Naughty and Nice ’23 No. 3: Other stuff

1. AI Is Ruining the Internet

The Rise of AI in artwork, writing, and voicework started in 2022. But for all the efforts to counter and criticize it, both of which are deserved, the story of 2023 has been how it’s slowly seeped into the internet’s most essential innards. The artwork is especially prevalent; you can’t search for a damned thing through Google Image Search without running into a bunch of obviously AI-generated artwork. The writing is bad too, and is often prone to making legitimate-sounding mistakes. None of this work is on par with what a human can provide, but the corporations will not be deterred. They’ll simply keep at it until they reach a time when it’s good enough to replace humans. They’re hoping it’s soon, but people who make their livelihoods through the creation of creative works should hope otherwise.

2. Nothing Has Topped Twitter

For as nice as it is that other social media networks have risen with Twitter’s slow bleeding of relevance for anyone who isn’t insane, it sucks that nothing else has come close to the platform despite it now being around 13 months since Elon Musk has purchased it. The other networks either don’t have the features and community that Twitter still enjoys, or they’re still in obvious beta states like BlueSky and Threads to a lesser extent, and are very, very slowly crawling out of it. Hopefully next year will be the year in which a replacement fully blossoms, or if they all team up within the Fediverse’s sphere of influence.

3. Other Films Fared Poorly This Year

It was nice that several unexpected films were smaller successes throughout 2023, as mentioned in the aptly-named column. But several others came up short. You might want to excuse the entire DCEU slate from Warner Bros. for bombing, but movies like The Flash and Shazam’s sequel still performed horrendously. The superhero woes also seeped into Marvel’s content, with both Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantamania and The Marvels faring poorly. Others such as Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and Wish performed badly too. The successes weren’t enough to prevent a lot of theaters from losing money this year. Worse, it’s tough to see 2024 being any better thanks to the number of delays after the strikes.

4. Fascism Remains Still on the Rise

For as nice as it is that fascism was beat back in countries like the US in 2023, efforts to fight it faltered elsewhere. Both Argentina and the Netherlands were too subsumed by its intoxicating grip, and Ireland could be next if it’s not careful with rising xenophobia. America’s issues sure as hell shouldn’t be glossed over here, with the biggest challenge coming next year being Donald Trump running again. Even if he loses, the fallout could be absolute hell to deal with, considering what his rabid voter base is capable of. We’re going to need a lot of luck to get through it.

5. The Streaming Woes

The streaming world got a big boom during the COVID-19 pandemic, when plenty of people had little else to do as they were staying in their houses without much option to leave. Many of them watched streaming shows and movies to pass the time. But the owners of those services were hoping the new and active base would stick around as normalcy resumed. This hasn’t happened. Companies overestimated the number of people who would remain avid watchers, which has led to shows and planned projects being canceled. The remaining subscribers have been saddled with ridiculous price increases to make up for staggering financial losses. This is a bad situation that was entirely avoidable, and could further worsen come 2024.

1. The Crypto Crash

Everyone who warned certain crops of people about investing their hard-earned money into cryptocurrency to potentially get easier-earned cash was bound to be right eventually. Several of those poor unfortunate souls learned hard lessons this year, as the markets for bitcoin, NFTs, and other cryptocurrencies that even the biggest nerds haven’t heard of came crashing down with a cartoonish thud this year. It’s a shame a bunch of them blew far too much money on Slurp Juices or whatever the hell, but the crash should ensure that others won’t invest in those specifically. But don’t worry: There will be other scams with delusions of grandeur on the horizon.

2. There Are Better Social Media Networks

Since Twitter (now referred to by another name that I won’t bother to use) is continuing its slow burn into cinders, 2023 has been a good year for finding other and better social media networks. There’s been no shortage of those which have tried to capture a defecting Twitter audience, like Mastodon and the multiple other instances among the Fediverse and BlueSky, not to mention others like Cohost. The One True Successor has still yet to emerge, but at least there are other ways for online users who aren’t deranged to keep in contact with their friends in a public setting.

