Rejecting Modernity: Getting Generative AI out the Window
For our first guide to Rejecting Modernity, it's a fundamental problem that is everywhere, both in the internet and out in our real world. It's a problem showing up in Discord, a problem ruining YouTube, a problem you can't escape from in Roblox, a problem plaguing Pinterest, a problem killing the company that started said problem, OpenAI, a problem Meta is attempting to capitalize, and most importantly, a problem melting into reality.. but a problem that, at the very least, can be mitigated: AI.
It's here, it's there, and it's everywhere. The most important part is that it's in your house (yes, the TVs you use and adore, use AI to optimize picture quality), your computers (a lot of the more intrusive apps you use on your computer either rely on AI (Copilot), are entirely vibe coded w/ AI (while I can't find any proper proof, I'm going to assume a lot of Microsoft apps are vibe coded)) or most of the operating system you're ON is vibe coded w/AI, and your phones (yes, even your lovely Google Assistant has probably just been replaced w/ Gemini like the rest of us, an arguably more useful bot replaced with an AI) It's even messing with the way we build our PCs, make our food, hell, even wake up in the morning. It's sorta too much, having this technology essentially handicapping you.
So, in case you've decided you wanted to quit cold turkey and wanted to return your life to a normal-ish state, here are some pointers to help attempt to curb your AI habits, as well as some reasons why AI might not be good as we originally made it out to be.
GPT isn't a Good Therapy Tool.
For users of AI models either running on the GPT model, AI models running off of Gemini, or ChatGPT itself that specifically use it as a therapy tool, I'd like to warn you that using GPT or any AI model as a therapy tool is.. not really a good option to start out with, and probably worse if you're planning to go full time with it.
Therapy isn't just advice, but rather, human connection, and in a lot of cases, having that relationship with your therapist tends to help with the healing process that comes with taking therapy.. AI cannot feel anything. While it can mimic empathy, it cannot actually feel empathy, and thus, cannot the same relational output therapists provide.
AI, specifically models using GPT tend to unintentionslly gaslight you into thinking your thoughts are correct, or in more simpler to understand terms, it struggles with attempting to say no. For an example of why this is the case, check this video out for more information. It's essentially toxic positivity, and the AI model is unintentionally making you lock your true emotions behind.
For one more reason why, and this one touches upon the privacy angle, a lot of therapy sessions pride themselves with privacy. Anything that is said with your therapist stays with your therapist, which means you can feel safe, honest and most importantly, vulnerable, without any peeping toms looking in from the outside. As far as OpenAI is concerned, they have access to everything you say to GPT. And don't even get me started on Gemini, and Google. There is no guarantee that what ever meaningful thing you've said to it will remain private, and thus, provides a massive risk to you and what you say to it.
If you want a full list as to why GPT and AI as a whole is not a good therapist, I suggest checking this Living Openhearted article about why using AI as your therapist isn't a good choice. And, for another example of why I don't feel right having ChatGPT be your therapy tool, check this Eddy Burback video for more information.
For anyone who's still using AI as a therapist, I suggest you find a way to limit yourself on using it as one, and instead, find a nearby therapist on the internet, preferably a reliable one with 3-5 stars in quality, and go attend some therapy. I also don't suggest getting online therapy as a start. Go outside a lil', it won't hurt you that much! You may attend online therapy after you've settled in to your new life away from the AI tools.
If you wish to delete your ChatGPT account after you've done all of this, I suggest following this link, to begin the process.
GPT isn't a Storyteller.
For users who use ChatGPT, Janitor, C.AI or any other AI tool to generate stories, or entire characters, I suggest prohibiting yourself from using these options too often. Unfortunately, this means you will have to attempt making your own stories. Don't worry, however, you have Tumblr and Pinterest backing you up, so it's all good!
I say specifically not to use AI models for storytelling as, ChatGPT tends to shittify character concepts a lot, especially if you entirely use AI for character creation. A lot of AI models tend to have pretty bad memory, meaning it will forget some details, or forget everything you've wrote, and while GPT does tend to write with enough detail to keep it interesting, the real problem is that much like with art and therapy, we're going to hit a state of AI where you wouldn't be able to tell if it was written by an AI or not, which starts treading over the "is it ethical or not" question.
