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@Durance Gaming - I appreciate your benefit of the doubt on my behalf. Thank you. As for the other person, yeah that's pretty much what I'm talking about lol.

@redonihunter - You said something that really stuck with me. "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." For some reason that made me feel better overall. I think the biggest problem I'm facing is that I can't find any gallery. It's either total AI slop/AI bros or furious anti-AI hate. There doesn't seem to be an inbetween where you can actually try new things.

To whomever it may concern, the recent videos I was referring to were simply visual examples of something I had been working on for over 6 months. It's just a visual representation of how Poly-Rhythmic Congruence plays out in real time. Two short 2-minute clips to illustrate/sum-up 6 months of amateur research.

A simple explanation for PRC is like how you can take a music video, remove the music, and add in a completely different song but it still looks like they go together because the video was made to similar beat/timing. Except with PRC, it's a phenomena that can happen with completely unrelated things. So I used my own written poetry as prompts, my own illustration for the 1st frame, and used them to create a 2-minute micro story to show how even the AI generator coincidentally follows the same musical timing and patterns. The video was placed at the center of the screen, and then audio-driven patterns were edited in to help viewers pinpoint the appropriate areas of congruence. The second video was the same, except used a different image every 5-10 seconds to see if they would match the audio patterns (which they did). So 3 completely unrelated sources (audio, visual, interpolation) coincidentally coming together as if intentionally timed. It was a demonstration of a phenomena that needed 2 short videos.

It's not supposed to be "hey look at this thing I didn't draw" it's supposed to be "I have used AI to demonstrate this principle" but no one ever bothers to read the "about" section of the video. They just see obvious AI (which I don't hide) and scream "SLOP!!!" then ban me or wipe my stuff immediately, which is incredibly aggravating. 

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.