> Throughout all of this, Horse News was the only stable work I had.
Only a good writer, that truly enjoys their craft, is able to masterfully insert a witty dry pun like that into their work. Bravo!
Waterluvian · 7h ago
It’s a good pun but let’s not pretend that it takes a professional writer. I mean, have you met dads?
fractallyte · 7h ago
> I root for Horse Laws and grow sad when a state bucks them.
Another cute one!
xandrius · 4h ago
Calling the horse/stable job a witty pun today is quite a stretch.
90s_dev · 4h ago
Maybe I'm just old and tired, but this pun is exactly like what you'd find in a movie review, which is literally the worst type of literature for that exact reason, and should be banned worldwide.
noduerme · 2h ago
Don't be so hard on movie reviewers. They're mostly just alcoholics on pensions who found a reasonably good retirement gig. Also, they have more random esoteric knowledge about movie shit than anyone in our industry has about anything.
ggm · 9h ago
This would be an instance of those mimetic "how I got to own a house at 29" stories where the first 6 steps are rational and the seventh is "have rich parents"
For most people, writing is not sufficiently lucrative to sustain a living income and supplements other income streams or is net negative.
Also: read "new grub street" by George Gissing, 1891
vouaobrasil · 24m ago
> This would be an instance of those mimetic "how I got to own a house at 29" stories where the first 6 steps are rational and the seventh is "have rich parents"
You don't need to have rich parents. I also make a living as a writer, and I'll say an alternative to having rich parents would be to get a high-paying job for a couple years and just save a little. Just for when the initial pay is a little low.
vidarh · 8h ago
But this patchwork of low paid freelance work is the most reasonable way to make it sustainable for most people.
ggm · 8h ago
Yes. And, if this is your craft, this is how to flex. If you're driven to write, you're going to write, rich or not.
Have you actually seen someone write an article like that where one of the instructive steps was "have rich parents"?
notahacker · 16m ago
I've seen a lot of articles where it's implicit. There seems to be a whole subgenre of Daily Telegraph "young person buys first house at 25" articles which lead with tales of their thriftiness and aspiration and bury the "parents paid most of the deposit" somewhere in the detail near the end.
abenga · 3h ago
I have seen several. One interesting one was a "how I became an airline pilot at 21" video where the (obviously smart and hard working) young man talked about a life where he went to a high school with an aviation club, interning at an airline while in high school where THE CEO took personal interest in him and gave him one-on-one coaching. "Have rich parents" was not one of the steps explicitly but it was a massive part of the subtext.
greggsy · 2h ago
Another classic pilot career hack is to have a parent who is a pilot. Simple.
0_____0 · 5m ago
My ex's dad flew for a US carrier. I got to hear a bit about how raw a deal new pilots get these days. Apparently it's much less desirable as a job now as commercial aviation works on tighter margins.
6stringmerc · 56m ago
For those who might eyeroll at this example, I believe it and find it a good citation. Have you done the math on what it costs to get a US commercial aviation license?
Just remember, Jack Antonoff (musician turned music producer for acts like St. Vincent) benefitted from his Dad being a millionaire diet supplement multi-level marketing huckster, Taylor Swift’s Dad was (and still is) a Merrill Lynch high earning banker, Redfoo of LmFAO is the son of Barry Gordy…he’ll, even Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent, is the niece of famous guitarist Tuck Andreas. Tell me with a straight face having those connections isn’t a thumb on the roulette wheel and I’ll politely go away for obvious reasons.
Apocryphon · 1h ago
Pilots talking with each other, what will they think of next!
ggm · 6h ago
No. I have only seen reddit memes and they generally relate to property ownership.
SuperHeavy256 · 7h ago
This is a negative comment. The author is someone who is clearly struggling, and trying to do her best to make ends meet by working multiple jobs that she makes clear she is desperately in search of. She also can't use her hands and is in chronic pain. Please, have some empathy.
ggm · 7h ago
I have empathy but it's tempered by realism. Very few people make a sustaining income from writing, almost all of them supplement some other source of income or subsist.
Editing and proofing may be a better deal. My partner did this for over 25 years and rarely exceeded the taxable income threshold.
ghaff · 2h ago
The perhaps unsatisfactory answer is you land a day job with a company that has a significant writing component, e.g. various content marketing roles but other types of marketing as well or analyst work. It's not the "great American novel" but I was, to a large degree, essentially a professional writer for over 20 years. And latterly I definitely worked with a lot of people who would probably have preferred to be independent writers but found pleasure in having a fairly well-paid career with a company.
I do know some successful freelancers but they're the generally fairly well-known exception (and are presumably still not making the kind of money many on this board would consider great).