3. Unexpected Successes at the Box Office

This was a mixed year in terms of the financial reception at the box office, particularly in the United States. But it’s worth noting the remarkable successes, some that many analysts wouldn’t have predicted at the year’s start. The Barbenheimer trio — Barbie and Oppenheimer — were the biggest successes, but others like the recent The Boy and the Heron and Godzilla Minus One put up great numbers relative to their budgets. We’ll see if the trend will be maintained next year, but I hope it’s a better year overall considering the lower-than-expected returns for theater owners this year.

4. Some Fascism was Beat Back

Countries like the United States (which I’m biased with addressing since I live here) are still fighting the rising tide of fascism. But just like it was in 2022, a good deal of it was beat back at the ballot box in off-year elections. Several local and state races like those for Supreme Courts and local councils and school boards saw the fascists lose, one thing dealing a blow to groups like Moms for Liberty. The biggest challenge will be the 2024 presidential election, but these amounted to nice victories however small. They were hopefully a tease for the future.

5. A New Dawn for DC

This has not been a good year for DC in terms of their theatrical releases, with Shazam: Fury of the Gods, The Flash, and Blue Beetle all bombing, and the signs are looking dire for Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. But that’s okay. A relaunch is coming, one spearheaded by James Gunn, responsible for the only successful live-action theatrical comic book movie this year with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Time will tell if this will reverse the fortunes of DC, or if the combination of Warner Bros. Discovery and their inane leadership and possible comic book fatigue are albatrosses too large to overcome.

1. Closed Game License

As I teased last Saturday, I’ve got some words for Hasbro and their complete lack of understanding about how you can’t monetize D&D like a smartphone game.
This year’s highlights could have been just Honor Among Thieves and Baldur’s Gate 3. Instead, they were trying desperately to repeal and replace on the Open Gaming License and layoffs.
While the attempt to close the Open Game License backfired so spectacularly that it’s now more open than ever in the creative commons, the lost trust and strong hustle of third-party publishers to dump it to protect their own bottom lines will reverberate for years in less content for D&D and a proliferation of diversity in game systems for everything that isn’t D&D the like of which haven’t been seen since before the d20 system gripped the industry.
The fallout is still developing, and we’ll probably check in again next year, when D&D inevitably ends up in the Anniversaries list.

2. You can’t own anything, and you can’t rent it either

I’ve already had my fill to say about streaming’s services making massive cuts to their own unique content, and price increases across the board for this less content (most shockingly, Paramount+ has FEWER movies after merging in Showtime content instead of MORE).
And while that’s all well and good enough for an appearance on the Naughty List, there are some late-breaking shenanigans on that front this year from our good friends at Discovery, who ended their licensing deal with Sony. Content deals come and go all the time, of course, but this one was the worst kind of going. Not only has Discovery and Warner Bros. content been pulled from the PlayStation Network store, they have been removed from the libraries of those who already purchased them. If you’ve been paying attention, you already know that not everything that got removed is streaming on Max or purchasable in other digital storefronts.

1. Nintendo’s return to multimedia

A highlight of my childhood television-watching was the licensed Nintendo cartoons produced by DiC Entertainment. But not long after Super Mario Bros: The Movie flopped, Nintendo killed its media-licencing in the U.S. The cartoons, books and comics came to a halt, with only the odd toy living on. There’s been a few false starts since then — see the canceled Zelda and Star Fox series — we finally get a triumphant return to media 30 years later (crap, should I have saved this for Anniversaries?). And this ain’t no flop.
While I have concerns about a live-action Zelda, they’re nothing more BUT concerns until I actually see it. Here’s hoping that leakers and flops stay far away so as not to scare Nintendo off again. They have some great characters and stories that are well worth the chance to shine outside of video games.

