Everything Is Content - Everything In Conversation: Is Cultural Snobbery Good?

Episode Date: October 1, 2025

Happy Wednesday EICollective! This week we're getting high and mighty in a conversation about whether making elitist attitudes unfashionable has actually harmed the culture. As Rachel Aroesti investigated in a recent piece for The Guardian... in an era of AI slop and mid TV, is it time for cultural snobbery to make a comeback? With your help we puzzle over issues of misogyny and classism in assigning labels of high and low brow, if phone addictions are making us less interested in good art and whether it's up to us to challenge each other to get more intellectual and curious in what we consume. As always thank you so much for listening and sending us your thoughts. If you'd like to take part in future episodes just follow us on Instagram @everythingiscontentpod See you Friday for more! O, R, B xThe Guardian - Is it time for cultural snobbery to make a comeback?  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Beth. I'm Ruchera. And I'm Anoni. And this is Everything in Conversation. This is the first of two weekly episodes where we get stuck into the best pop culture discussions. We'd love if you'd give us a follow on Instagram and TikTok that Everything is ContentPod to keep up with conversation topics and have your say in these episodes. And make sure you follow us on your podcast player app so you never miss an episode. And if we could be so bold, please could you give us a review wherever you're listening as it truly.

is the lifeblood of the podcast. In an era of AI slop and mid-TV, is it time for cultural snobbery to make a comeback? A great question and also the headline of a Guardian article by Rachel Arrowsd that we all recently got stuck into. In the piece, Rachel explores the idea that so-called low-brown media now dominates the culture and that pointing this out or expressing a desire for change gets you labelled as an elitist killjoy. She draws on an example from Lena Dunham's recent Netflix show Too Much, which we discussed on the podcast, where main character Jessica is criticised routinely by her boyfriend for her cultural tastes.

When she sings along to a Miley Cyrus song in bed, he tells her, quote, it's not real music, it's manufactured bullshit. Come on, you're too smart to fall for that. In tears, she replies, don't make me feel stupid for loving things. But is it ever right to do that? Is it ever right to point out that the culture seems to be getting less inventive, bold, interesting? and to push back on the rising tide of AI slop, shallow pop, bad poems and splashy but ultimately empty films and demand that the culture give us more of the really good, interesting, complex stuff

as well. Are we being kill joys when we point out that things are getting worse, that there is less art in our art and more advertising, the AI is being allowed, even encouraged to create on a mass scale at a time when real creatives are being undervalued and left out. Here's a quote from the piece, I think, lays it out best. In a 1993 interview, David Foster Wallace defined low culture, such as TV and popular film, as art that is lucrative because it knows, quote, audiences prefer 100% pleasure. Serious art is, quote, more apt to make you uncomfortable or to force you to work hard to access its pleasures, the same way that in real life, true pleasure is usually a byproduct of hard work and discomfort. We may live in an era when watching an entire

TV program without looking at your phone, feels like monastic contemplation, but Foster Wallace's ethos remains true and applicable. The easier art is to consume and produce, and the more focused it is on remuneration, the less it gives us. No food for thought, just reaffirmation at a time when echo chambers are the default, end quote. And I think anyone who has listened to more than 30 seconds of this podcast will know that none of us are strangers or haters of lowbrow culture. We consume it, we get pleasure from it and we have endless discussions off the back of it. But at what point do we reach a critical level where it's too much, where it's harming our intellect or becoming a warning sign for where society and culture is headed? And Routhera, you sent us this piece. And I wanted to

ask as someone who I think of as both a real housewives officionado and also a consumer of so much really highbrow, really esoteric culture, especially cinema, where do you stand on the label of cultural snob, do you think, has that label ever been applied to you when you talk about your tastes or have you ever encountered cultural snobbery directed at you for the fact that, as well as the highbrow stuff, you also do like to watch reality TV? What's your experience? That is such a kind question. Thank you. I've never felt so good being questioned about something. So I don't remember being called a snob before, but I definitely have been on the receiving end of judgment for liking the Real Housewives