The Janitor and Chai users will also know where I'm getting at, since while both of them is a fun time in terms of short bursts of roleplaying, going for the long run, Janitor isn't really good at developing proper storywriting for the long run, and you typically end up having to force it to remember what you were doing before hand, typically after a page or two, and Chai tends to stray away from the main topic of the RP.
..and before you ask about the C.AI users.. what users? C.AI users have practically left the platform, as using certain features now require an ID, something that, as we've seen from YouTube, Roblox and Discord (especially w/ Discord but we will need to come back to that later), can cause an exodus. Whoops. (..I'm not even angry over the fact CharacterAI did this, I'm more angry over the fact they folded this easily and ended up essentially butchering their own audience all because of the government.)
"Now, how come you know this is the case," you might be asking, and it's simple actually. While I tend to create characters on my own, either using ideas from Pinterest, people on GL2, or friends, I have attempted to make three characters using ChatGPT back in the day when OpenAI wasn't being burned at the stake for ruining practically everything, and.. while they were good initially, for my RP style, they're not.. really that interesting, especially with their backstory, and with that, my significant other and I are currently remaking those three AI-made characters, for those very same reasons.
Now before you say anything, having AI assist you when it comes to making stories is fine, but like I said, "enshittification" is a real thing you do have to worry about that goes into the AI, so be really careful. You might end up having to fix some things yourself, correct concepts you feel the AI went wrong at, or nanny it back on topic if it ends up straying too far. Fully generating things is where the problem begins with making stories, and that is what you should avoid.
AI Art is not Art.
For Midjourney, DomoAI and other such users who are not good at art, I suggest you muster up your fears to pick up a pencil and try your hand at drawing! Who knows.. you might have some hidden potential you've never discovered until now!
See, we've hit a point in AI art, where the technology is there, and it can genuinely fool people into thinking that said piece of art was made by human.. when in all reality, it's made by an AI, which really removes the soul from said art. Furthermore, a lot of art generation AIs tend to scrape either Google images, art platforms like Tumblr, or other platforms entirely, which can be considered as a form of theft.
This technology and the way it steals content has gotten so bad that when Twitter announced they'd be removing the ability to opt out of your art being scraped by Grok, people immediately begin rallying saying that Twitter as a whole is over, and that you should start migrating, which.. eerily sounds familiar to what people on Discord is doing, eh?
Back on topic, there are tutorials all around the internet that'll teach you how to draw. It might be hard, it might be difficult, you might not even get the hang of it right away, but this, and using dress up games like Gacha Life 2 or Picrew are valid choices and alternatives!
You should also remember that Pinterest is your bestie when it comes to this as there are inspirations all over the place, and other guides to help you, however, I would tread lightly around said platform if you're using this list to help you out, because as it turns out, there's currently a rumor that OpenAI has the money to buy out Pinterest. While it's only a rumor, and while they've officially lost the money to do so, that won't stop other companies from getting their grubby little hands on the platform.
If you're still on Pinterest, you may continue using it, but be extra alert of the news related to it, because like I said, other companies might grasp on this decision, something that would be practically be apocalyptic to the artist side of the Internet depending on who actually ends up owning Pinterest in the future, as well as people who typically get inspirations from art on Pinterest. I'd also suggest you start saving things for later in the likely case people start deleting their accounts and their art.
The Ethicality of Suno
Suno is.. well.. okay, look, I haven't used Suno because.. I don't really get it?
Okay, so let's get one thing clear: making music with AI is, at the very least... and as far as I know.. not really ethical.
There are concerns about the ethics of how Suno's models are being trained, having probably scraped a lot of music from the internet in order to power it's models, and while inputting your song into Suno technically doesn't count as stealing, technically it did train off of your data, which could, in the long run, end up hampering your future. Furthermore, Suno technically owns the music you created with their service, meaning it's technically not yours, it's theirs, and under their Terms of Service, you couldn't do a singular thing about that, even if you wanted to.
Also, at least for me, AI music artists do not have the soul that actually good and talented artists have, and even further than that, neither have anything on indie artists, music artists who don't do it for the money, but do it for the love of the game, and those are what AI will fail to copy in the next few years or so: human nature, brought out via a bunch of blips and bloops arranged in a way that makes you figuratively ascend.
