Strands of Genius: AI Tools TLDR , Cool is Dead Cringe is King, Relish Eating the Rich

Guest curated by Mike Jacobson

Feb 16, 2023

:: A BIT MORE ABOUT GUEST CURATOR, MIKE JACOBSON::

LOCATION: Brooklyn, NY

Who I am: An LA kid who’s been 'studying abroad' in NYC for 10 years. Someone once described me as the Ted Lasso of strategy, and I will never live that down.
By day: Freelance strategy
By night: Award-winning magician and mentalist to the stars. Magic Mike was loosely based on my life, I swear.
Where I’ve been: A part of the first 72andSunny strategy team (where I'd watch Faris videos on YouTube), then helped 360i fill the oh-shit-Rosie-is-leaving Oreo hole (tough act to follow), then built the first strategy discipline at Comedy Central, which turned into strategy across Paramount Network (Yellowstone!), Smithsonian Channel, and MTV pro-social too.
Strategy stuff I’ve been up to: Lego México + Laika (the stop-animation studio who did Coraline)
Other stuff I’ve been up to: My wife and I have been hosting a dumb fun event series called It Writes Itself: An AI Open Mic Night in Brooklyn. TLDR: A goofy, DIY, existential take on an open mic night (i.e. comedy, music, art, other esoterica) from the *gleaming* mechanical minds of your favorite AI bots, starring anyone. Bringing it to LA in March, and possibly other cities, if anyone wants to join!

Editor’s Note (Genius Steals): Magic, as he’s known amongst our friends, was the original Magic Mike in our lives. I don’t know who first introduced us or how we first met, if I’m honest! But we had been emailing when he was considering a role at 360i. We were like ships passing in the night, with my sabbatical timed just as he joined the team there. We were acquaintances, but we became friends through mutual friends, and I’ve admired his work from near and far. We got to hug it out in Mexico City recently, and I’m so excited to have him curating today! PS: The nickname didn’t come from nowhere. Our friend Magic was *featured on Ellen* for his magic!! I’d lead with that, but he’s more humble than me ;)

:: THE LINKS ::

For your deck | AI TOOLS TLDR 🤖

ChatGPT & DALL-E-2 are just AI gateway drugs. There are so many cool weird AI experiments going on (plug: just helped with the soon-to-launch dateyourcat.ai w/ PDA!), but the tools are evolving and Riley Brown is my teacher of choice. After trying 60 different tools, here’s a recap of the others you should know about/play around with:
- MidJourney (best for image-making)
- Lexica (teaches you how to best prompt AI)
- Synthesis (create a human who can read any script)
- WellSaidLabs (text to audio site)
- Runway (video editing with a focus on AI)
- Leiapix (for making AI images be more dynamic)
- Scenario.gg (great for replicating a style of art to create a world - characters, landscapes, etc). (Twitter)

For your content | COOL IS DEAD, CRINGE IS KING 👑

Aubrey Plaza. The Rehearsal. Shrek raves. The rise of bad taste. Hailing chicken nuggets. “Post fingers.” Things are getting exponentially weird and Agus Panzoni (@thealgorythm) is my one to watch for keeping up. I loooooved this take on the rise of meta-cringe taking over our feeds this year, and following the ‘cringe irony pipeline’:
- 2020: Sincere cringe
- 2021: Ironic cringe
- 2022: Post-ironic cringe
- 2023: Meta-cringe Meta cringe is about when you can’t tell if someone is being cringey ironically or sincerely (think: Nathan Fielder, Hemlocke Springs). Why’s cringe so compelling? 1. It’s about subversively defying societal expectations (Gen Z’s favorite hobby). 2. You can’t help but watch. I love that it's one big message to take ourselves less seriously. (TikTok)

For your campaign | RELISH EATING THE RICH 🍽️

Just had a realization: all the content I’ve loved in the last month - Triangle of Sadness, White Lotus, The Menu - has been around the malicious joy of eating the rich. I did the old “is there an article that supports my world view” Google, and loved this piece (which Vulture builds upon too). Class critique and existential will-this-actually-pacify-us-so-much-we-don’t-act-on-it aside, with a recession looming, this is our outlet of choice. “Capitalism’s the most marketable theme in entertainment.” and it made me wonder how we should...capitalize? *insert depressingly evil marketing laugh* (WhyNow)

Looking for more from Mike Jacobson? Those enrolled in The School of Stolen Genius will receive a deep dive from him in their inbox shortly! You can access all our expert interviews for SOSG here.

:: AND NOW… SOME FAST FAVORITES ::

:: Game :: Wavelength. If you haven’t played yet, blindly buy it from your local game store (ok, or Amazon) stat

:: City :: Actually, NYC

:: Book :: The Art of Astonishment by Paul Harris

:: Podcast :: Plain English with Derek Thompson (see: Chuck Klosterman episode - Aug 2022 - on why everyone hates everything and you’ll be hooked)

:: Album :: Oh wow, was not prepared for this. The one that's brought me the most joy: Jurassic 5 - Quality Control

::AI OPEN MIC::

Via Dall-E, prompted with: "a mythical creature performing poetry at an AI open mic night to a rapturous audience" - nailed it

Thanks for reading!

Mike
LinkedIn | hellomagicmike.com

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