It feels like typical AI-generated work.
The amount and density of information, as well as the overall quality, increase every year, but somehow it all seems to be heading in the same direction. In any case, it still hasn’t reached a level where it can express any real creative taste, so it’s rejected.
The real battle will begin when an engineer indistinguishable from a human developer is typing away at a keyboard, and a Terminator shows up completely naked to kill me and my grandchildren.
In Japan, we already have cat-eared robots delivering food at family restaurants—but they’re still on wheels. Evolution is way too slow. At this rate, I’ll die of old age before AI ever comes to kill me.
People trying to make money from viral videos have been making a huge fuss about how amazing AI is since around 2020, but honestly, its progress feels slow enough to make me yawn. Both software-based AI and physical AI need to hurry the hell up.
Just yesterday, I still had to clean my car windows myself.
This isn’t the future I was told about when I was in elementary school.
According to the books about the 21st century that I read as a child, we should have had robot chefs in our homes by now. Nuclear-powered jumbo jets should have been flying through the skies. Android tutors equipped with artificial intelligence should have been coming to help children with their summer vacation homework. Cars shouldn’t merely have been self-driving—they should have been flying along sky highways. Fathers should have been commuting to work from cities beneath the ocean. Humanity should already have begun colonizing Mars. Every movie should have featured incredible three-dimensional imagery without the need for 3D glasses. Game developers shouldn’t even exist anymore—you should have been able to shout, “I want to play an amazing game!” and then play GTA 6 on your wristwatch for about two dollars’ worth of electricity. And above all, it was supposed to be a peaceful world where crime was something you could experience only inside video games.
And yet, what does the modern world actually look like?
In Paris and Tokyo, we still live through day after day of dog owners failing to pick up their dogs’ shit while out on walks.
This isn’t the future I was promised.
Every day, I’m reminded that we’re still the ones who have to keep pushing things forward.
Keiji Muto is signing WWE action figures from his living room and calling it "printing money" and that's just the opening chapter of one of the most candid interviews about the Japanese wrestling industry you'll read.
Speaking to Weekly Bunshun, Muto covered everything from Great Muta royalties to why second-generation wrestlers never break through in Japan... and why he was born 30 years too early.
On his continued American popularity from just one year of active Muta work in 1989: "I think a big reason is that my old match footage is used at the NXT Performance Center as educational material for young wrestlers."
He watched his own old matches back recently and came to a firm conclusion: "If I were young right now, I'd be making a fortune in the U.S." His one regret? "If I could live my life over, I'd make sure to study English properly as a kid. That's the single biggest hurdle for Japanese wrestlers."
His WrestleMania observations cut to the heart of the cultural divide. Watching this year's show, he noticed Rikishi's twin sons, Rikishi's nephew Jacob Fatu, Ric Flair's daughter, Rick Steiner's son, Dusty Rhodes' son and Bob Orton's son all featured across two nights. "In Japan, the narrative around second-generation talent is always centred on 'surpassing the father.' But over there, it's viewed as carrying on a family tradition, so being a second-generation wrestler works in your favour. In Japan, it works against you."
His conclusion: "Second-generation wrestlers in Japan almost never break out. That's been the case ever since Rikidozan II."
On the Japanese training system, he was equally cutting. The infamous 3,000 daily squats weren't a method - they were a symptom: "When rookies were forced to do 3,000 squats a day, it was largely because the trainers themselves didn't actually know what or how to teach." Bump drills designed to prevent injury were being used to cause them: "The means and the end got completely reversed."
His vision for the future was provocative: offer elite salaries to wrestlers in their 20s, let them go free agent at 35 and head overseas on their own terms. "Young people nowadays choose careers based on compensation. Let them earn well while they are young, and once they build their reputation and skill, they can use their own leverage." His broader warning was clear: "In any form of entertainment, if you don't draw in a younger audience, your future is grim."
What do you think of his words?🤔