So, for Suno users who are not good at writing or making music, instead of telling you how music theory works, which would use up a lot of space, and wouldn't be fun to read in general, I'm going to suggest you watch these two videos, "music theory is easy.", and "Learn music theory in half an hour.", to learn music theory in around an hour.
If you don't wanna learn music theory, but still wanna learn how to make music straight away, try using MIDIs, mixing up soundfonts, remix an already existing track, spice up some notes, and by the end of your lil' diversion, you'll come to learn how to not just make music, but get good at doing so. All it takes is a little elbow grease, a good ear, and your personal preferences.
If you wish to depart from Suno after you've done this, follow this link to begin the process of deleting your Suno account.
Elevenlabs isn't a Good Voice Actor.
Elevenlabs honestly isn't really that good as a voice actor from my personal experiences. Unless you're explicitly using it for either professional purposes, or storyreadings, trying to get Elevenlabs to convey emotion isn't really an easy task unless you're really dedicated to plugging in modifiers to actually get it to convey emotion.
Not just that, but us people have a unique way of pronouncing certain things, something that AI can't really exactly replicate, again, unless you're dedicated to plugging in modifiers. Take, for example, the way we pronounce tomato. You'll either pronounce it to-mah-to, or to-may-to. Elevenlabs tends to fall towards the more popular pronunciation, to-may-to. This also means that whenever you give it a word that has more than one pronunciation, Elevenlabs will tend to fall towards the more popular pronunciation.
Not only that, but at least as far as I know, Elevenlabs uses real voices to feed into the AI in order to make the voices, which while they were provided by willing participants, still puts into the question of ethics and whether or not this is ethical in the first place. Elevenlabs also allows you to clone your own voice as well as others, something that won't even get you a passive income, meaning it's just not worth it, and is especially not ethical if you're cloning you (because even though it's your voice you're cloning, Elevenlabs may still be keeping this information somewhere we don't know about.) or other people's voices.
For Elevenlabs users who aren't good at voice acting, instead of again, teaching you how to voice act in this Rentry, as it would take a tremendous amount of space, I'm gonna suggest you these two videos, "How to become a voice actor in one year or less", and "How to start a Career in Voice Acting (A step-by-step guide)' to let you learn a quick way of how to voice act, as well as https://www.castingcall.club/ if you want a more in-depth guide on how to VA. Again, you'll get the hang of it sooner or later. Oh, and for us trans individuals who specifically want a female voice without having to rely on AI, I suggest using this guide by YukkoEX. These guides should hopefully help you learn how to properly voice act without having to rely on Elevenlabs.
After you've officially learned how to become a voice actor, if you wish to disconnect yourself from Elevenlabs, I suggest following this quick guide on how to delete your Elevenlabs account, found in this link here.
The Short Deal with Shapes and other AI bots on Discord
Shapes and AI bots as a whole on Discord tend to fall under three topics: image generation, voice generation, and text generation. These three topics have already been talked about left, right and center, and because said three topics are also in this rejection list, you probably should get rid of them before someone ends up inviting them accidentally.
For other AI bots, if you want a quick way of making sure these bots don't intrude on your server space, use the /ban user command, then put the ID numbers of these specific bots (1153984868804468756, 1288638725869535283, 1090660574196674713, and 1104973139257081909). It's also suggested you warn any user who uses AI features on Discord to stop doing so and warn them (or ban them if necessary or if you're running an anti-AI server) if they continue doing so, and send feedback telling Discord to do something about this, for these AI bots could very well continue to spread uncontrollably without Discord's reliance.
The thing is however, Shapes isn't controversial just for using AI, it's also controversial for seemingly stealing data, as in stated in Discord's banning of the service, Shapes seems to have violated section 2D (bot tokens should NOT be shared with third parties), section 5b (likely collects every message sent), and section 21 of the Privacy Policy (trains an AI model).
As far as I could get research on, for Shapes bots on Discord, there's a likely chance you're putting yourself at risk using the service, and besides, much like before, it still technically falls on you to not use Shapes, as it's still using an AI model. (at least as far as I could tell.)
The Dangers of Video Generation AI
We live in a time where video generation threatens the nichest of jobs, movies that have gotten hyped up since this and last year, actual genuine movie trailers, and potentially even the government itself as it develops. For small-time Veo, Sora (As of today, SoraAI has gone under. We have made one step towards a better future.) and any other video generation AI users, you still have a chance to get out of the currently expanding foam mess that is AI video generation, because believe me, you're gonna thank me later when I say this, please, I implore you that you do not continue using the platform.