Loughla · 32m ago
Grant writing. I've done that for years. It's using your writing and analysis skills. Again, not the next great novel, but it does afford you the opportunity and income to write in your spare time, while doing a job that isn't too demanding.
cafard · 2h ago
Having done editing and proofing for a few years, I can say that it paid the rent and kept me fed, but didn't do much more than that.
madaxe_again · 6h ago
I have the same thing as her and I built an off-grid homestead with my stupid useless arms, and I type until they’re so numb it’s like watching a hen peck for feed.
It never even occurred to me to make it a core part of my identity - it’s just pain and numbness, and they aren’t about to drop off and catch fire, even if it feels like it sometimes.
No comments yet
mndgs · 9h ago
Beautiful text, easy to read, one can immediately feel that author knows what she is doing. Light, but long and sad at the same time. With an aftertaste of hope at the end. Nice work.
ednite · 2h ago
The piece provides an open and modest behind-the-scenes look at the author's dedication to her work and will to maintain her creative identity in the face of adversity.
As someone who just started blogging and sharing stories, I'm reminded of how much passion and hardship influence creative work.
My weakness is also my self-doubt.
I understand that living a creative life does not require waiting for the right circumstances; rather, it requires working hard in the face of criticism, uncertainty, or lack of reward.
Thanks for sharing.
keiferski · 7h ago
One of the ironically (or maybe not ironic and just expected?) beneficial outcomes of AI tools is that "human-like" qualities are going to become more in-demand. The more weird, charismatic, or unique your personality is, the better you're probably going to do in the creative marketplace. The creators that will thrive are ones that manage to build an audience around their identity, and not merely ones that write/film/create the best works.
mykowebhn · 7h ago
So you mean that personality will trump content? The cult of personality?
I think we're already seeing that in the most-watched Youtube videos. The most followed Youtubers usually are the ones who are most "way-out-there" in terms of personality.
keiferski · 6h ago
I wouldn't call it a "cult of personality" because that seems unduly negative. It will just be...different, both better and worse.
Better, because creators are no longer dependent on a film exec in LA / publishing exec in NYC / etc. to "make it" as a creative.
Worse, because while those gatekeepers did lock out many talented people, they also had the function of allowing the creator to focus excellent, "pure" work. I'm thinking of anonymous/semi-anonymous authors that wrote world-famous novels while being unknown. I don't think that is going to be a viable route anymore, because it depended on the middle-men.
Now that I think about it, this last function might actually appear again: agencies that manage a creator's marketing, budget, etc. and just let them focus on making stuff.
In short: I don't know if we could have the open opportunity of social media without it also being dependent on personal charisma.
notjulianjaynes · 7h ago
You are probably thinking this means life will be more like that Jack Kerouac line "the mad ones..." I am imagining how what you describe plays out is more like a billion reality TV stars all trying to one up each other.
keiferski · 7h ago
It will probably be a mix of both. "One-upping reality star" is still something of a genre in itself, and it turns off a lot of people.
IMO it's very possible to convey authenticity via video, if you know what you're doing. I'm thinking of someone like Dry Creek Wrangler School:
Or rather - the more weird, charismatic, and unique your AI-generated personalities are.
In the future, everyone's aidoru will be famous for fifteen minutes.
aucisson_masque · 5h ago
I don't see why ai wouldn't be able to copy that 'personality'.
Everything ai can read or watch, it can copy. So someone showing his personality on YouTube video, Instagram or even tiktok, you get all the video, feed it into an AI and you get an enhanced clone.
keiferski · 5h ago
1. We are decades away from an AI being able to livestream convincingly, cheaply enough for the average person to use it.
2. At that point, identity systems will prevent an AI from just copying another creator’s content and passing it off as their own. YouTube, Facebook etc. have an interest in keeping real humans on their platforms and not just bots.
hnlmorg · 5h ago
They have an interest in keeping real humans consuming content because they’re the ones watching the adverts. The creators are just a byproduct of the pipeline.
If YouTube could replace humans with AI, and thus reduce all that annoying overhead that comes with dealing with creators, and do so without reducing the number of ads that are watched, then I bet Google would be ok with it.
keiferski · 5h ago
And what, every creator with a public presence and YouTube channel is going to be okay with Google stealing their identity?
This is a sci-fi fantasy with no connection to reality. In the real world, IP matters a lot and lawyers determine what’s allowed on YouTube, not demigod AIs.
rwmj · 3h ago
Why would Google/Youtube need to copy existing identities? Given a sufficiently powerful AI it can create a whole new world of characters and content.
I also think your comment is an example of the "just world fallacy" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_fallacy). Google/Youtube has vastly more resources, lawyers and lobbying power than individual creatives.
keiferski · 30m ago
What do you think Hollywood actors, studios, and agents are going to do in this situation? Just disappear and be fine with Google copying their work and destroying their careers?