2. (Some) streaming shows get rescued

When Paramount+ killed Prodigy with most of the second season already in the can for reasons that could only be guessed at. It’s just as likely to be Nickelodeon’s fault as it is this year’s streaming culling spree. Paramount shopped it around and Netflix eventually bit, with the first season landing on Christmas, and season two, which wrapped post production on December 13th, will be coming at an undisclosed point in 2024. (Though as much as I hate to say it, if Prodigy wasn’t driving new P+ subscriptions, then it IS worth more as licensing-fee bait.)
Amazon Prime Video also pulled a nice for rescuing A Merry Little Batman from HBO Max. While this one doesn’t interest me, surely it’s good entertainment for others. And, naturally, it’s also a big positive to see everyone’s hard work on it not go to waste.
But the biggest Nice on this subject this year has got to be Coyote vs. ACME, for which the creators fought back against the cut… and WON.

1. An AI MidJourney Right Into the Heart of ChatGPT

Just as the NFT craze was finally winding down in 2022, a new craze was beginning to fill that gap. On November 30 of that year, OpenAI’s ChatGPT (a text generator) hit the web and slowly began to build momentum. It heralded the age of generative AI taking the mainstream by storm, even though image generation projects such as Dall-E (also an OpenAI product), MidJourney, and Stable Diffusion have been around since 2021. ChatGPT was the generative AI project to go mainstream. The results have been predictability bad. Plagiarism in academic spaces. Questionable quality articles published by authors who never existed. Lawyers who got themselves into trouble because they didn’t do basic fact-checking. The visual and written works of thousands of artists trained on generative AI models without permission and the resulting lawsuits. These AI tools are just that. However, way they were rolled out to the public, and adopted without regard to the consequences shows that a lot more thought and care should have been put into these products.

2. Twitter Again (Oh, Don’t Act Surprised)

Twitter made our list last year since Elon Musk purchased it for a stupidly high sum of$44 billion. Since then, the microblogging social networking site has been on a steep decline and riddled with various problems of Musk’s own making. The biggest change was the rebranding of the site from “Twitter” to “X,” a letter Musk has been obsessed with since the 1990s. This threw years of brand recognition into the trash and the site is still mostly referred to as Twitter. The social network that was purchased for way too much was valued at half that by the man who purchased said site. The paid verification program hasn’t brought in enough users to offset the huge exodus of advertisers, many of whom Musk told to go fuck themselves. This was after Linda Yaccarino was appointed as the new CEO in order to bring those advertisers back. Additionally, Musk has promoted conspiracy theories floated by numerous hate groups, unbanned some of the worst people on the internet, launched a pyramid scheme for verified accounts, and has sued several non-profit organizations for pointing out problems with Twitter.

3. Mass Layoffs in the Tech and Gaming Sectors

2023 has been an awful year in large swaths of the tech and gaming sectors. In fact, TechCrunch has tracked about 240,000 layoffs this year in tech alone. Some of the biggest job cuts came from Google, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft. The last one stings a lot when you realize Microsoft just finished paying $69 billion to acquire Activision Blizzard. On the gaming side, cuts came from both large and small studios. We saw job losses from Amazon, Bethesda, Embracer Group, Bungie, and Epic Games just to name a few. Hell, Hasbro just took an axe to over 1000 jobs, and I haven’t even gotten to media publications. On that front we saw layoffs from Buzzfeed, Vice Waypoint, Kotaku, IGN, and a mass walkout at The Escapist. Let me also slip in that Bandcamp saw half its staff laid off after Epic sold the company to Songtradr. At this point we can only hope the bleeding stops or slows down in 2024.