for passionately loving reality TV and my take is I felt really challenged by this piece in a good way and I love that and it really made me reconsider maybe the last few years of this academic approach to reality TV and how much that's emboldened me to think and to almost use that as a crutch when people judge reality TV or my obsession with it

to fall back on oh well you know the ex-academic said this, you know that it's a microcosm of politics across the world and to really fall back on the academic side of proving that that genre has merit and is important. And I wonder if that is perhaps overselling reality TV. This piece made me wonder, is it okay just for reality TV to be a bit of trash for it to, you know, somehow also comment on the state of the world, the fact that maybe we all need to rely on TV that makes us feel good and is easy and is consumable, rather than making it much bigger than it has to be and making it so academic to the point of making it feel as legitimate as, I don't know, a bloody art house cinema,

which is where I think we've got to and I think I've really loved using that as a way to say that my tastes are all good across the board. And I don't know if that's true. I think it's okay and I think we should be able to say, you know what, I like a bit of shit and I like a bit of good stuff too and that's a healthy diet like fast food and cooking your own dinner and this piece made me reconsider that and I think maybe I've been a bit guilty of trying to sell myself as like all high brow, no low brow at all when really that's just not the truth. I agree with you about this piece feeling a bit challenging. I absolutely loved reading it and it really made me think as well and I love the point that they made about the kind of the endless cycle, the loop of the fact that because

I say the same thing, let people enjoy stuff, you know, people got really busy work lives if they just want to go back home and watch whatever at the end of the day, you know, let them do it. And the idea that like the reason we consume kind of crap in verticomber's lowbrow stuff is making us also have quite like uninspiring lives. The idea that that is a self-fulfilling prophecy rather than it being like an excuse or something we need. It's actually something we're then creating more of like a negative pattern. And I thought that was really interesting.

And I think it's really true. I think we've become really lazy in lots of ways because of the way that technology is advanced because of all of our addictions to our phones and because of our attention spans, we do seek out the quickest form of pleasure. I'm really bad at, you know, engaging with art in an evening if I don't already have a relationship with it, e.g. I might end up just re-watching a TV show because I literally cannot be bothered to try and get into a new show because I don't have like the energy to actually open my eyes and mind and heart to a new piece of drama which might be really good. And so I think that also what this piece points out is it's

actually kind of, I guess, a disservice to good art to allow each other, not to give each other break, but to like not actually try and commit, carve out time, allow yourself to really invest in watching, absorbing, reading, listening to very valuable art that has been created in a way that is slightly more impactful, perhaps than some of the more run in the mill, churn it out content that we do see. But that is really hard in a society which, God, actually had so many thoughts on this piece but in a society where everything is about capitalism now. I absolutely love that bit about in the 90s you would

say you're such a sellout and I remember even when I first started my career that was such a big thing people saying you're a sellout and then quite quickly that turned to go get that bag you know got to get that bread and money kind of became the thing that everyone was trying to get and it didn't really matter how or why you got there and everyone

kind of backs each other up and they're like you've got to do what you want to do in this economy but then art does suffer so I think it's really really interesting but I think like as a participant under capitalism in this society. I also don't necessarily know how most creatives can escape from a creating art that is commercial because that's the only way that it's really viable to do it unless you're like an aristocratic lord, which even they probably don't have much money left anymore, don't really know what's

going on with the Lord's. I do think one, I would like to know what's going on with the Lords, but maybe for another episodes. I think that is it. That's the central bit of friction here. And I love that bit in the piece talking about like pop-tivism and to quote, Rachel, she says, yet poptivism's reach went far beyond oppressive power structures. In the end, open-mindedness curdled into indiscriminate celebration.