Not to mention the fact that the minute it becomes obvious to society writ large that YouTube is not filled with real people, and is only AI fake bots, it immediately will become blasé and uninteresting to the vast majority of people. Humans like humans, not facsimiles of humans.
Way too much sci-fi AI worship on this site sometimes, it borders on deification. “An infinitely powerful being will have no restrictions.” Human culture isn’t a math problem that can be replaced and solved with computing power.
Google can’t even seem to make search results that work anymore. Color me dubious that they can create thousands, millions of unique characters and content that out-compete real people.
MonkeyClub · 4h ago
> lawyers determine
Laws are skewed through lobbying as a matter of course, and individual content creators don't have the same legal reach as AI unicorns.
jdietrich · 1h ago
We have models now that will generate not-quite-convincing video of a talking head in real time on a consumer GPU. Given the pace of developments in the field, I think it's utterly ludicrous to suggest that getting this type of model from "not quite right" to "good enough to fool a lot of people" will take decades, when so many other types of model have achieved that feat in a matter of years or months.
I don’t find that to be “not quite convincing” at all. It’s pretty obviously fake, and not comparable at all to a real person reacting in real time in their own personalized way, to slang or other internet interactions.
No comments yet
NikolaNovak · 2h ago
1. I'm a computer science graduate and work in IT, although the boring enterprise kind. ~5 years ago I would have easily signed a document vouching that we will not have the kind of interactive experience chatgpt gives us today, within my lifetime :-). So the notion that automatically generated content of any kind is "decades away" while the field is wildly unstable, seems like a tricky prophecy. I'll take that bet :-).
2. Social networks don't have any interest whatsoever in keeping creators humans. Creators are the cost, viewers or better yet paid subscribers, and the advertising buyers, are the revenue. IF majority of people are happy to consume generated content, social networks are happy to indulge. We on HN are assuming and hoping for some kind of human revolt, but we have historically been horrible at predicting such. Majority of people don't care a whif about stuff that HN cares about deeply (see: privacy, security,open source, etc:).
(This is not a hypothetical as far as I'm concerned - Spotify already has popular LoFi / sleep / working music channels it promotes that are generated cheaply by AI, or session musicians that are one step away from being / being replaced by AI. YouTube and Facebook are full of clips which have chatgpt generating text, AI voiceover, and short AI clips merged together - today, vs decades from now).
keiferski · 25m ago
The ecosystem is dependent on real people. The idea that audiences are going to just sit by and watch AI generated content without any desire to connect to other human beings is a fundamental misunderstanding of culture.
criddell · 4h ago
> YouTube, Facebook etc. have an interest in keeping real humans on their platforms and not just bots.
They want a human audience, but I suspect they are fine with bot creators and are probably working on that themselves.
Ever notice all those channels on YouTube and Spotify that are hours and hours of lofi music? They aren’t all human and some of them have big audiences.
Loved this article . It took me back to the days of just reading random stuff out of the blue and just enjoying it undistracted.
magic_hamster · 7h ago
Hitting CTRL+F and searching for AI all over the piece, there are 0 mentions. I would have loved to read what a writer thinks of the coming AI takeover in creative writing.
Virtually all the jobs mentioned can already be replaced with AI for a fraction of the cost.
One thing is clear from this text: she can definitely write. I wonder what her erotic stories read like even though I'm not exactly the demographic they were aiming for.
vouaobrasil · 26m ago
> Hitting CTRL+F and searching for AI all over the piece, there are 0 mentions. I would have loved to read what a writer thinks of the coming AI takeover in creative writing.
I make a living as a writer and I don't use AI. In fact, I hate AI and I work for an AI-free writing website. There is an audience for it, and we make enough money to support ourselves as well.
dakiol · 7h ago
> Virtually all the jobs mentioned can already be replaced with AI for a fraction of the cost.
I’m not so sure. First, they are already paying pennies to the writers. Second, who’s gonna write the prompt? The bosses certainly not, so they would hire prompters. Now, you cannot simply hire a prompter with zero experience in copywriting or editing; these people would not accept less than pennies for their work. So you just go ahead and hire people with writing experience. It’s easier.
Edit: besides, assuming AI will take over, if you want an original and catchy story, you need to provide a good prompt. I cannot think someone more suitable to provide such prompts than the writers themselves. Is like saying: anyone can create their own app with LLMs. Well, I can tell you my mom or my 21 year old cousin wouldn’t be able to do
so (they wouldn’t be able to be more specific than a simple “I want a spotify-like app but in red”. They wouldn’t know what to do with the LLM output, even if it comes as an executable that you just need to drop in your phone). So you need developers here as well.
cousin_it · 3h ago
> Second, who’s gonna write the prompt? The bosses certainly not, so they would hire prompters.
