2026-03-02 20:51:07
Top of the Bear trending this morning was Ginoz's AI is NOT better than you, post, a response to Future Perfect's original post post from last week.
And I gotta say, I 1000% agree with Ginoz's viewpoint.
And honestly, I think the big problem is looking at generative AI through this lens that sometimes feels like a big “What do you want me to do? I don’t know graphic design! I had to use AI". These poor people without time and skill but with a subscriptions to ChatGPT.
Brother, sister — try learning. Try “trying and failing” for once. Try asking that friend who knows a thing or two about Photoshop for a favor. I know it’s hard, but let’s not act like there’s no other choice but to use generative AI when we’ve always managed to cope and thrive without it.
Back in high school and college in the early 90s (93-95), I was friends with a few garage bands. After all, this was the time of grunge, alternative, college radio, 120 Minutes on MTV, etc. They would distribute cassettes of recordings from their bedrooms and garages, all static and crunchy guitars and drums, barely able to hear the vocals because they were recording it on a boom box or something along those lines. One friend of mine even bought cassette albums from Goodwill, tossed the liners, popped the tabs off of the tapes to record over, and created his own liner notes out of dot-matrix printer paper. They were cut to fit the cases, and with some hand-drawn scribbles as artwork. Was it perfect? Nope. Was it cool as hell to get a tape from them? YEP.
I get that AI makes things easy. I get that it can be considered inexpensive. I get that you can drop a description in a box, look up something on Canva, slap your logo on it, and print them all up within a day, so you can tape them up on walls and poles all over town. It's EFFICIENT! It's FAST!
Our world and our society demand perfection. Your posts must be filtered, adjusted, and tweaked to show your best side. Your music must be absolutely clean and every note perfected, as if you made it in Phineas' studio in one take. There are no imperfections, unless they were placed there for The Aesthetic. The problem is - this perfection removes all the soul. All the feeling. There's something so fun about the mess-ups, about the scratches and the paste-smeared collages with torn edges and misspellings. There's something so freeing about making the thing yourself, even if it's not perfect. Too many people today forget that the imperfections are how we learn and grow. The excuse "I don't want to suck because it's cringey" really bothers me. Those cringe moments MAKE us. Push us to be better. Push us to learn. We're so afraid of failure that we're using a tool to strip the soul out of everything - writing, music, art. That failure builds resistance in humans and teaches us what we need to know to survive in this dumpster fire of a world.
Play with art. Get your hands dirty. Mess up, make it again. If it's not perfect right out the gate? Fuck it, it will be better next time. Learn, fail, then learn better. Trust me, the sense of accomplishment you will have at the end is worth it.
Feel free to reply to this post on my guestbook, or you can drop me a line via email!
2026-03-02 08:10:00
I really wish you would stop talking about my evil job.
A job should not define me.
Even if I am doing evil things, I am only doing that for eight hours a day. And sometimes overtime.
I'm not even that responsible for most of the evil things we're doing.
Most of that is a completely different department.
And when I clock in at my evil job, know that I'm against the evil parts.
What do you expect me to do anyway, quit my evil job?
2026-03-02 06:40:00
This newsletter is a roughly bi-weekly roundup of short-form content I've found interesting, as well as a tl;dr of any longer posts I may have written in that timeframe. It starts at #003 because I am trying out this new format here on Bear for the first time. Enjoy!
I had planned on following up my most recent post on Feeding the Fire - Psychology, Engagement, and Algorithmic Media with a discussion of Network Effects. However!
Big changes are coming, if Google has its way, to ==how app development for Android is going to work==, which is a time-sensitive matter and thus felt a lot more urgent.
The tl;dr:
{{ posts | limit:3 }}
2026-03-02 02:41:00
I visited my dad’s today to celebrate his birthday and me and my sister somehow ended up on the kitchen floor laying out almost 50 sheets of paper to make a life size cutout of Leon from Resident Evil she can display in her gaming room, giggling like school kids as we joked about hanging tinsel and baubles 👀 from him for Christmas and “dressing him up” seasonally. I don’t think we’ll ever grow up lol
I think we may have made him a tad oversized which makes it all the funnier to us
2026-03-02 02:05:00
I think we should shit on any art that uses generative AI; no exceptions, no matter what it’s being used for.
I read Future Perfect post, and it inspired me to talk about it. He talks about the frustration of hearing others talk shit about a local band’s poster that used AI, and he says:
Like, for fuck’s sake! These guys probably barely had enough money to pay the sound engineer, let alone a decent graphic artist for their time and efforts.
And I completely understand the point. But I could very well be one of those people talking shit about that other band’s poster—not because I “hate” AI, or because it’s my personal crusade, but because they very well could have made something with their own hands instead of using generative AI or even paying a graphic designer.
When I was about to finish high school, I went through a really fun phase where I attended battle-of-the-bands events every week. Several of my friends formed bands, and at one point I even dared to get on stage and play with them despite my teenage anxiety and almost nonexistent musical talent.
It was incredibly inspiring to see how a community of alternative music lovers, in a small town like mine, made these events happen to keep the scene alive.
Part of what made it cool was seeing that each band had its own identity; not just through the kind of music they played, but through how they dressed, their stage presence, the name that represented them and… their logo and event poster.
It’s kind of amazing to think about how, back in 2011, a group of 17-year-old kids managed to design their own logos and make the event posters (some bands even designed mascots) with the little knowledge—and even fewer resources—they had.
Of course, there was always one logo that stood out more than the others, and there was never a shortage of some kid making fun of an event poster because it wasn’t as well done as event X or Y. But at the end of the day, those people had an identity, and no matter how amateur it looked, it was theirs.
If you let AI represent you, I wouldn’t be surprised if the response you get is rejection. Because it’s no longer just about your band’s identity being generic, sadly, you're being part of a larger problem that’s affecting society on multiple levels.
And honestly, I think the big problem is looking at generative AI through this lens that sometimes feels like a big “What do you want me to do? I don’t know graphic design! I had to use AI". These poor people without time and skill but with a subscriptions to ChatGPT.
Brother, sister — try learning. Try “trying and failing” for once. Try asking that friend who knows a thing or two about Photoshop for a favor. I know it’s hard, but let’s not act like there’s no other choice but to use generative AI when we’ve always managed to cope and thrive without it.
I think it’s important to call out generative AI in art and show our rejection of it, because normalizing its use (even more than it already is) could permanently distance us from what makes us connect with our essence, and eventually, with each other.
2026-03-02 01:22:00
I did a couple of "bulletin" posts for the Bearming theme. Since I now have so many Bear projects going on, I thought I might as well call it by my name. An update every now and then about new things I've created in the name of Bear blog.
First up is the Bearful theme I released yesterday. I suspect many think this is one of my most boring themes yet, but personally, I think it's the best so far. With that said, the next one is going to be quite the opposite when it comes to looks.
Next up is the updated Blogger's toolbox. It now contains close to 300 resources about blogging, web design, and writing. It used to feature a separate Bear section, but I think the Grizzly Gazette does this great, so I just added a link to them instead.
Last but not least, Sylvia made me a tiny pixel bear. I love it so much that I decided to add a new header avatar option to the list of Bear styles you can use for your blog.
That's it for this time.
Goodnight, blogosphere... wherever you are.