you've sold your swag! it's gone now! – ep. 170

Emotionally Online

In this solo episode of 'Emotionally Online,' host Maddie Drossbeck reflects on her childhood summers in a small Maine beach town, contrasting its nostalgic charm with the current

Key takeaways

• AI-generated branding is stripping local communities of charm and personality, leading to a homogenized, soulless aesthetic.
• The loss of 'swag'—individuality and creative expression—is a cultural sacrifice made in the name of productivity and speed.

Main topics

• AI-generated design and its impact on local aesthetics
• The cultural loss of 'swag' in modern branding

Notable quotes

You sold your swag to speed run through your own life.

I would rather see art from your nephew as the logo of your brand than you using AI.

Conclusion

Maddie concludes that while the world may be trending toward soulless AI design, true

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) You can't allow yourself to believe that if only you massaged yourself to be a little bit different than they would like you. You can't position it where they have all of this power to reject you socially and you have no agency whatsoever because at the end of the day are these the kinds of people that you would want to be friends with? I'm assuming the answer is no. You have agency here as well to look at the situation and say, these are not the kinds of people that I would want to be friends with. You're obviously invited, so call me back. I love you. Speaker 1 (0:49) What's up you guys and welcome back to Emotionally Online, the weekly slur party for heart to hearts and a hot gossip hosted by yours truly, the one and only Maddie Drossbeck who's hitting you with a solo episode this week because as you can see, if you watch the video version of this show, I am not in our usual setup. I'm actually visiting my parents right now up in Maine, sitting on their front porch with a nice cold DC. Life doesn't quite get better than this, people. This week, I've not been in Grind City, but I have been in Rant City, which I'm very familiar with. And honestly, you guys are probably very familiar with it too, because I have lived in Rant City for a long time. Unfortunately for you and everyone else on earth, I do be talking. I do be talking and I do love to talk. And being in the town my parents live in this week has stirred up some thoughts inside my brain. My parents live up in Maine now and where they live is where I used to spend summers as a kid. My parents don't live in my hometown anymore, thank God, because Lord knows I don't want to go back to Hopkinton, Massachusetts with peace and love, babe, except rarely any peace and love comes out of my mouth when I'm talking about my hometown. Anyways, that's a different story for a different time. Growing up, I spent every single summer here. And I've said this before on the podcast, but I actually hated it at the time because we didn't have Wi-Fi at the house. And I only wanted to be on YouTube.com making little videos to share with all of my virtual friends. So I was always pissed. pissed because I'd be making videos. I'd be like, let's go record. And I'm fully like walking around town with my little mini PC recording myself off the webcam. I was so free. I really, I didn't experience or understand what people meant when they talked about being cringe or feeling embarrassed. I don't think I've felt that emotion. So growing up, I really didn't love it here. because I did not have internet access and I was a brat. But then as I got older and we did get a wifi fucking router at this house, I grew to love it. And I have many fond memories here as a child. And it's kind of like the perfect summer town. When you think inside your head, like a perfect little beach town in a movie, it's like last day of summer, indie movie montage. The kids are ripping one last weekend. It's the last weekend of summer. We've got to do it up and save. the community before we all go back to school. Boo. And it's like the pop-up fair and you're making out on the Ferris wheel and then you're getting a twist soft serve ice cream in a cone with sprinkles and then you're hitting the arcade and then you're sleeping on the beach at night. Those are the vibes in this town. Very much so. And I always found that vibe very charming. I think most of us do. It really is like, last day of summer indie movie montage. Those are the vibes. And in towns like this, usually it's just a bunch of small businesses. And so with that comes a lot of real, like mom and pop looking graphic design, which I love. I don't care if your business graphics were done by your fucking four-year-old nephew. I like... the charm, the personality, getting to walk down the boardwalk, getting to walk down the street and see all these little shops that have popped up with their very unique one of one looking branding, small beach town shop vibes. I love