I think AIs will quickly progress to the point where the boss can just tell them to do X, instead of telling the prompter to tell the AI to do X.
bix6 · 1h ago
The boss doesn’t have time for that.
throwaway290 · 1h ago
If the boss has the time to task the writer then they also have time to task the LLM
keiferski · 7h ago
My prediction is that all "anonymous" writing will be replaced by AI. By anonymous, I mean: copywriting, corporate-style neutral writing, product descriptions, news summaries, headlines, and so on. Anything where the identity of the author is unknown or not important.
However, writers that lean into their identity and inject their personality into the writing, use video, and generally have a public brand will probably do fine. The fact is: we live in a video world now, so unless you can latch onto the brand of a larger entity to grow your audience, you're probably going to need to be on camera.
(This is basically how many writers are successful on Substack.)
Writers will also continue to be needed in fields where there is zero tolerance for errors (say, technical writers at complex manufacturing companies.)
throwaway290 · 1h ago
> we live in a video world now
Yeah and in a world where Veo3 exists. Using video is not a panacea. Actually if you post the video on youtube then it is used to train Veo so that you can be replaced... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44070548
Tallain · 4h ago
For many writers and creative types I've read and talked to, the use of AI for pretty much any reason is equivalent to crossing the picket line.
When so many models are trained on illegally-obtained data (libgen, etc.) and provide profit without acknowledgement to the folks whose creative output made said profit possible in the first place, it feels really icky to put it lightly.
What's more, the creative process is about pulling something out from inside of you, examining your ideas and yourself, and maybe showing it to the world. Feedback from others, editors or readers or whatever, is a reciprocation of that. Or if you keep it to yourself, you've learned and grown anyway, and have honed your craft for the next time you try it.
What reward is there in computer mimicry? How does AI empower this process?
From a commercial aspect it all sucks. Creatives are devalued and the creative process is arrested. This isn't new, though. Ever since we started calling entertainment "content," you could see it coming. It's a struggle Hollywood's faced since the studio system, even before. We had the subversives in the Code era, the new wave people, the auteurs, and so on, all fighting that good fight against the business people who spoke only in dollars and cents. So it was, so it shall be.
I don't think there will be an AI takeover in creative writing, except for maybe a hiccup where slop content creators chase gold. Already a couple of romance writers accidentally published stories with prompts left in them and have instantly ruined their reputations forever. I think the people interested in reading what a machine wrote are the people interested in making the machine write. Everyone else wants something from a real human.
SuperHeavy256 · 7h ago
Not everything needs to be about AI. Not everything should be.
CalRobert · 7h ago
Ok, but if you’re a horse in the 1920’s it seems prudent to consider automobiles
vouaobrasil · 26m ago
Horse to automobile is not the same as AI to not using AI.
cafard · 2h ago
Given the modus operandi of the AI world, it might be more prudent to consider dogfood factories.
mykowebhn · 6h ago
The part of this essay that convinced me that I like this person was this:
"Horse News makes me feel like a bad person sometimes. Racing is an odd, archaic, and often cruel sport. The more I read about it, the more convinced I become that it should not exist. I root for Horse Laws and grow sad when a state bucks them."
Part of her paycheck comes from the horse racing industry so to be honest in this way is courageous. If she were in any of the common HN industries she would've written how horses have been her life-long passion, ever since she saw a picture of one in some random children's book, and how writing about horse racing allows her to share her passion with the world. She'd also have another job as a life coach.
Papazsazsa · 7h ago
What do HN folks want to read that isn't tech news? What are you reading reading these days?
I have just made the leap into becoming a full-time writer. I had an early stroke of luck and sold a screenplay – which let me write full-time for the next 6 months or so. I write primarily military/espionage fiction, would love to hear what the HN crowd is hungry for on that front.
bix6 · 1h ago
Feel like you could write a pretty absurd story about the espionage implications of accepting a jumbo jet from a foreign adversary.
nosioptar · 14m ago
That's too absurd. What person in a position to be gifted a jumbo jet would be dumb enough to accept it?
Even if he/she was dumb enough, I'd assume the person likely has contacts with national security agencies that could spell it out for them.
giraffe_lady · 6h ago
There have been pretty periodic recommended book "ask HN" posts through the years, you could go have a look at some. Even a quick skim will make it extremely clear you don't want to take book recommendations, or especially writing guidance, from these people.
Papazsazsa · 5h ago
Haha, too cruel.
The nerd is a useful archetype.
