this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2025
273 points (64.9% liked)
Science Memes
14345 readers
4112 users here now
Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
- Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
- Keep it rooted (on topic).
- No spam.
- Infographics welcome, get schooled.
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
Research Committee
Other Mander Communities
Science and Research
Biology and Life Sciences
- !abiogenesis@mander.xyz
- !animal-behavior@mander.xyz
- !anthropology@mander.xyz
- !arachnology@mander.xyz
- !balconygardening@slrpnk.net
- !biodiversity@mander.xyz
- !biology@mander.xyz
- !biophysics@mander.xyz
- !botany@mander.xyz
- !ecology@mander.xyz
- !entomology@mander.xyz
- !fermentation@mander.xyz
- !herpetology@mander.xyz
- !houseplants@mander.xyz
- !medicine@mander.xyz
- !microscopy@mander.xyz
- !mycology@mander.xyz
- !nudibranchs@mander.xyz
- !nutrition@mander.xyz
- !palaeoecology@mander.xyz
- !palaeontology@mander.xyz
- !photosynthesis@mander.xyz
- !plantid@mander.xyz
- !plants@mander.xyz
- !reptiles and amphibians@mander.xyz
Physical Sciences
- !astronomy@mander.xyz
- !chemistry@mander.xyz
- !earthscience@mander.xyz
- !geography@mander.xyz
- !geospatial@mander.xyz
- !nuclear@mander.xyz
- !physics@mander.xyz
- !quantum-computing@mander.xyz
- !spectroscopy@mander.xyz
Humanities and Social Sciences
Practical and Applied Sciences
- !exercise-and sports-science@mander.xyz
- !gardening@mander.xyz
- !self sufficiency@mander.xyz
- !soilscience@slrpnk.net
- !terrariums@mander.xyz
- !timelapse@mander.xyz
Memes
Miscellaneous
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
AI slop
op here, I reposted this from a group chat and didn't notice, sorry for forever cursing your eyes with the forbidden art
Hey, that's pretty funny and made my day a little bit better. so don't worry about the hate :-)
why are people downvoting this? it seems it was an honest mistake.
Mistake? No. Honest? No. How are you people so naïve jfc.
...you good, man? its an ai generated webcomic. its not the anti-christ
AI generated webcomics are the harbingers of the antichrist. Be careful.
The bottles on the shelf behind the He change rapidly between panels.
To be fair if I drew bottles they would rapidly change as well like how my signature is never the same
But they're not even close. It's digital art. There's no reason to redraw. If you wanted to then it would still be similar and a stylistic choice.
I’m assuming that the OP has about the same drawing skills as me, which is to say, none. So in lieu of a tool to produce the cartoon for him, and (I bet) not willing to pay someone at least €20 to draw it, the only other option is that this comic would never have seen the light of day. Is that a better world for you?
You don't need any artistic skills to make a comic. Draw that shit on a napkin for all I care - if it's a good joke, we'll laugh. In fact, drawing it on a napkin would instantly increase the amount of charm ten-fold.
I think XKCD is a good example of this.
Yeah, absolutely no artistic talent there.
https://xkcd.com/3078/
Randall definitely has significant artistic talent, but there are hundreds of examples from xkcd that absolutely support the argument.
Go to Google image search and type in “noble gas walks into a bar”. This farce of a comic and its joke are not special or unique in any way.
You could take one minute to draw this comic in pencil and it would look less gross. Or even MS Paint or PowerPoint. It’s slop because the creators, promulgators, and defenders of it don’t care about the audience who sees it because they each think that the veil of professional quality and soullessly averaged characteristics are enough to placate the lowest common denominator of consumers. Don’t misrepresent my position to make yourself feel better about your media diet.
I googled it and the three comics seem kind of terrible.
Not everyone finds MS Paint to be the most pleasing form to look at in any case. Really, it's a bit much to see the constant witch hunt, you literally spam your 2 word reply just to start a fight. It's just calculated negativity and gatekeeping.
I think you are making huge assumptions with the "not caring about the audience" segment.
If he didn't come up with the joke and he didn't come up with the art then what's the point
Making me laugh? Not to mention that most of the content are reposts, your definition doesn't leave many acceptable posts on lemmy.
Gee, what’s the point of re-telling a joke? I can’t possibly tell. 🤦
Krita and drawing with a mouse are both there, you know.
Yes, the existence of this comic does make the world a worse place.
For me, it's a matter of this joke being old. If someone had sat down and drawn it as a comic anyways, that would make it cool and the thought of it can be humorous in its own way. But since they didn't, it's ultimately just an old joke. It not having been made through manual labor does change my enjoyment of it.
(And much like the others, I don't care that it looks well-drawn. I just care that someone decided, fuck it, I'm a silly goose, I'll spend some time crafting something for no good reason.)
But the AI wrote the joke, too. OP(or rather OOP) didn't contribute anything more than typing "make me a comic about science", clicking generate, and then uploading. And the entire process used a shit ton of extra power to generate the image compared to conventionally doing the art.
I use AI. I'm not better than anyone, I'm just not going to pretend there isn't a lot wrong with the whole situation.
The joke is pretty old though.
That's why the so-called "AI" was able to "come up" with it.
It lacks context to create anything new.
Combining some other comments:
Not only is this an old joke and not even particularly interesting, it also took a shit load of resources for the machine to produce it. A human being eats a hamburger and makes a few nice things + remains alive but one of these algorithms will consume ludicrous amounts of energy just to copy a mediocre joke and only so many people will even see it.
