Chappell Roan, Mumsnet and John Mulaney
Autumn turned up real faster than this newsletter
Chappell Roan is everywhere, everyone, all at once
We’ve spoken a lot about fandoms and why they’re becoming weird. But with Chappell Roan, the American queer pop sweetheart who has risen to astronomical fame this year, the concept of fandom is facing a reckoning.
For those who don’t know, Chappell Roan is a brilliant pop artist, who has spoken out about the abuse that she has faced at the hands of “fans” including stalking, doxxing and sexual harassment. She has later clarified that she’s not speaking to all her fans. but those who harass her and might happen to be fans.
It’s been a long accepted part of being pop-star famous - your fans are your paychecks, and along the way you might have the occasional uncomfortable experience. The 2010s saw the rise of Stan Twitter, obsessed tumblr blogs and, video essay breaking down the lore of One Direction.
But now, with a generation armed with therapy speak, such as “parasocial relations”, are becoming stars and fans. So there is intense policing happening within the fandoms. Pop stars and fans alike are reckoning with fame, social media presence and “the discourse”. The worshipping of stars isn’t quite the same - often celebrities are treated as part of the online culture, and can be flattened the same way stars of viral videos can be. Pop stars are just another part of our online discourse.
But they get to be seen a lot more! And with Roan, that seems to be the case, with months old interviews of hers continuously being repacked and shared by accounts like PopCrave. Interviews have been repackaged as small posts on various platforms and stripped of any larger context, making it seem like things from months ago are happening now!
A few people are predicting that this is going to be a mark in the sand for how we talk about celebrity and fandoms. We might see a push back of being a stan to the fringes or celebrities refusing to take part in the “discourse” anymore.
Nvidia? I barely know her.
Nvidia is the company making the computer chips that have powered the AI boom, including Open AI’s ChatGPT. Some analysts estimate that Nvidia already controls 98% of the market for data centre GPUs. And as Max von Thun argues, a lot of how they have reached this market domination is by squeezing out any competition - with bundles that aren’t competitive with others and locking in customers. By looking at Nvidia through anti-monopoly laws, Nvidia could be facing backlash and prosecution to avoid repeating the same mistakes made with Web 2.0.
Mums the human-generated word
Mumsnet has its issues i.e it’s overwhelmingly crowded by TERFs, Karens and helicopter parents. But somehow, on the topic of AI, it’s fighting back. Kind of. Wired reports that after discovering that OpenAI were scraping data from the site, Mumsnet tried to strike up a licensing deal. After this failed, Mumsnet decided it was going to sue! This could be the first copyright claim of AI in the UK of this scale. So - yay! *In the Receipts Podcast voice* Hooooooowever, they are still pursuing licensing agreements with other AI training companies, such as Google. They claim this is a chance to mitigate bias by ensuring that female points of view are part of the data set *sigh* AI feminism strikes again.
John Mulaney rinsed the Salesforce Festival and here are some highlights
“If AI is truly smarter than us and tells us that [humans] should die, then I think we should die”
"Can AI sit there in a fleece vest? Can AI not go to events and spend all day at a bar?"
“The fact that there are 45,000 ‘trailblazers’ here couldn’t devalue the title anymore."
Thank you for your service Mr Mulany.
And finally:
We’re going to Society 5.0 - if you’re in Amsterdam say hi!
UK Hobby Horse championships (not a typo)
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Arda + Savena
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