Max-q · 7h ago
She’s a good writer, I really enjoyed the article. It was one topic regarding being a writer today I was curiously waiting for while reading: gpt. Nothing can be more transforming for writers right now? The erotic novella will probably be written by AI very soon. YouTube is overflowing with AI generated and narrated stories now. Just a couple of months ago they were quite bad, but it’s huge improvements weekly and this week they have become so good that I’ll say they are better than magazine stories. We can just imagine how good they will be in two months from now.
Papazsazsa · 7h ago
They will never replace lived experience, in the same way McDonalds will never replace a meal made by mom.
artofpongfu · 7h ago
Could AI have written this touching, funny article? There will still be a market for great writers, for now people crave connection to a real person at the other end. In this case, I'm reading it to understand something about being human. But it's true that the market for human writing as a whole will shrink further.
J_cst · 2h ago
A totally different working life compared to mine. Definitely worth reading, thank you!
treve · 9h ago
Extremely entertaining read!
mediumsmart · 9h ago
I concur. … Not sure where, but empathy stopped me before the end.
6stringmerc · 1h ago
As a person with a lifetime handicap, reading this article with its plethora of examples and debilitating health issues:
Why did this person insist on denying their handicap and status as a disabled person and pursue benefits available to provide for basic needs, if available in Canada or elsewhere?
There are other options than going to the “dark side” as I call an avenue like Horse News.
I’m sure she’s intelligent enough to admit that “reputation management” is a fucked up way of relabeling “propaganda outlet” so it’s more palatable.
Honestly I’ve got no qualms with the smut angle because that’s a long running tradition and readers very much have made it a worthwhile enterprise over hundreds of years.
I do find some odd comedy in taking a position that writing literary pornography is actually the lesser of two evils, morally speaking, in her method of making a living. I won’t be checking out her book because of the pervasive comments about her health issues. I have a far worse one and I rarely bring it up and that’s my choice, as it’s hers to wave the flag or tout overcoming it as some kind of accomplishment to celebrate. I suppose in some ways it is, but personally speaking working for “reputation management” is absolutely distasteful to me and I won’t try to rationalize it, even in the context of physical limitations.
TimorousBestie · 19m ago
> I have a far worse one and I rarely bring it up and that’s my choice, as it’s hers to wave the flag or tout overcoming it as some kind of accomplishment to celebrate.
It’s one of a handful of things in your HN bio. The pinned article on your blog is largely about its effects on your life.
That’s okay.
I think it’s admirable for people to talk frankly about their struggles with disability, and I think it’s hypocritical of you to criticize the article’s author for doing so.
hexage1814 · 35m ago
You don't?
madaxe_again · 6h ago
She doesn’t explicitly say it, but it sounds like she has thoracic outlet syndrome - it’s familiar to me because I have it, and it sucks. Looking up her name plus that, yes, that’s what she has.
Sat here after a night of crappy sleep poking this out with hands that feel like they’re in tight rubber gloves, but life goes on, but it’s never even crossed my mind to see it as a disability, just as “one of those things”.
The only things that it has made extremely difficult for me are things like rock climbing or climbing very long ladders - but not impossible, if I take the time to pause and windmill my arms until they aren’t useless numb pain obelisks, or until other people start to get impatient with me. Other things I’ve had to just adapt to - stuff with fine motor control I have to take frequent breaks and ensure I’m supporting my hand and arm. Washing dishes, which she cites in another piece, I deal with by pincering a sponge between my fingers and using the back of my hand. It just became the new normal. Gross stuff, I find little difference with, although it definitely aggravates it if I spend a day doing heavy work involving my arms. Buy now, pay later.
Maybe it’s a generational or cultural thing. Maybe hers is worse than mine. I don’t know - I just found it jarring to hear someone describe it as a disability, as that idea has literally never even crossed my mind.
No comments yet
anovikov · 6h ago
A friend of mine was determined to make an actual career as a writer, and she gradually followed the money switching jobs in the direction of those that paid the most. She now easily makes upwards of $15K per month writing, sustainably over years (although she does work a lot, like 60 hour weeks). Catch is, it is mostly marketing content for scam companies, crypto peddlers, illegal trading companies, and associated ecosystem (like lead suppliers, salesmen sourcers and so forth).
willsoon · 7h ago
I can't write erotica or porn no matter how much I practice. I have read some great writers fails like a champ when they had tried to do the same. So, what if I fail. Sometimes I fall in erotica/porn scenes like not wanting to go that way. A detail just spontaneous popupping in my mind. And yes, then It's good. But is not erotica if it happen every 100 pages. PS: practice to write erotica, admin.