For video generation AI users dedicated to their craft, or have used services pertaining to video generation longer than a few months, please, sign off your PC or phone, take a break from the internet, and, I really recommend this next step, go consult therapy. You're either too attached to the AI or genuinely think you'll hit a breakthrough with this technology, and it's not, and in all reality, it's rotting your brain.
The reason why I say all of this is because.. well, we've hit a full-on panic with video generation. Recently, video generation has gotten to the point where:
- it can dip into copyrighted characters, say from Nickelodeon, Nintendo, Disney, and other characters.. and furthermore, it can even generate videos of likenesses of dead people, something that disgraces upon the grave of said person who's died, which eventually could result in a spiral of just.. absolute insanity.
- it can borrow the likenesses of other YouTubers, which is probably even worse than copyrightable characters, because now people can use said technology to cause a problem for content creators, and while initially it's their community doing this, it could end up evolving into threats, or harassment, and with Sora AI continuously evolving, it gets scarier knowing that bully campaigns can get worse because of this.
- the YT situation has eventually spiraled to people essentially making a channel where all they do is generate wholesale videos using AI and posting it to YouTube, something that the faulty algorithm has picked up on, because the CEO, Neal Mohan, just so happens to be one of those AI bros, and there's a lot of channels that have entirely given up and began to use AI, something we'll touch upon later because genuinely, it gets insane.
- it can generate entire creepypastas and recreations of such, and while this might not sound bad, not only are these getting popular, they're also competing with actually, well made recreations, some of which have gotten AI versions that or more popular than actual human made recreations. (I once saw this Red Mist recreation made with Sora AI that got more popular on TikTok than any recreation on YouTube.)
- it can generate movies, and while they do not look good, do not have good storylines, or actual VAs could end up developing into something way more massive than we make it out to be, especially when industries like Disney end up sacrificing most of their budget towards developing AI content.
- people have used AI to fake movie leaks, and entire movie trailers, which is bad in it's own right as it treads upon stealing real people's likenesses, but further than that, it fools people into thinking a trailer or a leak has dropped, when in all reality, said movie directors and producers haven't dropped a trailer yet, and if they have, it'd be in their official channel, in movie theaters or a proper source.
- there's an entire service called Showrunner, which, I can't believe I'm saying this, is basically AI Netflix, with it's own AI adult cartoons and such, and as much as I'd like to sit here and gawk about how someone genuinely came up with this idea, we gotta remember the fact that AI doesn't have the concept of humor down pat, meaning these cartoons aren't really funny, nor are they insightful in the slightest.
- there are now entire AI characters and entire AI actresses circulating in the same world as actually professional actors and actresses. This is also one of the main reasons towards my personal "Make Generative AI Illegal" movement, because the more we let AI proceed to have full reign over everything, the more unhinged everything gets.
With how easy it is to just plug in a prompt and go, you might end up causing more damage than just learning how to properly animate or make videos. Instead of being lazy and using an AI, learn how to use Blender or Davinci Resolve instead!
I would go fully in-depth for learning how to use Blender, but Blender in itself is pretty hard if you're just starting out, so I'd suggest watching this pretty cool tutorial by Kevin Stratvert to get yourself started. For Davinci Resolve, same reasoning, it's kinda hard to get used to working with Davinci, so here's this pretty handy Ben Claremont video, and this other pretty handy Justin Brown video for a complete tutorial.
The reason why I haven't mentioned After Effects yet is that, due to a upcoming entry of the Rejecting Modernity guides, you will probably not be able to use After Effects. If you're dedicated to rejecting modernity, you'll be switching from that too. For more information, check out this guide relating to Adobe..
These next few sections is dedicated to those from the outside looking in.
Abandon Every AI Creator You See
For viewers of YouTube, people who watch kids shows because their kid watches it, or otherwise, if a kids channel, a channel popularized by one specific creator on YouTube, a well-known creator.. proclaims they are using generative AI in their work ethic, and welcomes it, then... they're probably too already far gone, and they're probably about to go off the deep end. My suggestion? Find the exact episode right before the AI nonsense began, save all videos before it in a playlist, download as many as you can, put them in an archive or save them on Libretube, then unsubscribe from them as willingly and as quickly as possible because there's a likelihood they're about to pull a Kwebbelkop move and go full generative.
