Post-Mortem: AI Content Landfills

BEGAN WORK: 3/16/25

UPLOADED: 6/20/25

The Nightmare Begins

I was on my phone in the middle of March scrolling YouTube Shorts in a dissociative fugue (frequent occurrence) when I heard something that snapped me right out of it.

It's chilling to the touch

Never liked it much

And now you won't let go

Let go...

    Let go...

        Let go...

The accompanying video was some stupid "would you rather" question with a bunch of AI-generated slop images, posted by one "Thoughtful Questions." And that name snapped me right back into it.

God, I was Ratatouille'd right back to junior year of college when I was jaywalking on purpose and kept thinking, "it can't possibly get worse than this..." Don't laugh. It was that cold dry winter when I had been blasted with hundreds of videos letting me know that I had died, but though the cold hand of death was upon me, it had come bearing a powerful mercy. I had been granted the privilege to select the setting of my next life, my next incarnation's stomping ground.

But these choices were not what one would consider orthodox... Strange, distorted cityscapes set far out into a future not even the whole of man may ever see. But you had to choose. You had a few seconds to visualize a snippet of your life in Newtopia 34892 or whatever the hell and just when the gravity of the choice could set in, the video would loop. Congrats, champ. You just gave that sucker TWO views.

Yes, they sucked. Those videos always sucked. But I watched just about every one I could find. I found all the little oddities in the names and images so interesting. In 2022, AI was just about the funniest joke on the tech industry there was. Yeah, algorithms controlled our every move online. Sure, bots were all over social media. But a computer drawing a picture? That was priceless. The stupid thing couldn't generate a human hand if you put a magnet to its chassis. What a funny thing it was, to see these little dreams of a different life... To imagine for a few moments what it would be like to Let go... Let go... Let go...

 

Then I was back. I was in a bathroom in the year 2025. I could not remember when I had last seen a video from Thoughtful Questions. No doubt it had been years at the least. But it was back. It was here. It was alive.

Given the passage of time, I had a new connection to make. An album I had been listening to on and off ever since it came out, Elvis Depressedly's 2023 album WHO OWNS THE GRAVEYARD? As luck would have it, it was fresh in my mind. I had gone on a road trip and that was one of few albums I already had downloaded on my phone to listen to in the car. I thought about an interview I had seen with Matthew Lee Cothran long ago talking about how he made the album, and those videos with no views he had used for the feature film. I thought about how I hadn't seen a TQ video in quite a while, and I wondered how long it had been chugging along while I wasn't looking. If a tree falls in the woods (because AI is maiming the environment) but nobody is around to hear (my algorithm moved on to different slop to feed me), does it even never like you much, now it won't let go? 

And if that fairly notable one slipped by me so long, surely there were other channels just like it that I hadn't seen at all. Or even ones that nobody had seen. And that was it. I had my idea. AI videos with no views. Landfills. 👍

                                              

AI slop farms...

Writing

I've been making videos to some capacity since I was 7 or so (I'm 43), and I have NEVER fought so much with a video. The thing just HATED to be made. I had a general outline early on, and I had already identified a few of the channels I would go on to feature (as well as quite a few more that were left to rot), but I just hadn't really nailed a thesis. I knew I needed footage EVENTUALLY, so I decided to just stream what I had and see if I could make some discoveries on camera.

I actually had a pretty decent turnout to the stream in my eyes, a nice little cadre to go slopdiving with me, and we had an alright time. Throughout the stream, I was leaving comments on some videos requesting (politely) that they delete their channels (not that I thought I was some kind of hero, I just found it funny) and I actually got someone who had failed in making a Reddit Rage Bait Story Channel to join stream. They seemed like a chill individual, and they told me their impetus for doing it: they thought it looked easy, so they may as well try it. They gave up after a few videos. The actually ended up subscribing to me, which was nice. But to be perfectly honest, I still have some reservations about the fellow; their videos were exceptionally strange. I think one was some sort of Reddit-ified rendition of "The Tell-Tale Heart"...

It was now 5/3, and I still had barely WRITTEN the thing. Well, I had fast-tracked a video on the A Minecraft Movie movie-- which I still feel is a pretty good one-- and that had taken most of my April. By the time I was getting around to this thing that had been clawing at my head, I was pretty artistically defeated. The video hadn't done so well and I wasn't feeling good about myself. I also just wasn't sure of the scope, something that was apparent even in the late stages of making this thing. Part of me wanted to talk about the whole of AI, how it works, where it is, what it's doing to us... I realized as I began to write that truthfully, it was not a topic one man could tackle in its entirety.

As an offshoot of this video, I had created an entire OTHER video because it had been so long since I made one and I wanted to touch on something I had cut entirely from this one. If I knew when I posted that on 5/11 that it would be over a month until this one was done, I certainly would not have made it, as much as I do like it. Making an hors d'oeuvre video, I learned, is not wise, for you may feel fed upon it and no longer crave the main course! That one also didn't perform so well, and that was the hit that really knocked me down...

The original thumbnail of the preceding video

Quitting

2/3 of the way into the Landfill script, I nearly scrapped it. I was straight up ready to throw it all away. It was 5/25 and I had nothing to show for this whole unseemly affair. I was closing out research tabs, resigning myself to the failure... When one tab stopped me. Something about its presence on my browser...