And it's that indiscriminate celebration of girl get that bag that leads us to where we are now, where you cannot criticise, as a viewer of something, you cannot criticise, it's not space to criticise, or even just like ask about the artistic value of something very popular without first, like, an army of stands descending to mobilize, try and ruin your life. But also, no one seems to want to engage. Everyone's very like, oh, I don't know, man, like Mastercard is partnering with this. star to headline this war crimes summit. You know, it's all just really disgusting and hard. And it's like, it's a really horrible landscape to be trying to create good things and

interesting things and provocative things. And it primes fans of these big, big stars to have like these really weird standards for both the art and the artist. There's not a huge demand for things to be good, just for things to be plentiful. I saw Taylor Swift was receiving some maybe gentle criticism, but the tracks on our album aren't very long. long. I mean, she puts out song after song, after song. But there is, there's a hunger, but there's not really a hunger for quality, I think, some of the times. And also in terms of the behaviour of our faves, it's the standards just seem really hypocritical. And no one is really engaging in their brain. Like, you can have a gig, you know, if it's your fave, a gig in Tel Aviv is

permissible. A pop star becoming a billionaire is okay because people will kind of make, move the goalpost and be like, yeah, but she's a woman. So it's okay. And I think if any critique of that is met with and horror, then how do we improve and how do we create art that is provocative and interesting and moves, you know, moves the dial. It just seems like we've arrested in place. It's a very passive time. It's just, I'm not anti-pop. I'm not anti-lowbrow. I'm just very anti-the-stagnation. And Ashting actually said genuine criticism makes art better, but we've forbidden it. And I think we've talked about this to the cows gone home, so forgive me. But we are in an anti-critic era. We're sort of losing recipes and we're losing an interest in getting deeper and then

looking at art that is deeper. And it's like, we know that this kind of anti-intellectualism benefits bigots and fascists and really bad actors who would like people to be less critical and less intellectually engaged. So I think resisting the creep of low value or low-brow culture is not about saying this is bad, but it's saying what does this represent and why is that bad? What does this tell us about where we are headed or where we've already arrived at? It's interesting, isn't it? Because the question remains, what can we do about this? It feels like we're being led into a direction but the reality is and the peace touches on this culture has become more populist so really all of these things in a way apart from being driven by the technologies

that they exist on such as you know streaming platforms and screens they're kind of orbiting around us and it's orbiting around our attention so really we do have the power with all of this i went to a talk recently by somebody in marketing and netflix and they were talking about how much attention and discussion and conversation really drives their takes of how popular a show is. So we all literally have the power to determine what is popular, what becomes popular. So it feels difficult, but also at the same time, it really comes back to what you said and only where it is challenging ourselves to watch the difficult show, like adolescents, like baby reindeer, which really are the sparks of the last few years and the underdogs of

shows that were, in theory, not supposed to be Netflix's biggest stars, but they were. and their challenging shows. So I think, basically, I think this piece was quite cynical, but I kept thinking about those two shows and feeling a bit of hope about it. And also feeling the reminder of the fact that with all of these changes that we're seeing with the direction of culture, with AI slop,

the answer really falls onto, well, what do we care about? What do we want to invest our energies and attention into? And this piece really reminded me of, yeah, you know, housewives can be a bit of my diet, my culture diet, but really this is a reminder that I have to watch the difficult show. I have to pick up the book that is on the Booker Prize list category X, Y, Z.

I need to challenge myself and keep that up. It's like gym for the brain a bit. We had a message from Anonymous that said, bring back snobbery. I like to hear from film, musician, arts critics who spend their life thinking about these art forms. Algorithms are designed to make us passive and we lean back so we need to cultivate taste.