As of right now, the following kids shows and channels I know that have been affected by this rule are the following:
For channels specifically known for being popular or having a vast legacy:
Aumsum (Aumsum's whole story on AI has gotten genuinely insane over these past few months. When I wrote this point initially, they would start converting their channel to become AI slop, much like a lot of other channels. Bad on it's own right, but gets even worse when you realize most of the team working on the channel dropped off when this change happened, with the VA leaving at 2024, forcing the main directors to use AI voices, which, ew. Then, after a while of me not catching up, the directors must've seen that backlash, because then they.. just started to rollback some of the changes made via AI???. Weird choice, but okay.. but it got weirder, because while I was gone, there's been developments of an entire AI channel. assuming AI will be removed from the non-AI channel, this may be a huge development, but I'd still keep an eye out though. All-in-all, a very weird topic.)
forrestfire101 (For those who don't know who Forrest is, he's.. the the mfing Duck Song creator. You know, that one song/animation about a duck trying to get lemonade that resonated with like 671 million viewers? Before it came crashing down, he insisted the AI would only be used to assist, and not generate, which would've been fine, had he not gone on to release a video specifically using multiple AI tools on his main channel (yes that's right, his main channel. It wouldn't be any better on his side channel, let's just say..), When this was released, no one liked this. At all. And when I discovered it, it was one of the reasons why he was added here in the hitlist of AI creators in the first place. But then a correction was released. You know how I said that he released videos on his side channel? That wasn't his, that was a fan's. And that video he released, it's more of an interest to see how AI would look in his editing style occasionally rather than being a main stay on his channel, and he even said he's still doing Lego animations, which honestly fair enough. The problem is now his own fans are against him.. so just to be safe, I'm still going to keep him up here as a side note.)
BE AMAZED (BA happened to be one of the many fact YTers out there, giving facts that you wouldn't either know unless you looked it up, or trivia about certain things you didn't even know about and had around 20mil, making them quite popular. During the late quarter of 2025 however, videos would begin declining in animation, and as it turns out, the animator themselves was probably kicked off the team, because as it turned out, they were using AI. And in a response they made, much like with Forrest, they revealed that they experimented with AI, not because they were interested.. but because the algorithm practically forced their hand to, because YouTube's algorithm is a mill, it just keeps going and going and creators have to adapt to it, or fall behind. They said they'd stop.. and yet they immediately broke that promise in a single heartbeat. This is why they are on this list.)
For kids channels:
Pocoyo (Initially I was gonna bash on them, but on further analysis, it appears they're NOT using generative, and actually playing it safe by using assistive AI instead. From what the official showrunners have shown us, they are not willing to use any generative AI in the show, which in my eyes, is an okey-dokey from me! Still I'd watch out, just in case this sentence becomes invalid weeks or months later..)
for some reason, CBeebies itself (As of right now, it's only their thumbnails, however, I would come back to this sentence in the very likely case this ends up being incorrect, as this is a pretty bad sign for them, and will most likely get worst depending on how bad this sentence ages like milk.)
Maya the Bee, I wish I was joking (Unlike our other two cases, where they either used AI to assist or used it to generate thumbnails, in the case of Maya the Bee, it's the whole thing. Recently, Studio 100 lost the entire rights to the franchise.. and much like Pocoyo, was given to Animaj. Unlike Pocoyo and it's assistive angle where, instead of generating everything, they're using AI to assist in creation, everything about Maya became AI generated, including an upcoming movie that will be becoming out this year. Maya, this non-conformist, rebel bee became AI generated. It's less ironic, and more just deeply saddening, and while I may not be from the UK, I still understand what it's like to have your childhood be tarnished by robots.)
Expect this list to continuously be updated every single time a new YouTuber or cartoon is revealed to use AI. This list will get bigger over time, so be prepared.
AI-First Games are NOT True Video Games.
If a gaming company starts proclaiming themselves as AI-driven, AI-first, or their publishers or new owners are scummy, then that publisher or company has started to catch the sin of greed, and is going to screw over you and any remaining fans over until you eventually give in to their greedy practices. Prohibit buying any new games that release from their catalogue if you want to fight back against their decisions. If you wanna play their old catalogue, I suggest using piracy methods that I can't talk about, as it is illegal to tell people how to actually pirate these games (but not illegal to tell people to DO so in the first place), that I will mention multiple times in future installments in the Rejecting Modernity series.
