shlebs

These tweets are for me but I hope you like them

[Janel Comeau 🍁 @VeryBadLlama]

don’t make me tap the sign

[Adam Neely @its_adamneely]

Lead investor of Suno confirming that people who use Suno stop listening to all music that they don't create themselves on-app.

Commercial genAI creates cultural isolation, sold to consumers as "personalization."

[shlebs @itsmeshlebs]

This man never misses I swear

[Adam Neely @its_adamneely]

man, people sure do love finding insane justifications to be mad at that jacob collier orchestra video.

[Boston Mom @LaGrecca333]

Hot take but I think replacing alcohol and cigarettes with SSRIs and anxiety medication and legalizing marijuana has been a terrible mistake.

[shlebs @itsmeshlebs]

Seen lots of reasonably bright people become stupid due to this

[Meredith Whittaker @mer__edith]

One of my most deeply held beliefs is that refusing to name truth makes you stupid--literally degrades your intellect.

Engaging in mental gymnastics to justify what's convenient but unevidenced, unjust but personally beneficial, 'rewires your neural map' in ways that degrade your overall ability to understand and analyze the world around you, which is a precondition for intelligence and creativity.

[奶奶 capital @testinprodcap]

It’s actually crazy how China was right about everything:

Banning porn, banning gambling, banning crypto, limiting video games to kids, banning loot boxes, hukou, executing drug dealers, controlling social media.

Yea, prostitution happens but at least u got a step out the house

[sleeps10122 @sleeping_10122]

A lot of y’all beliefs about the opposite gender aren’t insight, they’re projections. So many of y’all lack the mental capacity to step outside yourself long enough to understand your counterpart.

[chaotic memes @memechaotic]

It’s such a banger though.

[twinkmoder @twinkmoder]

Not a fan of people pretending incel influencers are secretly gay when they are very clearly straight and extremely insecure 30 year old boys

[shlebs @itsmeshlebs]

Also re: AI - at least for now, it's mostly text-based, and I foresee that being at least a common mode of use going forward. I don't think reading comprehension skills have ever been more important than they are now. The humans of tomorrow must be voracious readers

[shlebs @itsmeshlebs]

and TikTok stars are just faces slapped onto music for branding. They're not particularly musically gifted, but behind them is a team of audio engineers convincing you they are. Lots of music was already slop. AI just accelerates what already happened

[shlebs @itsmeshlebs]

Everyone's mad about AI music as if music hadn't already turned to slop at some point. We listen to lofi playlists knowing none of the artists or song names, pop music is an entire industry of basically factory music, designed to be easily consumable more than anything else 1/2

[Antarktikos 🧭 @EUREKAMAXXING]

This is the "free speech" we boast about having in the anglosphere: Freedom of foolish, vacuous and inconsequential yap.

[Vivid Void @vividvoid]

The Westboro Baptist Church won. Everyone is a totally, unnecessarily incendiary idiot now, so embedded in hyperreal performance they've forgotten they were doing it for the clicks.

The only saving grace is that AI will destroy the information environment by the end of the year

[shlebs @itsmeshlebs]

This is what ppl with corporate jobs sound like when they try to convince you sending emails and having Zoom meetings for 40 hours a week is hard. No self-awareness from anyone

[LIL TAY @liltay]

Being an OF model is genuinely one of the hardest jobs in the modern economy, and people only deny that because they fundamentally misunderstand what the work actually involves.

It is not “posting a few pics and getting rich” It is running a full scale digital business where we are the product, the brand, the marketing team, customer support, PR, legal risk, and emotional labor all at once.

We conceptualize content, plan shoots, manage lighting, editing, scheduling, and consistency across multiple platforms just to stay visible in algorithms that actively punish inactivity. We market nonstop while navigating constantly shifting platform rules that can erase income overnight through shadowbans, reports, or policy changes. We manage subscriptions, pricing, custom requests, retention, upsells, daily engagement, and audience psychology in an oversaturated market where attention is fleeting and competition is ruthless.

On top of that, we face unprovoked harassment simply for working. Strangers feel entitled to insult us, degrade us, moralize our existence, and treat us as less intelligent or less human because of how we earn money. People project resentment and insecurity onto us, then turn around and claim we “don’t have real jobs” while actively consuming or obsessing over the content they pretend to hate.

There is no HR department. No paid time off. No benefits. No guaranteed paycheck. Income fluctuates based on algorithms, audience behavior, platform instability, and public sentiment. We are always “on” because disappearing for even a short period can permanently damage earnings and visibility.

And unlike most jobs, our work follows us everywhere. It is permanent, searchable, and endlessly judged by people who will never meet us but feel comfortable forming loud opinions about our character, intelligence, and worth.

Calling this “easy” says less about the work and more about how quickly people dismiss labor once it becomes sexualized, stigmatized, or financially successful outside traditional systems. If it were actually easy, everyone would be doing it successfully. Most don’t last.

You don’t have to respect the industry. You don’t have to participate in it. But pretending it isn’t demanding, mentally taxing, real work is willful ignorance at best and insecurity at worst.

[shlebs @itsmeshlebs]

@ApolloKage Homeboi improved today and got clowned on. That's all I needed to know about the internet...

[shlebs @itsmeshlebs]

Social media has filled our heads with a million witticisms, waiting for the perfect moment to be unleashed. But we all know the witticisms, so they're not funny or clever. The good news is that funny ppl are still funny, but most ppl aren't as funny as they think they are

[Cairo Smith @cairoasmith]

Unfortunately the tumblrfication of the left and the chanification of the right seems complete in America.