That concept of being passive, passively enjoying things, I think really hits the nail on the. the head and that is the difference for me and I notice it sometimes where say I enjoy a book or I enjoy a film it's like I'm enjoying it as it's happening but post the experience of having consumed it there's not really any reaction from me if any like lingering feeling sense or action whereas when I read a really good book that you're actually kind of even in your own head challenging it's making you think differently it's maybe making you question how you feel about certain things that is to me I think what art is and that's what the piece was talking about but we have kind of confuddled all of this in this world to just think that art should only bring joy, make you feel kind of like relaxed, passive, you're not an active participant in it. And I think we talk so much about overconsumption of clothes and like fashion and that being bad for the environment. But I also think the way that we overconsume, like you were saying that the rate at which stuff's being put out, there's so many statistics now about like how when they first made books like available to the general

population, people started reading like voraciously, whereas before that they would kind of read the same book over and over and over again. And reading has completely declined now, but we're like constantly consuming things from every single angle, whether it's like two new albums a week, every single new Netflix film that drops, maybe a book in there, whatever. And I think that part of it, and we are definitely all guilty of this, is like consumption for the sake of feeling like you're part of the culture so that you know what the language and the conversation is happening, but it's not actually engaging from a point of view of, I've just found this author and I absolutely love his writing. So I'm going to read every single book he's ever read

starting from the first one, then I'm going to learn about the history. There's no kind of like, it just, it's, it's that thing of like, no one's cultivating your own taste. We're kind of jumping around all over the shop just to kind of feel like we're on top of the message, and I'm saying I do this as well. And it's something I've been thinking about, but it's, we're so torn now. I kind of would love to just be like, actually this year I'm just going to read books by Jonathan Franzen and then I'm going to research, you know?

And I think that that's like an interesting idea as well of not feeling the pressure to be on top things because then I think what happens is we overconsume so much that actually nothing really stays in. What this made me think of, so that message from Anonymous stuck with me and also a message from Daisy who said, there was an insane amount of slop on Kindle Unlimited. I'm all for a lowbrow easy read, but the amount of titles with variations on the same name and 90% plot is mad and does make me worried for the future. Both of those messages made me think of a post on Twitter I saw recently, which was shouting the praises of the library and protecting the library as an institution because it is a space which is quite organic where you can discover new media that isn't influenced by the last credit card transaction that you made.

Whereas online, you know, if you read one, maybe one trashy plot by numbers book, which I have to admit on my recent trip to America, I was doing that. My algorithm is now serving me up more and more of the same. Whereas if you're outside of the internet in a kind of physical space, whether that is the library or even just a book club with really diverse participants, you're far more likely to explore and be challenged and, you know, begin to read something, which has no algorithmic connection to the last thing that you browsed or something that you searched or whatever. And I think when we lose physical cultural spaces and we rely on algorithms and, you know, e-commerce or even TikToks where the premise of them is like, if you love this book, here are 10 more that are really similar, which isn't a great evil, but I think it does speak to just how we sort of silo into one space. funnels us towards these little cultural alcoves, which I don't think is ideal if you want to have

diverse tastes, if you want to read a bit of highbrow, a bit of lowbrow, I found myself really in this middling space because I am relying on what Amazon or even what, you know, emails from Waterstones, wherever is suggesting that I read based on my last read. And I think when we read books on Kindle, especially when we return to this one hub, this like, as the intent narrows to like just these single commerce spaces, we just lose, we lose the kind of human element and the element of curiosity, which is very important if you want to see what is culturally out there. If you want to be a person that creates interesting culture, you have to consume interesting culture. And I think all of us are just maybe doing a bit. Or we're just victims of the

way that the culture is set up and how it is delivered to us, which is a Netflix algorithm, an Amazon algorithm, an algorithm on every single front. And I think that does lead us to a place where yeah there's just less of the really good stuff there's less of the really interesting stuff it doesn't pass on news feeds and so it isn't selling i'm going to ask a bit of a provocative question because when i was reading this piece i was thinking about the amazing new yorker piece on romanticcy that we read and specifically the section about how uh some part of book talk will find their next romanty book based on tropes that they're looking for so basically it's almost like um shopping for your next book your next part of the puzzle piece of the next thing that you want to

consume. And a lot of the pushback on any criticism against Romanticies is that it is a mostly female written, a mostly female red genre. So in the heart of criticism against Romanticy is a misogyny. And also in this piece, she brings up Marvel films and fantasy being almost like the male equivalent of a form of cultural slop that is left unfested and in many ways is just held up to be an amazing part of culture. We're meant to talk about it with reverence. And I wonder, what do you think about the fact that both of those things can exist, but there is this huge kind of pushback against criticism of Romancey and the defence of it being misogynistic to think of it as maybe a lowbrow form of culture?

