This is not my main account, so to speak. I use this account for more personal artistic endeavors. So you will not see any goods bought in my "supported" tab here. Like many others, I am quite literally a starving artist. I can't tell you how many times I have had to choose between food and assets to carry on my work. After all this, I went back and looked at how much money I've spent supporting other independents. Just over the past 3 years... It was a 5-digit number.

Part of me felt kind of embarrassed. Especially because I had come to realize that I don't know these people and they, they certainly don't care about me. The amount of backlash I've faced for daring to tinker with AI is so vehemently barbaric, I'm getting pages deleted. Videos taken down... I'm getting my time wasted. The most important, most valuable, most precious resource in the universe. It's being thrown in the trash every time I try to open my mouth--and I'm not even talking to anyone. I'm like a kid on the edge of a pond, just tossing rocks into the water because maybe the ripples will feel like company. Then I get these moderators and anti-AI people walking up to me outta nowhere and kicking my sand castle like, "dude, really?"

I just tried to start a new account on Newgrounds, a place I've been a part of for like 20 years. I just start working on my page, I upload a couple videos. Start working on some thumbnails, trying to arrange everything because my work is kinda out-there and over-the-top. Very scattered, like myself. I burn a few hours and boom, my videos get ripped down. I go to see what the moderator says "AI slop" and refresh the page... My entire profile page is wiped.

So now, I've gotta boot up my second computer and knock the dust off the keyboard. I can't just simply host my own website because corporate greed traded out our public IPs for this CGNAT bull crap so I gotta tunnel through Cloudflare just to feel like I can be allowed to exist. But where am I gonna get the money to cover the increased energy expenses, the domain registration, etc?

Sadly, from Patreon. From Itch. From Unity. From Soundcloud. Supporter subscriptions I've held for years. Subscriptions that won out over months of Hulu or Battle Passes. I cancelled the corporate stuff and just spent more time utilizing the works of the artists I patroned rather than pull myself from what I viewed as a sort of karmic pool. I wanted to be a part of it all, poor as I was. It wasn't even out of hate or anger or spite... I have to express myself. I can't help it. It's like a sickness. Friends go on, people play, I'm in my workshop just tinkering away.

It feels like more than the end of a bunch of subscriptions. It feels like being way back in elementary school again, looking up to the cool kids, and then hearing them talk about you behind your back. Even on itch, I don't just buy assets to be supportive anymore. I always like this concept of "the art community". They never really noticed me, or talked to me, but when they finally did it just felt cold and sharp.

It makes me wonder if there are other people like me out there, just trying to go about their business, getting wrecked by the AI hate lol. And to put things in context, I'm talking like a 5-10 second image2video animation of my own stuff. Boom, it's slop. I'm a terrible person.

Can't do it anymore, man. The magic is just... gone.

If you just generate your stuff via AI, you are not an artist. You're an impostor who wants credit and applause for doing the thing, but instead of actually doing the thing, you rent a machine that steals from actual artists.

So maybe the AI hate does harm you, but it certainly does not harm artists.

What does harm artists is AI grifters sucking all the air out of the room and then having the audacity to pretend that they are the victims in all of this.

lol damn... well, I think I see what the OP is talking about xD

For what it's worth, just do your thing. The truth is, 99.9999 percent of people have no idea what AI is, how it works, what it does, etc... And, frankly, what kind of person do you think it takes to read what seems like a heartfelt post, then attack a stranger like the guy above me did? Not the kind of people I'd wanna show my stuff to, if it were me. But then again, my mom woulda smacked me in the mouth if he she heard me talk to someone like that unprovoked. Grown man or not, lol. She's brutal like that.

But yeah, the internet ain't what it used to be. That's for sure. Keep going man, do you and express yourself. Good luck with your own individual art process, wherever it leads you. Someone once told me, you don't make art for the consumer. You make it for the universe  o/

The truth is, 99.9999 percent of people have no idea what AI is

... yeah. Sure. Because AI is not actively being shoved down the throat of every single person who interacts with computers or phones on a regular basis.

And, frankly, what kind of person do you think it takes to read what seems like a heartfelt post, then attack a stranger like the guy above me did?

OP is whinging because they are doing something shitty (spamming their AI slop in artist spaces where that AI slop is not wanted) and people are getting mad at them because of it. They are asking everybody else to change their behaviour, because they themselves are not willing to reconsider why spamming AI slop in artist spaces would make actual artists mad.

I do not care how "heartfelt" that is. No matter how deeply OP is convinced that this stance is 100% reasonable, it is a shitty expectation to have. OP is the problem. OP has the option to change, to do actual creative work and be respected for it. They choose not to. They choose to demand of everybody else that they stop criticizing them.

OP is not the victim here.

To answer your question, the kind of person it takes to give such an answer is a person with critical reasoning skills.

But yeah, the internet ain't what it used to be.

Yeah. For one thing, there's AI slop everywhere and all the creative spaces are overrun by AI slop spammers expecting to be taken serious.

Hatred is not a good thing. It makes people feel justified doing bad things. And it makes discussion impossible.

People can chose and avoid whatever they like. No hate needed for that. We are talking art here. There is many things called art by some, that is not art in the view of others.

If there would be a gallery of oil paintings and someone would submit a photographed print of something that looks like an oil painting, that gallery would very likely reject it. Or if they do allow such things, some fans of oil paintings would probably dislike it for various reasons.

But what is the purpose of the gallery, what do the guests want to see? Do they want to see portraits? Do they want to see oil on canvas? Do they want to see the paintings of a child, that only the parents would praise? Do they want to see painting of that one artist that is famous, but now only paints "abstract"? What about charcoal sketches or wood carvings?

Well, depends on the gallery and the guests.

If you want to exhibit at a place that only allows oil on canvas, you will have a hard time submitting something that does not fit.

But if you visit a place that allows all kinds of works, the guests do have to deal with the fact that there actually are all kinds of works. Sure, they might rumble on about how certain things are actually not works, or how those things are bad and should be forbidden and so on. But curiously enough, those works actually are not forbidden. Not by law and not by the place they visit.

This is still art we are talking about and guests will chose what they want to see or not. No hate needed and no convincing by righteous people.

In my opinion, AI things are tolerated at best. In situations where a thing would not exist at all. Like in a no budget single developer situation. The novelty of AI has worn off. People do not like it in their recreational media as a substitute for the real thing. 

And to put things in context, I'm talking ... of my own stuff

That's what AI haters do not get. Their usual arguments are short sighted. It's just hate. And one can even use an AI system trained with your own things. On your own computer even. The rig one would play a 3D game for hours.

And AI slop is not slop because it is AI, it's slop because it's slop. But because it is very easy to create a lot of slop with AI, you will see a lot more AI slop than regular slop. Appealing AI things are rare though. A professional developer would be wise to classify and treat any AI assets as prototype and switch to commissioned art sooner or later. It's still art we are talking, and people do not like to see or read AI, when they expect craft and art.

You're getting your time wasted?  No, you're the one wasting the time of the moderators who have to delete the feces you're smearing all over their communities.

Abandon all your hopes and dreams and make fruit island slop now on Tiktok if you want an AI following. 

You made this bed now lay in it. I don't know why you thought indie sites support AI?

I don't know, mate. I don't want anyone hurt. I am not a fan of commercial AI art, I don't support it. I don't like using hateful language either. I'm sorry you're feeling hurt, but, I just don't see indie sites supporting AI anytime. It does hurt non-AI artists, so, I don't know.