Avicebron · 2h ago
So born rich is the strat?
chistev · 9h ago
Writing is fun. I have a small personal blog with 21 subscribers -
If you like it and you're feeling extra generous, you can leave a donation.
Max-q · 7h ago
I liked the piece on corruption. You say it’s not everyone, it’s the system. I think it might be the culture, not the system? It has become the culture of the country to think that way. This is something I’m often thinking about, how can this be changed? How can a leader say “we as a country have to change. We need to change our culture, think of corruption as illegal and destructive” , and get the citizens on board with it. Because, with my, unfortunately limited, knowledge about Africa, I have understood that in many countries a government employee can’t make a living of their salary. The position is a position enabling taking bribes, and that’s what’s putting food on the table. When it’s that ingrained, how is a transformation possible? Where to start?
One idea I’ve had, is transformation via a system similar to corruption, but regulated. If you go to a government office, you don’t pay a bribe, but you pay some kind of tip to the representative. And that tip is listed on a “menu” and is reported to the employer, and a small tax is paid. The amounts are set at a level around the commonly known bribe paid today.
Then, year by year, those tips are reduced (or stay the same, not adjusted for inflation), while the salary is increased. This is possible due to the small tip tax.
Doing this while information campaigns are running on TV, internet, schools, and so on, continuously.
Let’s say this is a 20 year project, with a clear goal of a higher level of civilization, imprinting in people that this good and this will make life better for you, your children and grandchildren.
I hope that your country will be able to fix the problem.
Was enjoying the article 'till a massive popup tried to grab my attention. Unfortunately I have a policy that requires the page be closed within 5 seconds of any such popups :'(, hope the horse writing turned out OK for him/her/them/they.
jadtz · 5h ago
I doubt the writer has any control over the website her piece is published on. It is a pretty good writeup, you should give it another try.
dSebastien · 8h ago
I've been writing for many years, and I I'm still very far from being able to pay rent
Only a good writer, that truly enjoys their craft, is able to masterfully insert a witty dry pun like that into their work. Bravo!
Another cute one!
For most people, writing is not sufficiently lucrative to sustain a living income and supplements other income streams or is net negative.
Also: read "new grub street" by George Gissing, 1891
You don't need to have rich parents. I also make a living as a writer, and I'll say an alternative to having rich parents would be to get a high-paying job for a couple years and just save a little. Just for when the initial pay is a little low.
There's another piece of journalistic writing about erotic Potter fanfic where the article author realises they're possibly good at it and have recruited followers. It's https://www.vice.com/en/article/my-quest-to-become-a-harry-p...
Just remember, Jack Antonoff (musician turned music producer for acts like St. Vincent) benefitted from his Dad being a millionaire diet supplement multi-level marketing huckster, Taylor Swift’s Dad was (and still is) a Merrill Lynch high earning banker, Redfoo of LmFAO is the son of Barry Gordy…he’ll, even Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent, is the niece of famous guitarist Tuck Andreas. Tell me with a straight face having those connections isn’t a thumb on the roulette wheel and I’ll politely go away for obvious reasons.
Editing and proofing may be a better deal. My partner did this for over 25 years and rarely exceeded the taxable income threshold.
I do know some successful freelancers but they're the generally fairly well-known exception (and are presumably still not making the kind of money many on this board would consider great).
It never even occurred to me to make it a core part of my identity - it’s just pain and numbness, and they aren’t about to drop off and catch fire, even if it feels like it sometimes.
No comments yet
As someone who just started blogging and sharing stories, I'm reminded of how much passion and hardship influence creative work.
My weakness is also my self-doubt.
I understand that living a creative life does not require waiting for the right circumstances; rather, it requires working hard in the face of criticism, uncertainty, or lack of reward.
Thanks for sharing.
I think we're already seeing that in the most-watched Youtube videos. The most followed Youtubers usually are the ones who are most "way-out-there" in terms of personality.
Better, because creators are no longer dependent on a film exec in LA / publishing exec in NYC / etc. to "make it" as a creative.
Worse, because while those gatekeepers did lock out many talented people, they also had the function of allowing the creator to focus excellent, "pure" work. I'm thinking of anonymous/semi-anonymous authors that wrote world-famous novels while being unknown. I don't think that is going to be a viable route anymore, because it depended on the middle-men.
Now that I think about it, this last function might actually appear again: agencies that manage a creator's marketing, budget, etc. and just let them focus on making stuff.
In short: I don't know if we could have the open opportunity of social media without it also being dependent on personal charisma.
IMO it's very possible to convey authenticity via video, if you know what you're doing. I'm thinking of someone like Dry Creek Wrangler School:
https://www.youtube.com/@DryCreekWranglerSchool
In the future, everyone's aidoru will be famous for fifteen minutes.