4. More Tech Companies Acting badly

As if mass layoffs weren’t bad enough, we still have tech companies acting badly. Let’s start with Google. Last year we complained about the increasing number of ads on YouTube videos. This year, things have only gotten worse at YouTube, as the company has sought to discourage people from using adblockers while browsing the site. A few weeks ago many users were greeted with the prompt to either turn off their adblockers or buy YouTube Premium, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to use the site. Yes, it makes sense this is YouTube’s primary way of generating revenue. Even so, the ad breaks are sometimes longer than the video itself, there are numerous badly placed ads that break the flow of a video, and some ads are unskippable.
On the Chrome side of things, Google wants to limit ad blockers in 2024. If the majority of Google’s revenue comes from ads, it checks out that the company would want to limit said ad blockers. That said, browsing the web without being able to block ads can be dangerous, in addition to being a massive invasion of privacy.
Some other examples of tech companies acting badly include Reddit charging for its API (a la Twitter), and as a result forcing many third-party app developers to shutter their services. Many moderators closed their Subreddits in protest, only to have Reddit remove them and reopen their communities with new volunteer moderators.
Twitch rolled out new guidelines dealing with promoted content and had to walk those guidelines back after user anger.
Netflix removed the ability to share passwords outside the home for users after promoting the practice for years. They were rewarded with a massive boost in signups and other companies such as Disney implementing similar plans. Worse, they raised prices yet again in 2023.

5. The Famous and Powerful Acting Badly

When is there a year when the famous and powerful aren’t acting badly? To keep this list from getting stupidly long, I’m going to limit this to two examples that fit into what we cover on this blog. Justin Roiland was accused of sending sexually charged texts and DMs to fans of his work, and some of them were underage. This allegedly went on from 2013 to 2022, with some people claiming they had sex with the co-creator of Rick and Morty while they were underage. Roiland had domestic abuse charges dropped earlier this year, but his issues with these sexual assault claims continue to haunt him. Folks, don’t meet your heroes especially if they slide into your DMs with very creepy messages.
Stockton Rush wasn’t well known outside marine submersible and Titanic exploration communities. That changed when he and four other people met their grisly end on June 18. The Titan submersible Rush piloted imploded on its way to visit the wreckage of the Titanic thousands of feet below the ocean’s surface. Because the owner and the passengers of the Titan were wealthy, no expense was spared during rescue efforts when it was believed the submersible was still lost at sea. (As many pointed out at the time, those same rescue efforts were not afforded to a sinking refugee ship off the coast of Greece where many migrants drowned due a lack of rescue resources.) Later, the world learned the Titan imploded because Rush believed safety rules were just in the way of innovation. Sadly, if those four passengers on the Titan had known about Rush’s cavalier attitude toward safety, they might have rethought doing business with OceanGate.

1. The NFT Craze is Finally Over

NFTs have been on the decline since 2022, but 2023 saw a few stragglers try to cash in despite the bust. For example, we just saw former President Donald Trump release another round of digital trading cards earlier this week. Otherwise, we saw numerous companies ditching their NFT plans. One of the biggest stories of this year was Meta dumping its plans to get into NFTs and the blockchain as a whole. No doubt, the parent company of Facebook was still smarting from its dive into the Metaverse and VR as a whole outside of gaming. Now the biggest news coming from the NFT space is how digital collections are still being stolen. Sure, we have AI to deal with, but I’m so very glad the digital collectable future turned out to be little more than an overpriced fad.

2. More Third-Party Services Give Mastodon a Try

As the fallout from Twitter being run into the ground continues, a few notable places have survived the microblogging social networking shakeup. Avid users of social media have largely settled on Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon.
Threads, owned by Meta, had the most early momentum when it launched this year by basically being Instagram with a text element, and being attached to millions upon millions of accounts on the social network. Upon its launch, Threads signed up more than 100 million users. However, that impressive number dropped to just over 13 million two weeks later.
Bluesky saw a steady growth, as many users saw it as the replacement most similar to Twitter in the early days. As of this writing, it boasts over 2 million users, but basic features such as DMs, hashtags, private accounts, video posting, and scheduling tools are setbacks. At its inception, blocking wasn’t even possible. Like Threads, Bluesky promises to be decentralized and will run on its own AT Protocol, a rival protocol to ActivityPub. ActivityPub already powers the larger Fediverse, including Mastodon and Threads plans to federate on this protocol.
While many people have written off Mastodon as too difficult to use, it boasts over 10 million users. The social network recently received a huge boost in third-party support, something that’s sorely lacking with Threads and Bluesky. For example, popular social media productivity tools such as Buffer and Dlvr.it added support for Mastodon earlier this year. Also, popular app makers such as Tapbots, The BLVD, Inc, and Sengi have created third-party apps for Mastodon, vastly improving the experience for a majority of users. To boot, Mastodon has existed as a Twitter alternative since 2016 and boasts numerous features not yet available on Threads or Bluesky. (Many users are still waiting for quote toots, and yes, they’re coming.) Here’s to hoping that other services on the Fediverse will also see more third-party support.