It was a GritlabTV video. I clicked on it. It was a stupid sneering AI smokeshow burning a hole in my forehead. I realized in that moment, that no matter how hard this project had dragged me through the mud, no matter how much of a fight it was going to put up, I knew I had to see it through. I could NOT let GritlabTV win. Quite ironically, that infernal channel HAD motivated me... So I soldiered on.

My artificial hunk

"Hammering" "It" "Out" 

Have you ever pulled one of your own loose teeth out just a bit too early when you were a kid? That was like filming this thing. I'm always smacking my lips and mispronouncing things I say normally without issue all the time. I may have onset aphasia and I HOPE I'm joking. I sort of stutter when I talk and I always thought it was because I speak too fast, but now I'm starting to realize it really is a stutter. It's chill though. Except for when I'm trying to FILM WITHIN A REASONABLE TIME FRAME.

Editing was even tougher. I usually like editing, but this one made me think: I see why people hate editing. I was splicing in clips from the stream too, which was an added complication. I had to reformat a hard drive because I realized I would likely have no room to finish it otherwise. I edit all my videos on a 13'' Macbook Air, and can I tell you? Not totally ideal, I will be honest. Not the most ideal stallion to ride into the sweltry desert. But it's mine, and I love it dearly. Within the reasonable boundaries of man/machine. I kept adding things glitching in as opposed to my usual slide-in, and I realized at some point I would have to add a sound effect. I asked my friend if it was really worth it to add, and they convinced me it was. Honestly, I think it's a little gratuitous. But I think they were right about it, sadly enough. Better to be overcooked than under, far as I'm concerned...

The worst mistake I made was not having an ending planned. I decided to just keep working on it and see how I felt. At some point about halfway through the edit, I thought I had gotten a handle on the ending. I filmed the entire thing and started editing it together. I realized that not only was my face out of focus the entire time, but I had NOT gotten a handle on the ending. I was humiliated. Once again I was feeling pretty down-and-out about the whole thing.

I just can't take it any longer LOL!!!

Flashback?

I kept thinking back to college. I thought of the specific type of people I had to deal with daily at that art school, a subset who thought an artist was someone who could make art, when they wanted to, and otherwise could coast on whatever they could think of off the top of their head, and whatever they could execute an hour or two before the project was due. I always got insecure about myself because of them, and would think this: I put in twice the effort to achieve half the result... I would think that same thought every time I would labor away at some project or other, then present it in class and receive decent acclaim (the polite applause of a hungover class with drifting minds), only for those others to show the fruits of their labor, get a similar response, then brag about how they had thrown it all together a few hours prior. Many mouths spat the same chant, "I just wrote this the night before!" The night before... 

I would always ask myself this: why do I do this to myself? Why do I feel compelled to put in all this effort for all these things that don't matter (unfunny comedy sketches and standup routines)? To that point, where was the line? When would it matter? Would it ever matter? Why am I spending $[redacted to spare my dignity] to write cringe comedy every few days, just to find myself in the very same spot as most deranged histrionics ever told they were funny by hapless relatives who knew not what they had done? Well, before I get carried away, I am one of those histrionics. Glass houses, and whatnot... 

The answer to the third inquiry (and an affirmation to the logic of the second) was this: it didn't matter, and it never would. That isn't why you do something. The answer to the first, was because I loved it. I loved doing it. I loved working on my little projects, I loved writing late into the night (at least TWO nights before...). I just loved the process. I didn't need to care that I was making art for those people in my classes who fundamentally resented the process of creation and believed that they were effortless artists who made masterpieces with the ease of a bird defecating in the air. I wasn't making anything for anyone except myself. I could, can, and do get so wrapped up in this victimized idea of making something "that matters" and having everything I do "pay off" and I chug that ladder-to-success Kool-Aid until I really start believing that life is when you ACHIEVE and every second you don't ACHIEVE is a second you waste. Not so, not even a little.

I was staring at this mass of footage for this video and all these slop channels, and I thought back on the things that got me through in college. One of them was the poem, "St. Kevin and the Blackbird" by Seamus Heaney. It's a poem that undresses itself, asks of you only to put yourself in the mind of a patient man in an impossible position.

"To labour and not to seek reward" 

A line from the Prayer of St. Ignatius of Loyola. That was my ending, I decided. It fit so perfectly with what I was covering, what I was feeling during this thing's creation, and all-in-all, what the truth of the matter really was.

And so I read that poem (scuffed a few lines as always, I hate when I do), and this long goofy video was finally done. The night I finished it (6/19) felt surreal. It was like a specter that had been haunting me for months finally had a vessel in which to lay itself to rest. I sang it a little dirge as I scheduled the upload. It went like, "It's chilling to the touch... Never liked it much..."

Also, the answer to the other raised inquiries in this section is, "because I'm a moron." 

I used to have much longer hair

Regrets

I wish I hadn't made an hors d'oeuvre video, I wish I had determined an ending earlier on, I wish I hadn't given myself so much grief over this thing. I am very glad it's over. More importantly, I'm glad that a topic as demoralizing as this is what reaffirmed my reason for always creating something or other, no matter the result. 

Thank you for giving me the strength to carry on, GritlabTV. Delete your channel.

Hip hip hooray!!! Hip hip hooray!!!

Reading

I finished Tender is The Night. What a beauty. I also just finished Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan. Yucky! Also pretty genius. I want to take more time to read, I feel like I haven't been reading as much as I would like. In any case, it's a lot better than Shorts scrolling. It's also less likely to result in wasting 3 months of your life on a YouTube video. I'm going for The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers next.