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TeaThe algorithm has sent an untimely film critic to harass me. This critic is young, knows his stuff, and writes about classic films on several Cinestar-like websites. He’s too polite for a byline, let alone a profile photo, but I’ve read enough of his work that I can picture him in my mind: an honest, middle-class fan with a name like Sam, Josh, or Jack. He writes detailed essays on all things Derek Cianfrance blue valentine (from 2010) all the president’s men (1976), and appears to post three or four times every day. His enormous work rate puts my shabby stream to shame. Now it’s gotten to the point where I actively hate the person. Or rather, this pastiche, whatever it is or whatever he is.
Everyone hates critics, that goes with the territory, but there are specific live-button reasons to hate Josh-or-Jack. I hate him not because he is wrong-headed or mean – the usual character flaws of the critic – but because he is just the opposite: politely agreeable and intent on taking no offence. I hate his bland laudatory posts, which always start on a note of mild authority before plunging into a tone of quiet, monotonous reverence. “It’s just not a great American thriller,” he would write about almost any famous American thriller. “It’s one of the all-time great movies about America.” Most of all, I hate him because I believed briefly He was genuine, and then he felt betrayed and ran away. So by hating Josh-Ya-Jack, I’m probably hating myself a little too.
like movies, Aye Slop comes in different styles. AI-generated film criticism – let’s call it snobbery – is definitely on the softer, more vanilla end of the scale, assuming Josh-or-Jack doesn’t have any extra hustle as an enthusiastic sexbot or a concerned American patriot – which, come to think of it, he almost certainly does. Nevertheless, he is an irritating presence, flooding the arena with his mediocre criticisms, constantly clamoring for clicks and likes; The embodiment of a trillion-dollar engagement farm presenting itself as a series of enthusiastic fan-sites. NewsGuard, a US-based ratings service, believes there are currently over a thousand such accounts seeking our attention, each operating with little or no human oversight. What do they provide? Mark Zuckerberg It’s described as a “feed experience”, which seems like a polite way of saying it gives the illusion of substance. Who cares if it’s tasteless and superficial and barely fills your stomach? After a click or two another person will help you.
Large language models are lifted from the work of actual writers, turning pointed published prose into a kind of homogeneous paste. This explains why Josh-or-Zack reads like an over-educated graduate who has never had any original thought in his life. Furthermore, AI is inherently conservative, as it is trained on group think and suffers from confirmation bias. This shows why he loves citizen Kane (1941) and seven samurai (1954), The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and interstellar (2014). In some mini-essays he would also include glowing criticism to describe surprising behind-the-scenes events during the making of a classic motion picture. All of these stories play out essentially the same way. They involve the lead actor improvising a scene or a line for the camera, and everyone on the set is stunned and holding back tears. Finally, an unnamed crew member will turn to a co-worker. “That wasn’t acting,” he would whisper. “it was Creature,
So what if I hate him? If Josh-or-Zack works, earns clicks, and is judged by the most basic metrics, sloppiness may even qualify as good writing. Its grammar is phonetic and it provides information. Evidence shows that readers are loving it. When I used to write reviews on a regular basis, the commenters below the line mostly demanded that I be fired, or at least clarify how much I was paid for this travesty of a Batman review. Whereas when Josh-or-Zack posts an article, it’s as if they’ve all seen nirvana. They’ll tell him, “Oh my God, you’ve perfectly expressed what’s so special about this heartbreaking movie.” “Thank you for your gorgeous writing, I would never see this Forrest Gump Same way again.”
Presumably, all of these readers are bots themselves, although I’m not sure that’s a comfortable thing. This doesn’t comfort me, and only adds weight to the dead internet theory, which suggests that the Web is little more than a giant, self-policing echo chamber of ghosts. Who knows where it leads? I’m guessing nowhere good. Spend too long in the company of a Josh-or-Zack blob – full of low-grade content, unsure of what’s real and what’s not – and one begins to feel alienated, unhinged, as if you’re a strange foreigner and everyone else is a local. just recently i’m watching to many, vince gilliganPost-apocalyptic TV drama pitting an angry human survivor against an ungrateful hive-mind. to many Incidentally, that’s great; Be sure to check it out if you can. As Josh-or-Jack might say, this isn’t just a show about a scary dystopian future, it’s a show about the scary reality of our real world today.
So far, at least, AI sloppiness hasn’t changed or even challenged my view of any movie. The change that has happened is quite seismic, this is my view of film critics. I love them, they’re amazing, a whole sad, sorry bunch. Because real writers are flawed in the best possible way. Each has their own quirks and quirks, sudden likes and dislikes, overused words and phrases, and the more we read about their work, the more we get to know who they are. That’s always been the case: We took it for granted until the featureless Josh-or-Jack came into our feeds, and turned their persistent flaws into virtues and their weaknesses into strengths.
To put it more bluntly, if processed slop shows us anything, it’s that the lowest, barely literate hack blogger is worth more than a ruby and should be cherished at all costs, just because they love some things and hate others, and are actually trying to explain why that is. Critics are useless because they are human. They make mistakes because they are divine. As far as his sucking methods go, that’s his signature style, his King Arthur’s sword – possibly even a buoyancy aid, as digital water comes closer.