Hollywood Writers That Wouldn't Pass a Captcha Test

Writers strike for better pay and working conditions. Their demands about AI however...

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Hi there my fellow performative activists and welcome back to this GoFundMe campaign where we try to give Vin Diesel a character arc in the Furious movies.

He had none in the new one, of course. He reprises his role as the same old stoic potato muttering life-coach lines about the importance of his pedigree — and it's bad. It's so bad some viewers wondered whether they had just watched ChatGPT's big break as a screenwriter.

But enough small talk. In today's issue, we offer our armchair support to the Oompa-Loompas of the Motion Picture Factory: human Hollywood writers. If you've been wondering why Spider-Man hasn't been remade in a whole three weeks, this is it. Our friends here have finally come out of the tiny little mini cubicles they work in to strike for better pay and working conditions.

So yeah, prepare for a lackluster catalog of Netflix & Chill next fall, because the only lines coming out of the writers' room are gonna be catchy rhymes for picket signs.

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This strike has given me a bittersweet realization though

On the one hand, I'm a QWERTY smasher myself. I can sympathize with the feeling of being so undervalued and overworked that you'd start to believe it's actually impossible to make it in showbiz without pretending to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein.

And we're not talking about a stimulus check-dependent industry here; Hollywood is a $100 billion business, and they have the audacity to cut costs on their anonymous backbone? I get that Tom Cruise's insurance is expensive, but this star-power wage gap makes me wanna shout expletives through a megaphone.

Writers, however, made a demand I can't get behind

They said they want to ban artificial intelligence?

As in, prohibiting movie studios from using AI to generate derivative scripts and stereotyped works, potentially ruining the quality and integrity of modern storytelling by turning it into a conveyor belt of formulaic, inauthentic, unoriginal cash grabs?

My question is, why?

Oh right — cause that’s literally been their job for decades

Do you know what's the fatal weakness of these AIs? They can't come up with anything truly original. They can only ape whatever they've been fed during training. There is no true inspiration; only parody and mimicry.

This means the only thing human writers needed to do to future-proof themselves against it was not writing eight fucking movies about rescuing Matt Damon, but oh damn — it's too late now. They've spoon-fed the algorithms with too much source material. Now any movie studio can get on the waiting list for GPT-4 and whip up a decent draft for the ninth at minimum overhead costs.

I'm not trying to throw shade on writers here, but you gotta understand movie studios. Why provide dental coverage for 20 people when you can just have one AI turbo-tackling scripts and then hire a human editor to polish them up on Fiverr for $4.99?

With the amount of Harry Potter fanfiction available on the internet, even my Thermomix could be trained to write this whole ass show.

"But studios aren't buying original ideas anymore"

Take a moment to realize how naive that statement is.

The studios don't want original ideas? My dear reader, the studios want all the ideas. Snakes on a plane, starring Samuel L. Jackson? Have a green light.

A tornado, but made of sharks, and with enough sequels to spawn a cult following? Sounds like summer blockbuster season.

A movie based on a Disney World ride featuring Johnny Depp? Give me six.

“Watch Leonardo DiCaprio take a series of naps for 2 and a half hours, then leave the theater wondering whether he was sleeping the whole time, actually."

Hollywood doesn't give a fuck about creative integrity. They just throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. Remember Cuties? That was Netflix at the height of the streaming wars saying "Yes, we're sexualizing little girls, but subscriber counts are down and there's a whole child molesting demographic out there no one's catering to yet."

“And we wanna grope down their pants and touch them in their wallets."

Like it or not, reboots, sequels, and adaptations are what make bank these days

We could put on our Yeezy merch and a couple of tinfoil hats and talk about how this is a conspiracy plotted by the "Jews that run Hollywood." You know: push recycled franchises, get us hooked on nostalgia-baits and cinematic universes, and then automate the whole thing with the One ChatGPT API Key to Write Them All.

But the truth is, the Jews aren't in control — we are.

We, the consumers, are the ones making The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 two of the highest-grossing films of the year so far. One, an adaptation. The other, a sequel. Both starring Chris Pratt.

Coincidence?

Probably.

More Pratt-starred reboots are coming anyway.

We, the people, decide what sells

You may be more or less a fan of superheroes, but their cultural resonance is undeniable. We live in times of extreme "good vs evil" polarization and widespread powerlessness, and something about super-powered individuals sausaged into spandex costumes fighting crime helps us cope with that.

Same with zombie stories, dystopian young adult romances, and whatever kids are binging on these days. These things are popular for a reason. They strike a chord with our collective consciousness; they resonate with what we cherish and what we fear as a society.

How do you think Andrew Tate reached peak pop culture? Simple; none of us wanted to be friends with our respective quiet kids at school, so now there is a legion of deranged, asocial schizoids calling him a “top g” in the comments section.

A group of desperate people engaging in an extreme form of competitive spectacle, willing to risk everything for what it's essentially financial security? Sounds a lot like one of our Tuesdays to me.

So what does our obsession with rebooting the past say about us?

Sure as hell doesn't mean we're all clapping our asscheeks in excitement for the future — why would we? Seeing what ChatGPT can do now, all fresh out of Beta testing, it's hard to imagine any future where humans can get a job outside the "Convert oxygen to carbon dioxide" sector.

So I understand Hollywood writers. I relate to their confused Pikachu faces and their fear of obsolescence. After all, it was only a few years ago that robots were still having trouble writing a 6-character-long Captcha — now they can write Seinfeld? What the fuck happened?

The first instinct is to resist, to fight back; to take a long hard look at your LinkedIn Premium subscription and wonder whether it's even worth keeping it anymore.

But I also think they're exaggerating

Saying chatbots are the end of writers is like saying cars are the end of legs. It's a preposterous notion. But that's how fear of obsolescence works I guess.

Look where you're reading this — the internet was said to end the publishing industry, yet here we are. Magazines pivoted to dotcom domains and printer ink still sells at the price range of canned unicorn sperm. In the end, everybody wins.

As new technologies emerge, some industries adapt, some jobs disappear, and yes, some people are made redundant. This is not "corporate greed," this is just progress; it's society shifting things around so we may accommodate the future.

AI right now may feel like a cataclysmic disruption, but I bet it unfolds like every other technological disruption in history — unexpectedly. So hold your fan theories, for when it comes to unexpected outcomes, reality always beats fiction.

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Anyway, I'm all talked out. Signing off for now, but in the words of Chris Pratt's father-in-law...

"I'll be back."

Stay cocky,

Loudt