Everything ai can read or watch, it can copy. So someone showing his personality on YouTube video, Instagram or even tiktok, you get all the video, feed it into an AI and you get an enhanced clone.
2. At that point, identity systems will prevent an AI from just copying another creator’s content and passing it off as their own. YouTube, Facebook etc. have an interest in keeping real humans on their platforms and not just bots.
If YouTube could replace humans with AI, and thus reduce all that annoying overhead that comes with dealing with creators, and do so without reducing the number of ads that are watched, then I bet Google would be ok with it.
This is a sci-fi fantasy with no connection to reality. In the real world, IP matters a lot and lawyers determine what’s allowed on YouTube, not demigod AIs.
I also think your comment is an example of the "just world fallacy" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_fallacy). Google/Youtube has vastly more resources, lawyers and lobbying power than individual creatives.
Not to mention the fact that the minute it becomes obvious to society writ large that YouTube is not filled with real people, and is only AI fake bots, it immediately will become blasé and uninteresting to the vast majority of people. Humans like humans, not facsimiles of humans.
Way too much sci-fi AI worship on this site sometimes, it borders on deification. “An infinitely powerful being will have no restrictions.” Human culture isn’t a math problem that can be replaced and solved with computing power.
Google can’t even seem to make search results that work anymore. Color me dubious that they can create thousands, millions of unique characters and content that out-compete real people.
Laws are skewed through lobbying as a matter of course, and individual content creators don't have the same legal reach as AI unicorns.
https://humanaigc.github.io/chat-anyone/
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2. Social networks don't have any interest whatsoever in keeping creators humans. Creators are the cost, viewers or better yet paid subscribers, and the advertising buyers, are the revenue. IF majority of people are happy to consume generated content, social networks are happy to indulge. We on HN are assuming and hoping for some kind of human revolt, but we have historically been horrible at predicting such. Majority of people don't care a whif about stuff that HN cares about deeply (see: privacy, security,open source, etc:).
(This is not a hypothetical as far as I'm concerned - Spotify already has popular LoFi / sleep / working music channels it promotes that are generated cheaply by AI, or session musicians that are one step away from being / being replaced by AI. YouTube and Facebook are full of clips which have chatgpt generating text, AI voiceover, and short AI clips merged together - today, vs decades from now).
They want a human audience, but I suspect they are fine with bot creators and are probably working on that themselves.
Ever notice all those channels on YouTube and Spotify that are hours and hours of lofi music? They aren’t all human and some of them have big audiences.
https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machin...
Virtually all the jobs mentioned can already be replaced with AI for a fraction of the cost.
One thing is clear from this text: she can definitely write. I wonder what her erotic stories read like even though I'm not exactly the demographic they were aiming for.
I make a living as a writer and I don't use AI. In fact, I hate AI and I work for an AI-free writing website. There is an audience for it, and we make enough money to support ourselves as well.
I’m not so sure. First, they are already paying pennies to the writers. Second, who’s gonna write the prompt? The bosses certainly not, so they would hire prompters. Now, you cannot simply hire a prompter with zero experience in copywriting or editing; these people would not accept less than pennies for their work. So you just go ahead and hire people with writing experience. It’s easier.
Edit: besides, assuming AI will take over, if you want an original and catchy story, you need to provide a good prompt. I cannot think someone more suitable to provide such prompts than the writers themselves. Is like saying: anyone can create their own app with LLMs. Well, I can tell you my mom or my 21 year old cousin wouldn’t be able to do so (they wouldn’t be able to be more specific than a simple “I want a spotify-like app but in red”. They wouldn’t know what to do with the LLM output, even if it comes as an executable that you just need to drop in your phone). So you need developers here as well.
I think AIs will quickly progress to the point where the boss can just tell them to do X, instead of telling the prompter to tell the AI to do X.
However, writers that lean into their identity and inject their personality into the writing, use video, and generally have a public brand will probably do fine. The fact is: we live in a video world now, so unless you can latch onto the brand of a larger entity to grow your audience, you're probably going to need to be on camera.
(This is basically how many writers are successful on Substack.)
Writers will also continue to be needed in fields where there is zero tolerance for errors (say, technical writers at complex manufacturing companies.)
Yeah and in a world where Veo3 exists. Using video is not a panacea. Actually if you post the video on youtube then it is used to train Veo so that you can be replaced... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44070548
When so many models are trained on illegally-obtained data (libgen, etc.) and provide profit without acknowledgement to the folks whose creative output made said profit possible in the first place, it feels really icky to put it lightly.
What's more, the creative process is about pulling something out from inside of you, examining your ideas and yourself, and maybe showing it to the world. Feedback from others, editors or readers or whatever, is a reciprocation of that. Or if you keep it to yourself, you've learned and grown anyway, and have honed your craft for the next time you try it.