3. Unionization Strikes Hard

Last year we saw a number of union strikes. This year strikes and the threat of strikes hit hard, and unlike previous years, strikers largely had the support of the public. Notable strikes include WGA (Writers Guild of America), SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists), and UAW (United Auto Workers). All of these unions went on strike for months, with WGA’s strike being the second longest in its history at 148 days and SAG’s lasting for 118 days. The strikes cost the California economy over $6 billion in lost revenue due to all the employees and businesses impacted by the strike. All because of the AMPTP’s (Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers) stubbornness. It’s clear they could have easily afforded everything the striking writers and actors were asking for, and ultimately made those concessions. It’s hard to make an argument about not being able to afford to pay labor when CEOs are taking home tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars per year in compensation. Let’s hope the AMPTP remembers this when contracts are up in a few short years.
On the UAW side the strike lasted for about 45 days and employees won huge in their concessions from the big three automakers.
Another big win for unions came when Teamsters averted strike with UPS at the last minute. In full disclosure, I am a member of Teamsters.

4. Orcas Become the Ultimate Sea Trolls

For reasons not quite understood by scientists, there has been an uptick in the number of incidents of orcas sinking boats in the Iberian Peninsula in recent years. This year garnered the most attention. Most researchers have theorized that a traumatic incident in the past has caused pods of these sea mammals to attack boats off the coasts of Spain. Others suggest it may be a fun pastime that’s part of a larger fad. I wager that the orcas are sick of humans and technology in their waters and have decided to do something about it. This just my opinion, but let me have this one.

5. Some Famous and Powerful People Get Comeuppance

2023 has been a notable year in which famous and powerful people actually got some comeuppance for their bad behaviors. Sam Bankman-Fried was an entrepreneur worth billions when he headed cryptocurrency exchange, FTX. Earlier this year he was found guilty of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy for defrauding customers. He’ll spend decades in jail, and has another trial waiting for him in March.
Earlier this year Fox News settled a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million dollars. This was a result of the network carrying lies about the 2020 election, even as many at the news corporation knew the claims were false. The corporation still has an ongoing lawsuit with Smartmatic.
Shortly after the lawsuit settled, Fox News fired their prime time host, Tucker Carlson. Speculation swirled about his firing being related to the settlement with Dominion, but the truth may be as simple as him alienating many of his colleagues at Fox News. He streamed his show on Twitter, but only saw a fraction of the viewership he did while on Fox, despite claims from the social media network suggesting otherwise. In the end, Carlson has launched his own website for exclusive content, but his influence has been diminished since his ouster from network cable TV.
On the Justin Roiland side, shortly after his accusations came to light he was dropped from Rick and Morty, Solar Opposites, and Koala Man. In Rick and Morty, Roiland was replaced as a voice actor by Ian Cardoni (Rick), Harry Belden (Morty), and Jon Allen (Mr. Poopy Butthole). In Solar Opposites, Roiland was replaced by Dan Stevens (Korvo), and in Koala Man Roiland’s voiced character, Chad Wagon, was killed off– notably before the allegations came to light because Roiland was that difficult to work with. It’s nice these productions didn’t rush to defend someone with so many issues, despite his prominence in these series.
Let’s not forget the fall of Illuminaughtii, allegedly revealed to be little more than an abusive and manipulative employer and YouTube commentator. Ironically, her downfall was kicked off by her accusing a lawyer of plagiarizing the graphics effects she used in her videos.