it. Okay. I have something devastating to announce, which if you're alive in the world and have your eyes open, I'm sure you've noticed this as well. But it was particularly heartbreaking to me to see this in The beach town that I grew up going to. And the thing that I've noticed this time around is the ways in which AI graphic design and branding have absolutely stripped the beach boardwalk of any personality, flavor, and charm. It makes me feel a sickness deep inside my bones, okay? I... look at a poster designed with AI and I feel a white hot rage just burning inside of me and I feel very confused that other people don't seem to feel that white hot rage. I don't know what's going on but I was thinking about this. Because I'm like, you know how we look to like the 60s, 70s, 80s, and we're like, God, that style, the vibe, the fonts that were used, the like style of cars, of furniture. It's not just clothes. It's everything. It's design styles. We look back at that time and we're like, oh, it was sick. It has such like an individual perspective to it. It's so specific to that era. I say 70s design style. You know exactly what I'm talking about. And I had a moment where I was like, oh, my God, when people like 50, 100 years from now talk about the design style of the 2020s, they are going to talk about us like we are the. ugliest swagless motherfuckers on the face of the planet and I'm having you know right now that I'm not taking credit for it so when your grandkids are like what the fuck is up with your generation how come everything that came out of this era was absolutely fucking swagless and looks like it was designed by someone who hates art and hates being alive and actually wants to die tomorrow and they're all gonna look at you and be like oh how did you let this happen and I'm gonna go yeah how did you let that happen big guy Uh-huh. Because I'm not taking credit for it. No, you will not be blaming me for the poor design choices that you guys have adopted by embracing AI to the degree in which you have. Okay? I didn't take the charm out of the beach boardwalks. You bitches did. In the name of what? You sold your swag for productivity? You sold your swag to speed run through your own life? Speaker 1 (7:16) Like it really gets me so fucking heated. But I'm truly not exaggerating even a little bit when I say that I would rather see art from your nephew as the logo of your brand than you using AI. Let's say you're, I wish I had like a paper and pen in front of me right now because I'd literally draw what I think you should do. But like, let's say your ice cream shop name is called Cone. I would rather you tell a preschooler to write the word cone as shittily as possible and then like draw a cloud around it. So it kind of looks like the top of an ice cream and then you draw a cone on it and then boom, there it is. It's got character. It's got charm. Okay. It's built, designed by the family, by this four-year-old fucking prodigy we've got over here. I would rather you do that than give me some bullshit AI slop designed nonsense that is just uglifying the whole goddamn world. We're going to have to answer for these crimes someday. Okay. The crimes that you guys are committing, making everything ugly and swagless. It's, like I said, I'm not taking credit for this. I'm not taking the blame. When all of your grandkids are like, what the fuck is wrong with your generation? I'm going to sit next to them and go, damn right. What the fuck was wrong with our generation? Jesus Christ. I get hung up on a new part of the AI fucking spiral every day of the week. But really positioning it like you sold your swag to speed run through your own life. When I wrote that one down, I was like, no, that really bothers me. Selling your swag to speed run through your own life. Giving up your ability to cultivate swag in pursuit of doing something as quickly as humanly possible. I think I need to buy a gun, actually. What the hell is going on? And you know what I think is so funny is that whenever I rant about AI, someone's like, God, you're so negative. We're here now. You just have to embrace the future, queen. Whatever. And it's like, I actually feel that my resistance to this nonsense is an act of like. defiance and optimism. I don't feel that I'm being pessimistic about it all. I actually feel like accepting it is being pessimistic, being like, there's nothing we can do. We just live in slop city now. Well, get with the times. We like slop. Oink, oink. Like, I'm not going to do that. And it's because I'm an optimist. And it's because I believe in people to be better and do better and to have higher taste palates. And my other thing. sorry to keep fucking going on this tangent but i find it perplexing when i'll say i said this to a family member recently i was like i think about ai every single day and they were like how how do you think about ai every single day they thought i was