What's interesting is I was quite snobby about those kind of books until Beth read them and then it kind of gave me, it felt like I then had clearance to also go and read them because I trust Beth and I trust Beth's likes and you, and by, are you kind of okaying it for me? Because I think I still had that inbuilt snobbery. I was like, I'll go and read one. I read a couple. I quite quickly did get over it and I do think they are still a bit sloppy in some ways. But I think there's a really interesting thing about shame, this whole like snobby and the misogy thing of romanticcy. I don't know how many people who read them don't have that double layer of awareness that it's not really the best book. I think some people do

take them very seriously. But I don't know if I've heard that many people say that it's misogynistic because it's what women enjoy, but maybe that's because the people I know reading them are readers like me and Beth who, they're reading them, but they're also like, got one toe in, one toe out sort of thing. I'm also in that place where I'm torn between wanting to be really fair and democratic towards art and all art and not automatically assign an entire genre with the label of, well, it's part of this, it must be this. We've had like crime novels at some point. People were sort of like, well, that's easy to read, crime, it's pulpy. And actually some crime novels are really fantastic and we do as was pointed out on our DMs like if it is a man

making a piece of art a white man specifically for a very long time it was automatically granted a level of self-seriousness that women and other you know minority groups or disparaged groups have historically had to really really earn so I'm always trying to be fair but you know I think it does exist in a space where because they are very they're replicated and there's so much replication so much copying and so much so much intervention from big company CEOs wanting to make money off the back of it. It's very difficult, I think, for that genre especially to break through. But I mean, I was thinking about this because I was like, well, if we're going to talk about cultural snobbery and we're going to talk about low brown highbrow, like how do we

define what is what? And she gets into this in the piece in the way that historically the term lowbrow has been misappropriated or fueled by culture-wide prejudices. And it's across the board. It's like the same reason that people think French food is really fancy, but Chinese food, even though involves so much prep and it's it's it's so flavour rich and it's it can be really complex it's kind of automatically assumed or has been in the past automatically assumed to be of a lower status same with like jazz rap music novels by women it is has been automatically assigned that lower status and I think in having this conversation you have to have all the other conversations about why what we believe to be inferior how culture has been away from anything that's not written by a sort of balding white man

but I think we're very much still in that time of correction where we don't quite know um and in the piece she writes, we've adapted to art in increasingly populous, democratic and easily digestible forms, cinema, pop music, television, the internet, much of it reflective of new technologies. Over time, suspicion about specific mediums become synonymous with elitism and a fear of change. Yet there were always hierarchies within these modern forms, often directed along lines of race, gender, and sexuality,

with the output and tastes of the straight white male, generally receiving the least derision. And I was thinking also about some, like, low-brow, TV, like, I would say like drag race, queer eye, that could then, could be argued to have the highbrow elements if it, you know, introduces a different perspective into the front rooms of families that might not otherwise come across it. Like, your granddad might watch an episode of drag race, but he's perhaps wouldn't have watched Paris's burning. And I do think it's a complex conversation because highbrow art or lowbrow art can operate on some highbrow levels

and be very impactful and does impact then transcend form, you know, if it's reality TV, but it's reality TV exploring gender or at least opening up channels of communication. And I just, I don't know, I got kind of really in the weeds about this because how do we categorize high and low brow is romanticity, as we pointed out, like for many years, fantasy was about men, it was about wars, it was about this, and now it's about romance and female power. does that mean that it is automatically in the gutter? I don't know. I don't have an answer to this, but I think there's a lot to think about on that topic. And I don't know, did you have a thought on this, Ruchera? Was this just a spicy question? No, I was just dropping the grenade into the

