This video was made with artificial intelligence (AI) very much on purpose. What better medium for a video to drive the point home that, "there's nothing better than the real thing?" Everything you see in the video was made with a combination of Google Veo2/3, Kling AI, LTX Studio, DeepSwap, and Chat GPT. The only character that's real in this is myself as the recurring character that our protagonist interacts with over and over again which is what finally exposes the true nature of her artificial world. There's something very accentuating about using AI to make a video for The Real Thing and I hope that underscoring meaning helps the song and the message be a bit stickier. I love this song and how it came out. Karl Anderson from Anchour studio helped make it a reality and I'm glad to have his help in it. I wrote this song from the comfort of my quarantine bed in my basement during the height of COVID so I had nothing better to do that read, think, and write for 10 days. As painful (for everyone in the house) as that was, I'm thankful for the time and the unexpected fruit that came of it. Now, years later as technology has caught up to the point where I could make the acompanying visual media I so wanted to create with it, I get to share it with you.
The video follows our skater on her way to a roller derby through her world that seems to be exactly what she expects, and exactly what she sees. Everything is normal until she slowly starts to notice incongruences with what she knows to be. As she skates through the city, interacting with various people that she at first doesn't notice to be the same man, she begins to see unsettling details in her surroundings that start having a cumulative effect. She begins to notice that people are willingly and happily consuming poison in everything they intake, from media (the Poison Plex cinema showing the double entendre French movie 'Les Poisson') to the drinks we drink (man on the park bench drinking 'Poison'), to the food we eat (Poison Eats Restaurant serving moldy food). With every passing reference she becomes more unsettled until even after reaching her final destination of the roller derby she notices the same man she's interacted with a handful of times again. The first time she sees him as a construction worker it's nothing to think twice about. The second time at a hotdog stand could very well be a coincidence. The third time he appears after a man drinks a can of Poison and transforms into him. This is so out of the ordinary she can't believe what she's seeing and passes on thinking to herself that she must have got it wrong and she must be seeing things. That's not possible. When she sees him at her roller derby across the city however, It's too much to be a coincidence and too much to be natural. The facade of her otherwise normal world and the veil that hid it's true nature is broken and she passes from being a unknowing participant in a reality that turns out to be untrue, to someone desperately trying to escape this facsimile of what's real. When she does make the realization, her reality itself turns on her like T-cells on an infection. She becomes like a virus to this established reality that is not set up to serve her, but to use her. Friend and foe become unified against her as she makes a mad dash to try and escape the world she thought she knew.
I want to be clear; this is not a condemnation on AI, but it does raise an important conversation. Things aren't always what they seem. A time is coming (and may be here already) where creative tools like the generative AI I used to make this video can just as easily be used to sway public opinion and deceitfully inform us to certain influencer's selfish and potentially harmful ends. Even now, it's hard to discern what's real and what's not and I fear before too long it will be impossible. I think this is true even now for things we believe, or even things we think we know. In many cases we're not even given the chance to hear all sides of an issue anymore because of the way information is delivered to us. We're provided tailored and curated feeds on every social media platform and content cache that is designed to engage us, but that's exactly the problem. As we express interest in a certain point of view based on the first bits of information we receive, we feed algorithms that begin to "learn" our favored behavior and are designed to give us not the truth, but what we want. What if the opinions we're provided aren't first prioritizing truth or what's real but rather simply what's engaging? We wouldn't even know it; we would only become more galvanized in our existing way of thought which would drive further interaction with our curated sources of information only deepening the wrong belief. That deepening of our way of thought will naturally distance us from others who hold differing views.
I'm generally not a fan of social media. I use it as a tool (not very well though) but I try not to get too into the weeds with it. I think almost all of it is a polished and manicured image of what's actually going on. I get it though, why not put your best foot forward? The problem I see however, is that the curated presentation we show the world comes off as our normal. Our best vacation photos, most enviable experiences, and highest highs are presented as our normal and ordinary life and we (or at least I) tend to find myself comparing my own life and experiences to those. This doesn't lead me to feeling better about my situation, only dissatisfaction in the long run. The intention of social media to being people together is still served, but many other side effects have sprung up in our continued usage and further engagement with it. I'm happy with what I have and where I am. It could be better of course, but I don't know if I'd be happier as a result of circumstances temporarily changing one way or another. I don't need the innocent and unintentional falsehood of someone else's digital life infringing on my satisfaction with my real one.
The other big risk and progression of things like social media and AI are that the tools of our time now no longer serve us, but drive us apart into smaller and more defined tribes which I believe can only make us weaker. Wouldn't we be better together? Even if we disagree? The song The Real Thing speaks of a desire to break this cycle and reach for something actually real, even to the point of being idyllically transcendent. It's the pursuit and desire for a truth that isn't moved or concerned by which direction the winds of popular opinion are currently blowing. It's after something permanent; eternal even. A pursuit after a source that speaks to a soul rather than a symptom, even a search for God. It's after something beyond our own vision; something real. That's what I want. I want the real thing.