exaggerating like the roman empire shit they thought that i was doing what men did two years ago where they were like yeah i think about the roman empire every day no the fuck you don't they thought i was doing that I think about AI every single day. I panic about AI every single day. They're like, well, how do you do that? I'm like, how do you not? You can't avoid it. I walk down the street. I look at a business's logo, the flyer in the window, and I'm pissed off. It's everywhere. It's not that I can just stop thinking about it. I'm reminded of it every second of every goddamn day because the world is becoming uglier. And I genuinely feel like if you don't notice that, you must not have your finger on the pulse. Do you not have a perspective on art and culture? I just have to believe that your taste palette isn't that refined. No offense. Or maybe offense. You can take offense to that if you want. Speaker 1 (11:06) I just think that we should believe in ourselves more. We should believe in people's ability to create more. We should be more comfortable with the process and with things being imperfect. And I think that people should have more pride in doing something themselves, even if it's shitty, even if it fucking sucks. I would rather you do it yourself than do the AI slop nonsense. Because by the way, it doesn't look good. AI Slop successfully picks a font and puts every single word that you gave it on the page. It's like I'm overwhelmed. I went to a restaurant the other night where they had fucking AI images of every single meal, which by the way, completely unhelpful. Doesn't make me want to order a specific item any more than if you just gave me the name. but not only that but they had like fucking every single special had its own graphic and it was like kids eat free wednesdays and it's like i'm overwhelmed with information Speaker 1 (12:13) You giving AI all this stuff, you're like, okay, I want all of this shit on the menu, make it. The AI doesn't understand what is actually good design, what's effective design, what the best way to communicate the message to your consumer is. It's dumb, it's stupid, and it's making something shitty. It's just successfully picking a font for you and putting it on a page so you don't have to. It looks bad though. Again, call your nephew. He'll do a better job. Speaker 1 (12:43) I'm sick, guys. I'm absolutely fucking sick about it. So anyways, that's where I've been residing. Feet firmly planted in Rant City because I am an optimist and I do believe that continuing to talk about this stuff, we are better off for it. I think we have to keep talking and keep calling it out. I don't think that... putting our hands up and being like, well, what can we do? It's already here. Guess we're stuck. And being like, oh, fuck it. I guess I'm going to do nothing because there's nothing I can do. Reacting to the world like we're so powerless to do anything about it, I just think is, that's the pessimistic decision. That's the thing that leaves you stuck in one place. You're giving up. I would rather see people angry and passionate and fired up and talking about this shit on a loop every single day than saying, well, what can we do? Accept it? No. I will never accept bullshit nonsense, okay? I am team artist and team creative until the day that I die, and I like living in a creative world. I like living in a world where I walk down the street and get to look at all these tiny, small businesses that have designed their own worlds in the signage and the way their shop looks. Like, that means something to me. I like walking through the world and seeing creativity. Fuck. Speaker 1 (14:03) this feels like a crazy conversation to be having. Like if you told 14 year old me that this was going to be the conversation when I was damn near 30, I'd be like, so what do I do? What do we do to stop that? And I'd be like, I don't even know. I don't know. I don't know how we got here. How do we get here? Speaker 1 (14:25) Okay. In better news, because we need some optimism around here. Actually, I've got two pieces of good news. I've got a piece of good news that impacts the world. And I've got another piece of good news that is a personal good news. So the good news that impacts the world is that I saw on the news a couple days ago that they have some really promising research when it comes to a vaccine that you can get to prevent melanoma from coming back if you've had it. And that is so exciting. My mom has had skin cancer several times. And so this has been a hot topic in my household. And it's like, that's amazing. That's so incredible that we get to see in our lifetimes science. advance in the healthcare space to the point where we'll be able to see something like melanoma, the rates for that drop downwards exponentially because we're actually finding treatments that work. That's awesome. And it only points towards even more good news to come