Currently at 1.3K angry comments over on Threads, which is a new record – even for me. I haven’t been following it closely, because you can’t really without an Instagram account, but so far, some notable hate coming in:

  • Michael Chabon emoji puked on my op-ed.
  • Elon Musk’s daughter wrote “delete this.”

Thanks everyone for taking time to comment!

I’m enjoying all the people who believe they are blocking me in responses. I guess the other Tim Bouchers on that site must be having a bad day. Sorry about that, eh?

Here’s an editorial cartoon I am struggling to make with Dalle, where a greedy author is eating books and crapping out money in a factory… It didn’t quite work as I wanted (after many tries) but good enough:

If you’re new here and are actually curious what this is all about, I recommend checking out my About page, and a recent Welcome New Readers post. That should keep you busy, and check out the thematic series in the nav bar at top.

If you’re just here to dunk on me, you’re still welcome. I made some memes for you to use. Knock yourself out.

Having worked for five years in content moderation and handling online complaints, I’ve heard it all before, and much much worse. And having had the audacity to merely use AI technologies for the last few years and be open about it as a creative person, I have *especially* heard it all before, and had it all directed at me.

I also noticed that there’s only one comment on the actual article’s post page online. I guess people who are paying for a premium subscription know the value of it, and aren’t going to spend their attention fighting about it.

Meanwhile, many/most of the Threads responders seem to not have read more than the headline and the preview text (if that) because it’s paywalled. Okay, totally understandable.

The most curious thing to me though is that it seems to be all quiet on Twitter as to this op-ed. This is the first time I’ve ever seen people flame me en masse from Threads, so that’s something I guess.

One person took the time to put together a post in the hopes of reaching my Google Alert, but don’t seem to have (found via Threads):

It’s because of people like you that the world of self published writing will be even worse off, and will be continued to be considered lesser than big house publishing.

I’ve written before about how to me the publishing industry is not worth defending. The fact that ‘big house publishing’ must even be our benchmark in the first places just proves its hegemony.

Ten years ago, people like East Bay Ray of the Dead Kennedy’s were railing against YouTube for engaging in what he called “sharecropping” tactics. These kinds of fights have been going on forever and will continue forever. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have them, it just means: the more things change…

If you want to critique AI, I am here for that. But let’s not stop there.

Anyway, here’s a free book download for all the new Threadsitors. It’s one of my favorites, The Politeness Protocols. There will be 10 free copies for the next couple days you can download if you want. You don’t even need to give your real email address.

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