I'm really glad that you mentioned the point of community harm reduction, because (as someone who clearly Goes Here albeit generally less "gooner-aligned") I've definitely noticed this. The Discord server for one of the major open-source chat/RP apps has a bunch of harm-reduction advice pasted right at the entryway.
Personally, AI smut was a lot of things. Among them, a way to explore parts of myself I couldn't with other people, but also *a way of connecting with other people* aligned more closely with my interests (social and personal.)
I'm asexual, and also the creator of a model which manages to get thousands of downloads on HF per month. I know for a fact that they're using it to get themselves off, because that's kinda the buried lede with a lot of "creative" LLMs (although the better ones do genuinely try to be good writers, too.) I'm not only unbothered by this, but it makes me feel like a contributor to something that's had such an overtly positive impact on my life. If I were braver, less trauma-bound, less lazy, I'd have probably gotten into making porn; but this is a decent substitute.
And yet I can't seem to shake the idea that there's a lot of people for whom it *isn't* such a positive impact. I've [made the comparison on Bluesky before to mukbang](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:br6yuwkgvtn43dz3r65fpwzu/post/3ldrson72mc2g) -- a phenomenon which came about during a highly uncertain time, showing behavior which is charitably performative, and uncharitably disturbing, but undeniably appealing to a lot of people. To paraphrase [the video from This Exists that post is directly quoting](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZRVbBZzz6Q) -- It's hard to know whether it's a symptom or the cure.
But this framing - where it's sort of a superposition of both - feels right to me. The only way we make it out okay is by looking out for each other.
EDIT: Oh boy, Substack comment formatting does not in fact work that way. Whoops.
I'm really glad that you mentioned the point of community harm reduction, because (as someone who clearly Goes Here albeit generally less "gooner-aligned") I've definitely noticed this. The Discord server for one of the major open-source chat/RP apps has a bunch of harm-reduction advice pasted right at the entryway.
Personally, AI smut was a lot of things. Among them, a way to explore parts of myself I couldn't with other people, but also *a way of connecting with other people* aligned more closely with my interests (social and personal.)
I'm asexual, and also the creator of a model which manages to get thousands of downloads on HF per month. I know for a fact that they're using it to get themselves off, because that's kinda the buried lede with a lot of "creative" LLMs (although the better ones do genuinely try to be good writers, too.) I'm not only unbothered by this, but it makes me feel like a contributor to something that's had such an overtly positive impact on my life. If I were braver, less trauma-bound, less lazy, I'd have probably gotten into making porn; but this is a decent substitute.
And yet I can't seem to shake the idea that there's a lot of people for whom it *isn't* such a positive impact. I've [made the comparison on Bluesky before to mukbang](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:br6yuwkgvtn43dz3r65fpwzu/post/3ldrson72mc2g) -- a phenomenon which came about during a highly uncertain time, showing behavior which is charitably performative, and uncharitably disturbing, but undeniably appealing to a lot of people. To paraphrase [the video from This Exists that post is directly quoting](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZRVbBZzz6Q) -- It's hard to know whether it's a symptom or the cure.
But this framing - where it's sort of a superposition of both - feels right to me. The only way we make it out okay is by looking out for each other.
EDIT: Oh boy, Substack comment formatting does not in fact work that way. Whoops.