering that we don’t have to be productive 24/7 – you’re allowed to do something for you.
Top anti hustle culture tip, find a hobby you’re not that good at – that way, you’ll never be tempted to monetize it.
#5 - Introducing The Did List
Is your to-do list a never-ending source of anxiety, in the most literal sense of the term? Well then a “Did List” might be for you.
Making to-do lists at work is proven to be beneficial for prioritising the right tasks and encouraging organisation, but when done wrong can actually be counter-productive and mentally exhausting.
Apparently swapping them out for a did list can help you stay focused on the right tasks but also boost your morale.
By listing what you’ve acomplished during the day you can see everything you’ve managed to get done written down, rather than a mountain of tasks to complete, and you may even be surprised at how productive you actually are.
The morale boost you get from realising you’re actually not totally useless (because you probably aren’t) can then power you through to finish what you haven’t done yet, because you know you can.
It might seem like tricking your brain, but hey, some days we’ll take all the help we can get…
Brave & Heart over and out.
Bonus
The Matrix Five
The seminal film on simulation theory and one of the coolest pieces of cinema of all time is back for a fifth round, but this time without any Wachowski’s directing the movie…
Will our simulated future ever be the same?
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