I listen to the Mindscape podcast which at least until now has seemed mostly about science related topics but this latest one was an interview with musician who formerly called herself 'Grimes'. Apparently she started with GarageBand and worked up to her present successful music career.
She brought up a lot of interesting ideas.
You represent 2 people. Your physical self and your digital self. Embrace the difference.
Lots of people seem upset by this difference and feel people aren't being real online. Her POV seemed to be that's the real version of you online and it is a different version of you but so what. Most people are different around their parents than their friends for example and likely different around their co-workers. That they are different online is just another of the same thing and should not be considered bad but rather embraced.
She's trying to separate her digital self as a separate person.
In this way she hopes when people attack her digital avatar it will feel less connected to her sense of self.
Fashion should stop being physical and instead be virtual
This idea is kind of riffing off throw away fashion. The idea that you go to H&M or some other cheap clothing place to buy a cheap outfit who's only point is to take a picture and put it on Instagram. Her point seemed to be why go through the physical part. Just put digital clothing on your picture and post that to Instagram. It would accomplish the same thing and not waste resources.
Whether it's functionally equivalent or not I don't know but I found the idea that she saw it as equivalent interesting.
Semi related she mentioned making music videos and how bad that is for the environment. Flying people all to one location, building sets that just get thrown in the trash after, all of this to make a thing that ends up being a digital video on Instagram or YouTube. How about finding ways to just keep it digital from start to finish.
Related to all of that she expects VR and avatars to be a major thing soon
I'm a little curious. I have hard time getting into non VR games now. Partly because so many games are just skinned versions of older games. VR games provide 2 major things. One is the feeling presence, feeling like you are actually in this other world.
The other is given the input systems attach to your hands a well designed VR experience the way to do something in the game kind of disappears. If you want to press a button on an elevator you just reach out and touch it. If you want to open that drawer you just grab the handle and pull. If you want to look to the right you just turn your head. No having to figure out which of the 17+ buttons on your PS4 or XBox controller you need to press to do those 3 things. That can make the games way more intuitive. Of course poorly designed games fail to make their input systems easy and they can end up being worse but at least the ability to make then better is there.
I don't know if VR will ever go anywhere mainstream in the near future nor do I know digital avatars will be a thing but I found it interesting that she thought they would.
She thinks A.I. will surpass us creatively
It follows if AGI can think it will be as or more creative than us. It was just an interesting thing to think about that AGI could start creating works for art/music/writing for other AGI and not for us.
She has multiple troll accounts she uses to shitpost.
This one bothered me. Trolling just seems bad to me. You're actively being mean to another person. Her POV seemed to be "everyone does it so it's no big deal". That sounds like the lemmings argument. "If everyone jumped off a cliff would you jump too?". Or "Two wrongs don't make a right". She found it cathartic to go virtually be mean to people. I found problematic. Emotions and feelings are real so being a dick to someone is still being a dick to a real person since it affects their real feelings and emotions.
I want to make a distinction between trolling vs posting anonymously. Plenty of people make throwaway accounts to post things they feel would get them in trouble by their employer, their family, whatever. It could be an LGBT person who is not or can not be public. It could also just be someone with an unpopular opinion but in this world of cancel culture is afraid to even bring it up.
She mentioned being creeped out in VR chat by male players harassing her
She didn't seem to notice the connection to the fact that she has troll accounts.
Anyway, it was an interesting interview.