conversation. But I think everything you said is such a smart way of looking at it. That's so true and it's such a good point about if Drag Race is your gateway into reconsidering a new perspective, does it matter if it's quote unquote lowbrow? I think you've just given the whole conversation a more 4D element to it, because I do think that might be a limiting factor in the piece actually you've made me think about this. Maybe quilling it all the different categories of brow, low, mid, high can be quite a reductive way to enter into this conversation. Maybe it's what you said right, the beginning and only, which is if it challenges you and isn't just spoon-feeding you the same thing that you are consuming all the time, perhaps that's the more interesting

goal for culture, regardless of what brow category it fits into. Maybe it should just be about not just repeating and not driving ourselves towards the same echo chamber and just kind of going in circles over the same culture. Maybe it is just about being more explorative with our choices. And that doesn't necessarily have to tie into a category that just has to be about being curious. And we've spoken before about being, about the world just feeling quite anti-intellectual, anti-curious at the moment and I think maybe that's that's the thing not the brow it's so funny you say that because this is the loop I kind of got stuck on because that was my initial I remember again like you beth trying to be more democratic about art and also understanding that everyone has different

access points and levels and coming to things at different points and I remember when florence given's book women don't owe you pretty fast came out and there's lots of backlash people saying this is like feminism like blah blah and I remember saying at the time but for some people that is their access to feminism like they haven't read any of these other books that you're talking about, that might encourage them to get into that. And that it's kind of like that train of thinking, you know, like everyone should have a level of something that works for them, which then helps. That's how I used to frame it. This piece then made me wonder, which is the other argument, which is that like, if we're constantly making everything

sort of so super accessible watered down to the point where like, do people actually progress past that? Perhaps that isn't true that we then go and seek out the next layer. Perhaps we all stall at that first hurdle. Again, on the studies of, like, reading and people's ability, like, the books that people would read as, like, kind of young adults or even children, adults today studying, or just generally, like, really struggle to read certain texts. So we are losing some quite basic language and reading skills anyway, and not that that makes something high brow, because I really struggle with it, and I struggled with it last time

when we were talking about what makes something mid and low, and we talked about conclave and those things. but the way she explained it and the piece actually did kind of make sense to me which is that something mid is basically when it's glossy they get really good actors and like all the kind of proponents of something you think looks and sounds and moves like it's a good film but actually that's all that's there it's just like the external shell and there's no real thought put in the middle and that kind of I was like oh yes that makes sense to me because I get a hoodwink by those films as well like I see the cast the glossiness and I'm like

this is a good film and then you're kind of like is it though like is it actually a good film maybe it's not all of this to say I don't have an answer because again I then you say all of that about I guess aren't being worthy or art being educational enough or like making sure that people aren't just I guess being spoon fed to the point where it actually makes us less intelligent because that's a really complicated thing to say that there's so many reasons why education access like that's that's really quite problematic and of itself but at the same time I think the piece also does strike me as something important which is we do have to give it give ourselves and each other credibility that we we actually could probably be a bit smarter and we could be smarter through making more interesting educated choices on the art that we consume. What I think on, I think on that topic is it feels like studio heads or the stuff that gets made is for momentary money or it's for like momentary impact, like quick impact, top of the charts, a million viewers, one of the most watched on Netflix.

And then often, not always, because we mentioned, you know, adolescence and baby Reinder, then it sort of vanishes versus trying to create something which endures. So watching a film from the last 50 years, you go, this will always be a very good film. This is, and obviously as cinema and TV does progress, there's less groundbreaking stuff that you can do, stuff that you do in the first 30 years, 40 years, 50 years of a medium is probably, it's a lot easier to be like, and this has never been done before. So it's not even necessarily saying like, wow, this is completely reinvented the form, although I do believe there is still ground to cover. there. It's that the effort is not being made. And I think, I don't want to sound like too tin foil

