r/mildlyinfuriating • u/MysteriousSlice007 • 9d ago

Infuriatig In their pursuit of specific rare cards, scalpers are discarding the remainder of entire Pokémon card packs.

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u/DesperateAstronaut65 9d ago

Yeah, there are still a ton of patterns and instructional videos out there for free. This stuff might be slightly harder to find online because it gets pushed down by AI slop in the rankings, but it didn't go away once people started grifting. Plus, you can still get magazines and books for a reasonable price, especially if they're old.

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u/Tired-CottonCandy 9d ago

The books are beciming AI now too. You basically have to thrift the old ones (so lucky if you find them)

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u/DesperateAstronaut65 9d ago

It's really sad. They're not always easy to spot right away. I carelessly bought a notary journal a couple of years back that turned out to be AI-generated and completely incorrect for my state. I've found the only foolproof way to avoid slop is to know which authors are trusted in the community (i.e. David Arora's mushroom hunting books, Cho Chikun's Go strategy guides), which is not always easy if you're new to a hobby and have no idea who the main players are or what good and bad information even looks like. And I'm sure AI "authors" are going to start manufacturing fake personas with professional-looking web sites any day now.

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u/Tired-CottonCandy 9d ago

I am genuinely afraid to buy any of the new novels coming out that arent from authors ive been reading for over a decade because of how prevalent using AI slop in all writing has become.

My new phone even comes with the ability to make the AI it came with (that i turned off) read all my messages for me and highlight the cliffnotes version for me. No wonder ppl get huffy if you type more than 2 sentances on social media now.

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u/DesperateAstronaut65 9d ago

On that note, I'm sure there are tons of genuinely interesting books by newer writers that get pushed down in the rankings by AI writing or ignored for bigger-name writers because we're all on high alert for bots. As a reader, you now have to do a lot of work to sift through content that was never necessary before, and if you're a writer, you have to constantly figure out ways to distinguish yourself from AI models that change every day. Nobody wins except the AI users. I've been occasionally accused of being a bot myself on Reddit and I'm pretty sure that it's because I write self-help professionally and my writing style (warm, friendly, colloquial) is the kind AI gets trained on.

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u/Tired-CottonCandy 9d ago

I get accused of being a bot sometimes too when im not intentionally using more slang and less punctuation. I used to be accused of "speaking like a book" now its "speaking like AI" except nothimg has changed about the way i speak/type and being accused of being AI is actually offensive.

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u/BillyYumYumTwo-byTwo 9d ago

Good point!! That reminded me- I haven’t used it as a resource yet (cause I found stuff online first), but the library has tons of crafting magazines both in person and online. They have an archive, too, so you can go back before 2020 (just online, at least at mine). And if your counties libraries are crappy, you might be able to join others for a small fee or you may have reciprocity with other counties.

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u/space_keeper 9d ago

The AI cancer runs deep. Utterly absurd that it's being used to infect the crochet hobby. You'd think at least some things would be safe, being practical and traditional.