Not every joke needs to be pushed to the world and not every amateur musician deserves a main stage(certainly not if they’re just playing covers). Art is wonderful in that there are certainly barriers but at the same time it is relatively cheap to get the materials to practice. I literally know of a homeless woman who people give paper and pencils to and she spends her time drawing to pass the time.
So, yes, the world is a worse place for having this “art”.
You heavily underestimate the resources required to produce a hamburger, and thus the environmental impact of a human creating such a comic, but you’re even then not wrong: AI is an excessively heavy power consumer.
Someone can do other things with the energy from a hamburger is all I’m saying, and even if they do nothing but stay alive that’s already a better use of that energy. I also had thought about that and, to be fair, a hamburger is only a very small portion of the cow.
It’s amazing how you manage to keep up such a double standard in the same comment. Have you been practicing doublethink for a while?
On the one hand you say a human can output this while consuming just a hamburger, on the other hand you say it takes practice (conveniently leaving out the ‘years of’ part).
On the one hand you say “the algorithm” consumes ludicrous amounts of energy, but on the other hand keeping a person alive seems to be free in your world-view. (And no, a homeless person getting just enough to survive does not count as an example of consuming few resources. That’s not a life, that’s misery.)
When AI outputs something for a small audience, that’s a huge waste, but if a human draws something for themselves, that’s somehow adorable?
It’s not double speak, it’s nuance(or just entirely different things). The hamburger is the energy required to create a quick comic of this level after gaining the skills, the practice is something else you do, and which you do for personal enjoyment so it comes double.
I get free beer at the bluegrass jam because we play for the bar. My instrument cost over a thousand dollars and I was playing for a little under a year when I first went. If your goal was to save money on beer then yea, bad investment, but my goal was to learn an instrument that I enjoy and play with other people. I don’t consider the cost of the instrument and my time when considering the money I save on the drink. Keeping someone alive does a whole lot more for the world and themselves. It’s not free, but they also do more than create one generic comic before throwing off their mortal coil.
For fuck’s sake, I make very good Heroforge minis and, while appreciate the creativity I put into it, I understand that I’m still behind people making custom 3D models or putting pen to paper. At least I can still be proud of my work, unlike this “AI” garbage.
Your entire argument stems from the idea that this comic is somehow adding value to the world. Not only is it stolen and using all these resources but the “artist” doesn’t even get to have any personal satisfaction because it’s just an algorithm and the other “artist” didn’t actually put any effort into it when they just wrote “write a funny comic” into a text field. Nothing of value was created, not even genuine personal satisfaction in a job well done, but so much was lost.
Also to your last sentence, I pity you for not being able to understand the difference.
But you do consider the cost of training when we’re talking about the AI’s output. That’s the double standard.
The comic made me smile. It made my day better because I like the presentation and the style. The post currently has a vote ratio of 266:78. So I’m clearly not the only one enjoying it. I do believe that bringing joy to people adds value.
I can’t understand why that is a problem. Why are you hurt because a machine cannot get personal satisfaction? Are you mad at an mp3 player because it doesn’t enjoy the music it plays? The point of this comic obviously isn’t to benefit the creator. It’s to enjoy the reader.
If you insist on drawing parallels to a human artist: Do you think everyone enjoys creating every single piece they create? That there are no commissioned words that an artist grudgingly accepts because they have to pay their bills? Sometimes the process of doing something isn’t the end goal, but the product.
If you want to create music for your own benefit, there’s no need to do it in public. You can do it in a garage. You’re going to a bar because pleasing the audience with a good product is at least part of your motivation. Do you think they care if you’ve enjoyed making the music? They only care if they enjoy consuming it.
What? No, I consider the cost of actually doing the work to be insane. If you want to talk training we can get into all kinds of other wonderful ethical, legal, and climate related shit, and I said that the cost of training for something like drawn art is exceedingly low as pencils and paper are cheap and all you need after that is a flat surface and time. I’m glad you enjoyed the comic but the cost to make it was far too great and you need to understand that sometimes that’s a dealbreaker.
Have you ever built anything with your own two hands, or made a piece of art, or played a fun or beautiful piece of music purely for the enjoyment of it? And, separate from that, if you have, you’ve really never wanted to share it with the world? I go to the bar because I enjoy it, I make friends there, and we can all participate in a shared passion. The patrons of the bar also do appreciate that we are real people. We aren’t perfect, we forget the words sometimes, and our instrument balance can be wonky at times but they enjoy the fact that we are up there. Live music is objectively “worse” quality than something made in a studio but we love it because of the distinctly human connection with the performers and the audience. When my friend tears up a sick Irish fiddle solo I turn to who I’m sitting with and we all talk about how skilled she is and how much effort she’s put into honing her craft. When musicians talk about other musicians so much of it is about appreciating how much time and effort they put in to get to where they are.
And yes, sometimes an artist does something that they don’t love. Artists, both the casual amateur and career professional, have accepted that fact as part of the greater process.
I cannot stress how important it is that you go make something, and that you bring people into your life who appreciate the work you put in instead of just judging the end product. There’s a bright, colourful world out there and I’m genuinely worried that you’re letting it pass you by or, worse still, that the people around you are keeping you from it.
Oh my god! Op is worse than the devil! Someone call the moderators! Oh the humanity!
Oh my god! The person who wants to push back on usage of the plagiarism machine that boils lakes is worse than the devil! Someone call the white house invade the commentor's nation! /s