haty, but it does feel that the stuff we're consuming, it's getting stupid. One, maybe because we're all double-screened consumers. And I'm guilty of this. I'm trying to stop it, but I absolutely am. And actually, we got a message from Hope who said, everything feels like ambient watching designed to be scrolled to. It's what I've been thinking. I watched recently actually the girlfriend on Amazon Prime. I don't know if either of you have watched that, but it's like big, it's, doing very well Amazon Prime at the moment. It's basically about, it's got Olivia Cook in it. It's about a young rich guy, brings home his girlfriend, it's kind of psychological warfare in shoes with her and his mom. And it's, I thought it was good, but a lot of it, parts of it felt

like it had basically been dialed down and dumbed down, like interesting plot points or parts where you think, oh, that could have been really suspenseful. Basically had been made so much less complex and I thought, and it's not the first show I've thought this about, it felt like it had been written and then rewritten for an audience that they knew would be on their phones, that they knew they would go, oh, this is a bit confusing. I don't really know what's happening. They know that people are not giving stuff their full attention. And I think we're kind of living in a time where people can't even bear to be off their phones in the cinema. So many of us do double screen. And it feels like things are being written to be more accessible to screen zombies. But also maybe, like, you know,

the impact of that is we are more susceptible to propaganda, to being spoon-fed ideas. We're watching, like, such a push towards what seems like such clearly false and hateful ideology, especially in the, in the US. And people are quite blindly saying, yes, absolutely, it's this way. And it just feels like a stupidity epidemic as evidence, not just in politics and popular opinion, but also in the stuff that we're all consuming, it just feels like a slow march towards like total brain rot, total mindlessness. And just people being like, well, that's what TV is. And it's like it actually isn't or doesn't need to be. For balance, we had a message from Catriona who said,

there is a need for all art, in my opinion, apart from AI art. I have space for a shitty TV show, book, as much as I love a beautiful piece of cinema, literature. Sometimes it's great to decompress with something that's a bit more lighthearted and fun. And often when you sit and think about it and talk through it, it can be really surprisingly deep and bring lots of people together. I, however, don't have any interest in AI art. there's millions of amazing artists who dedicate thought and time and trying into their craft if AI is giving us art then it feels insecure and lacks the depth it took someone to make this thing in that way good lord imagine the award shows they'd be so uninteresting and one thing

I was thinking about when we read the guardian piece was AI obviously eats itself it eats the information that is available online it eats kind of the culture that it's being fed to learn from And have we just walked into the direction of AI being able to replicate really shitty stuff so easily? Like I think about how quickly it was able to regurgitate a Drake song and how chilling that was. I think about the podcast, it can spit out in five minutes of people just chatting absolute shit. And please, no one come for me and accuse me of any of that, please. But I just, I wonder if the lines of denigration are easy to separate between human, and AI, because up until this conversation, that's what I have been doing every time we talk

about it. But the point of this piece that really challenged me was, maybe that's the point, maybe the reason why we are in this scenario where there's so much crap around is because there's been crap around for a while now and we've just been ignoring it. Yeah, I think, I think is that, because I think that message is right. Catch you in its message, I agree. I think like the podcast that we love and lots of you very kindly say we sound like, the high or low is really important. But I think that actually this piece made me realize that we do need to be able to be critical of it because otherwise we kind of cushion each other and allow each other to just consume slot, which I do think atrophies your brain. And I do think actually makes us less

intelligent, less curious. Like Beth said, more primed to be sold to, to be kind of like hoodwinked and not be as media literate, not have former own opinions. And I think the death of criticism, something we've spoken about so much, does make art worse. Obviously, And it also, I think that it's a bit like choice feminism in a way where you're like, oh, it's feminist if you shave your legs. It's like art is good as long as I enjoy it. But it's kind of not, but I think that's still okay. You can still enjoy something and it not be good for you or nourishing. You can still be a woman who identifies with feminism and do loads of things that don't necessarily further the call of feminism.

