AI is deepening the previously parasocial relationships we had with our favorite anime characters from passive linear media, into powerful new, interactive relationships.

I think this is legitimately the first time that I've seen someone speak about parasocial relationships not only positively, but also suggesting that, hey, we should remove the human element even more from it because it's not creepy enough as it is.

Out of my sample of Anime fans who actively participate in the hobby and spend money on it,

100% of them hate genAI primarily because, and I quote, "if I pay you $40 for something and it is exactly equivalent to what a $0.05 prompt garbage result would be, I won't pay you again."

Fans, the real fans, can tell. Like, this is their whole hobby brah.

from bsky:

Weeb3

Money represents the aggregate value of the intersection between human labour, ingenuity and scarce finite resources. Human lives are routinely rendered down, ground up and consumed by the drive to generate this representative value. Entire ways of living, forms of self perception and our understanding of what makes a human worthy of existing is inextricably wrapped up in this value generating process.

As a society we have declared that these people are best placed to decide what to do with that value. They chose anime.

Dragon Ball A16Z: We have replaced interminable screaming powerup sequences and planet-destroying energy blasts with long panning shots of the characters using their abilities to light giant mountains of cash on fire. If you give us a series C at a valuation of $420 million, we may be able to determine why test audience surveys have thus far come back unfavorable

There was a lot I left unsaid in the Stubsack comment because of how difficult it is to express the uncanny valley effect I got from reading the a16z blog post. It's not just the very AI generated sounding prose, or the relatively broad knowledge of multiple forms of Japanese and Japan-inspired media combined with the glaring factual inaccuracies and extremely surface-level understanding of the topic. Even the whole angle of "how can we insert ourselves as a middle man to extract surplus from this" dressed up in a veil of celebratory excitement is par for the course for a private equity firm, but somehow they completely fail to understand anything about anime or video games as a business either.

The only way I can describe how the article reads is this: it's like if an anime fan gave an introductory presentation about Japanese media, then a business analyst gave a presentation on the size of anime business, revenue of gacha games and market value of Japanese entertainment brands, then an AI bro who knew nothing about either topic but took meticulous notes on both presentations threw them together into a blog post and padded out the word count using GPT.

Edit: Here's a long-form piece about Japanese cultural capital from someone who does know what he's talking about, as a palate cleanser https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM2VIKfaY0Y

Coincidentally, NFT grifters Azuki bought the anime.com domain name and have funding from a16z competitor Y Combinator.

lmao

Ah yes, a16z.

I'm not saying they're the stupidest fucks in this solar system, but I'm also very much not saying that either.

It’s all about finding an angle, no matter how creepy, and going for it

We trained a neural network on 29 years of Evangelion merchandise, and it screamed and dissolved into TANG.

Kudos to Robin Guo and Jonathan Lai for managing to trick a16z to pay them for writing and researching this kind of shit. Turn your hobby into your work and you will etc.

This post serves as your periodic reminder that the bald people were the bad guys in Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo

Want to throw big money and solve real-world problems? ElderTech.

But sure, software that makes shit up, fake digital money, and animes are cool too.

You do you.