What reward is there in computer mimicry? How does AI empower this process?
From a commercial aspect it all sucks. Creatives are devalued and the creative process is arrested. This isn't new, though. Ever since we started calling entertainment "content," you could see it coming. It's a struggle Hollywood's faced since the studio system, even before. We had the subversives in the Code era, the new wave people, the auteurs, and so on, all fighting that good fight against the business people who spoke only in dollars and cents. So it was, so it shall be.
I don't think there will be an AI takeover in creative writing, except for maybe a hiccup where slop content creators chase gold. Already a couple of romance writers accidentally published stories with prompts left in them and have instantly ruined their reputations forever. I think the people interested in reading what a machine wrote are the people interested in making the machine write. Everyone else wants something from a real human.
"Horse News makes me feel like a bad person sometimes. Racing is an odd, archaic, and often cruel sport. The more I read about it, the more convinced I become that it should not exist. I root for Horse Laws and grow sad when a state bucks them."
Part of her paycheck comes from the horse racing industry so to be honest in this way is courageous. If she were in any of the common HN industries she would've written how horses have been her life-long passion, ever since she saw a picture of one in some random children's book, and how writing about horse racing allows her to share her passion with the world. She'd also have another job as a life coach.
I have just made the leap into becoming a full-time writer. I had an early stroke of luck and sold a screenplay – which let me write full-time for the next 6 months or so. I write primarily military/espionage fiction, would love to hear what the HN crowd is hungry for on that front.
Even if he/she was dumb enough, I'd assume the person likely has contacts with national security agencies that could spell it out for them.
The nerd is a useful archetype.
Why did this person insist on denying their handicap and status as a disabled person and pursue benefits available to provide for basic needs, if available in Canada or elsewhere?
There are other options than going to the “dark side” as I call an avenue like Horse News.
I’m sure she’s intelligent enough to admit that “reputation management” is a fucked up way of relabeling “propaganda outlet” so it’s more palatable.
Honestly I’ve got no qualms with the smut angle because that’s a long running tradition and readers very much have made it a worthwhile enterprise over hundreds of years.
I do find some odd comedy in taking a position that writing literary pornography is actually the lesser of two evils, morally speaking, in her method of making a living. I won’t be checking out her book because of the pervasive comments about her health issues. I have a far worse one and I rarely bring it up and that’s my choice, as it’s hers to wave the flag or tout overcoming it as some kind of accomplishment to celebrate. I suppose in some ways it is, but personally speaking working for “reputation management” is absolutely distasteful to me and I won’t try to rationalize it, even in the context of physical limitations.
It’s one of a handful of things in your HN bio. The pinned article on your blog is largely about its effects on your life.
That’s okay.
I think it’s admirable for people to talk frankly about their struggles with disability, and I think it’s hypocritical of you to criticize the article’s author for doing so.
Sat here after a night of crappy sleep poking this out with hands that feel like they’re in tight rubber gloves, but life goes on, but it’s never even crossed my mind to see it as a disability, just as “one of those things”.
The only things that it has made extremely difficult for me are things like rock climbing or climbing very long ladders - but not impossible, if I take the time to pause and windmill my arms until they aren’t useless numb pain obelisks, or until other people start to get impatient with me. Other things I’ve had to just adapt to - stuff with fine motor control I have to take frequent breaks and ensure I’m supporting my hand and arm. Washing dishes, which she cites in another piece, I deal with by pincering a sponge between my fingers and using the back of my hand. It just became the new normal. Gross stuff, I find little difference with, although it definitely aggravates it if I spend a day doing heavy work involving my arms. Buy now, pay later.
Maybe it’s a generational or cultural thing. Maybe hers is worse than mine. I don’t know - I just found it jarring to hear someone describe it as a disability, as that idea has literally never even crossed my mind.
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One idea I’ve had, is transformation via a system similar to corruption, but regulated. If you go to a government office, you don’t pay a bribe, but you pay some kind of tip to the representative. And that tip is listed on a “menu” and is reported to the employer, and a small tax is paid. The amounts are set at a level around the commonly known bribe paid today.
Then, year by year, those tips are reduced (or stay the same, not adjusted for inflation), while the salary is increased. This is possible due to the small tip tax.
Doing this while information campaigns are running on TV, internet, schools, and so on, continuously.
Let’s say this is a 20 year project, with a clear goal of a higher level of civilization, imprinting in people that this good and this will make life better for you, your children and grandchildren.
I hope that your country will be able to fix the problem.
https://www.rxjourney.net/the-problem-with-our-country
https://dsebastien.net