Knowing the words
2018-12-29 09:22And that's really cool! It's like having a major play as a cultural touchstone and seeing a thousand different interpretations of the script, so that it becomes something even greater and broader.
Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.
I like writing stories. You like reading stories. Do you like my stories enough to keep reading them?
This is not intended as a personal question. The 'I' is generic, so is the you.
Automated story generation. It is an idea I first picked up from 1984, where stories were mass-produced by machines to keep the proles sedated. Since about then I've considered such story generation a plausible, likely sort of eventuality. Included it in some stories no one yet has read. I don't see why there couldn't such production of stories unless we turn out to be living in a dualist or otherwise supernatural sort of universe.
Typically I see it as a bit of a personally bleak prospect. Writers as a set of humans obsoleted by an equivalent or superior source of fiction. Today I wondered about parochialism, and maybe for some time people would prefer stories written by humans because of the sort of prejudices that lead them to say only humans can make stories worth reading, humans have creativity, humans have something ineffable that sets them apart. Maybe some would like reading the stories of those they knew or liked. I wonder in such a scenario how likely it is human authors would still develop a following.
*meaning here stories made by (nonhumans made by humans to some degree of antecedence)
Most people like to imagine themselves big novels, 800 page doorstops that include forty fascinating characters buzzing around each other, major crisis and triumphs, maybe even a world scale event like a war or a natural disaster in the background. All of this preferably described with panache and poetry by a Russian master like Tolstoy or a French wordsmith like Proust. But the truth is most of us live 243 page lives, if that. There are only a few major characters in our stories, maybe a mid-level crisis or two, certainly some triumph or tragedy sprinkled throughout, but none of it profound or interesting enough to demand more pages, more explication, more background. Thoreau famously said most people live lives of quiet desperation. He could just as easily have said most lives can be summed up effectively in 200 page novels written by adequate midlist authors.
#25 ::: Xopher ::: (view all by) ::: July 20, 2007, 03:50 PM:
"This is the internet, not real life!" (Therefore I can be nasty in ways I allegegly wouldn't in person or on the phone, because in writing on the net is somehow exempt from normal rules of courtesy and politeness. Personally I want to kill fucktards who use this one.)
#26 ::: Steve ::: (view all by) ::: July 20, 2007, 03:55 PM:
"I challenge you to show me where I said [X]."
"You're quoting me out of context."
"That's an ad hominem attack."
"I don't understand what you all are so upset about."
"You seem to be taking this rather personally."
aesmael: *explains worldview / theory of mind*
Person B: That's, uh, that's depersonalisation disorder. Not everyone has that.aesmael: Oh.