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Will the Real NPCs Please Stand Up?
Yesterday morning I took a walk with Patti Labelle and an evening stroll with Georgia Ann and Rick Fox. Then, I watched a simulation of Facetime with my favorite influencer (Malik) before shopping with my fellow “Trader Hoes” (Steezus and Lavelle) at Trader Joe’s. All of these things happened from the comfort of my iPhone. Because one of my favorite past-times is watching videos and listening to audio of what other people do in their homes. How other people decorate, how they clean, how they work, walk, and watch tv.
Humans, they’re just like me, is what I think.
In these mundane moments, life becomes an art form, and every person we see online becomes the artist detailing what it looks like to live well and perform human-beingness with creativity and comedy. Most of these people have become so good at performing life for the entertainment of others that we wish to imitate them. We work to pretend that our lives are like theirs. We consume the content they produce and buy the things they buy. We clap for their accomplishments and cry at their failures, and through them, we can clap and cry for ourselves because we are them, and they are us.
They influence us into being a better version of ourselves, a more human and humane life form.
Yet, with each new algorithm and iteration of artificial intelligence, we are becoming less unique individuals. Whatever small quirk or personality trait you thought was yours can be easily replicated and performed on a screen by someone else. Someone who can seem completely unlike you. So, what makes us unique human beings when it becomes so easy to replicate the performance of human life?
Black Barbies in the Valley of AI Dolls
Recently, these questions have been on my mind in light of several new marketing and money-making trends on TikTok. First is the constant content stream advertising the new “Barbie” movie. Soon to premiere at the end of the month, this latest film from the mind of Greta Gerwig has a…