The games this rule affects are the following:
Subnautica (To make a long story short, Unknown Worlds, the OG devs of Subnautica was acquired by Krafton in 2021, and was set into a earn-out clause up to $250 million, with one of the conditions being to release Subnautica 2 in early access by the end of 2025. Before that could even happen, around July, Krafton ended up dropping both original founders, and brought in Steve Papoutsis, and leadership became spotty. Subnautica 2 was delayed a lot, a lawsuit was filed by Charlie Cleveland, one of the OG founders, against Krafton, and somewhere along the line, they became an AI-first company. As a result of this discussion, both Subnautica and Subnautica: Below Zero (if you're reading this guide) will now become inaccessible to buy, and such, you are required to pirate them in order to stop supporting Krafton.)
Disco Elysium (The OG devs lost the rights to the game itself, were fired by the company who bought them out and profits off of anyone who even thinks about buying the game, and you know it's bad when the OG creators outright want you to pirate the game. (Essentially, the same as the Subnautica situation, without the AI scandal, and anyone willing to buy the game now would be supporting a scummy company.) I don't even suggest buying from GOG as you'd still be paying for it, if you want to play this game, you are required to pirate it. No exceptions. )
Teardown (Which, actually looking back.. it's sorta competent again? I'm going to be safe on the people who are against the newfound decisions the newfound owners made, still suggest to watch out for this one, and pirate the game anyways, because who knows if things will get worse.)
and a major part of any Square Enix games (Square Enix was hit with back to back layoffs, occurring throughout 2025, as a part of restructuring. A bunch of releases were either remasters, remakes, or ports and not actual games, said ports did not sell well in the long run, they seperated for some bizarre reason during this year, by the end of 2027, most of it's workforce will become AI (oh god oh fuck), multiple failed NFT projects, and the fact that, as a commentor has once said, they're not even selling Kingdom Hearts stuff anymore. We might be at the end times and ohhh boy piracy is gonna end up being the only choice when this company falls under greed too.)
Expect this list to ALSO be updated occasionally when new gaming companies come out to be using AI and the such.
Keep your art safe, and block any and all AI artists.
For artists and musicians, there are a lot of great tutorials for interfering with usage of your art for AI, as well as keeping your art away from being trained by said AI. A lot of AI services allow for opt-out opportunities, and for some of these services, you can even request that your content can be deleted from the API if you really don't like your content or things based on your content being used in a derogatory way. I suggest you use these if you don't want your art being featured in stuff like Midjourney, or DomoAI, or even ChatGPT itself.
There are a lot of methods to disrupting a model, but one I suggest using is Nightshade and Glaze. Glaze is a defensive tool that disrupts style mimicry by minimally changing artwork secretly, such that it's impossible to figure out what's changed to human, but to a model, it's a completely different artstyle. Nightshade is an offensive tool to distort feature representation, to make the AI think that something in a piece of artwork is something else entirely. Both of these well known tools, as well as disturbance tools in artwork software like ibisPaint X is one good way to protect your art from those nasty AI scrapers.
If any social media says they're going to use your data to train an AI, and they happen to announce in the same breath that they won't be allowing you to opt out of this data scraping, I suggest you save every post or image on your account that you have posted before, tell people where you're going, then delete all of your posts and your account, and take your leave, because if they gain your data, and they don't have the ability to request a deletion of said data in the API, then they get to use that data for more nefarious purposes, handing off to other companies, etc, etc.
If an artist or musician you know starts using AI, it's a likely chance they're about to head down the same road the above creators have already head down before, and as we know.. this results in their content looking like a total mess, thus meaning that it's probably already over for them. I suggest you unfollow them until they stop using AI in their content or block them out entirely if they refuse to stop using AI. If a friend you know starts using AI, I suggest you redirect them to this guide and tell them who sent you. They will realize the mistakes they've made and immediately cut that crap out.
Remember, Generative AI is dangerous, and it can lead to further, untimely effects that will drive this world to a dystopia. If you take your step now, you'll thank me later, and you'll be thanked across the web as well.