That's just how life is. And I think we so quickly and so often want to be able to flatten things, tie them up in a bow and make everything feel like it reflects. us in a way that we like and that is really flattening. I think it's good to know and okay to know that the things you consume actually maybe aren't that great and that maybe it's important to try and mix up a bit and try and spend less time on your phone because I also think we've all allowed each other to get these like social media addictions because everyone said kind of same thing was like oh it's not that bad don't mind I'm always on my phone and I're all like fuck we literally can't get off our phones like I think we're being a bit too sort of softly softly sweetly sweetly

with each other about like across the board about quite a lot of things that are in the long run pretty bad for us. Sorry, I just have to say I was obsessed with Beth saying that there's a stupidity epidemic. And I am one such victim. Like I do, I feel it in myself, which is why I felt comfortable in saying it. But it does feel like the things I see and I know like I shouldn't be, I shouldn't base that off what's on the internet because of like the abundance of bots. I don't know whether these are real people, but just the things that I see and the things that people are buying into, I think we might be in some real trouble here. And I, yeah, I find, I feel like the phrase let people enjoy things has got so much to answer for, perhaps at some point when we're all

really overly critical or maybe we weren't like people enjoy things. It was a nice little correction. I think the overcorrection has happened to the point where it's like, if you're critical, you're a hater. It's just not the case. It's really, it's an interesting way to engage with art. And we're not really engaging anymore. I think we are just, as we say, we're consumers. we are sort of opening up, we're just into the trough more and more and more. One point of the article that I maybe didn't agree with or didn't think was necessarily fair or productive maybe was the lumping in of like AI slot with lowbrow art because as we said like AI slop is like the programming hallucination.

It's like millions of sources blended into something nightmarous with no value. Whereas even lowbrow popular culture is human creation and even if it is less groundbreaking or artistically interesting. It still is the product of like talent and effort, whereas AI doesn't have that effort. It doesn't have intent. And I think, and I would say we don't have this glove like AI slot because of pop stars or even reality TV. We might be primed for it because of those things, but like we have it because of greedy tech billionaires and governments who are either too corrupt or stupid or just like blinded and intimidated by capital to push for regulation. And I think what I felt in this piece and I feel in the culture is that real, everyone

pointing their fingers like the Spider-Man meme of like, oh, it's you. And, you know, I think when we pit like the ice spices and the Sabrina Carpenter's of the world, we make enemies of them and we say, but that's not real. Maybe we do just fall into a trap where we don't identify the real bad actors here. And we had a message from Matty who said, I think it's possible to say that, just for example, Sabrina Carpenter makes music that is good, even if it is disposable, not high art, whatever, but also saying that music made by a little robot or computer is very bad and we should be snobby about it. We can still draw a line. at this is a human being's creation, so let people enjoy it. I think that is a very important

point. I don't think AI slot exists even in the same continent as a poppy album or a new series of Below Deck. I think they are completely different entities. And we can, you know, we can say like, we should, I want a culture which has a real broad, very diverse representation of media. I want the lowbrow to exist. I do not want AI slop to exist. It has no place in an artistic landscape. Whereas I think a little poppy album, that's that me espresso, absolutely does. Yeah, I like that line. And I always come back to you.

I remember the snobbery I would get at university talking about the TV that I binge watch or the music taste that I had. And often from men, often at house parties, and it just was so shit. And really made me think of myself as quite a dumb consumer until, you know, the kind of last few years, of really pushing pop to have the respect it deserves, popular culture having the respect

it deserves. So there is definitely good in there. I think, you know, assuming and kind of treating people with a level of disdain and disrespect for their taste is just never going to be the answer to anything. I think having a line is important. I think completely, you know, banishing the importance of the poptivism and the optimism of what we've experienced is not the right way to go about it. And I think that's the kind of thing I was railing against. I just I just can't imagine that snobbery is the right goal from this. I think it's probably moving the goalpost a little bit towards that direction, but not going full highbrow snob.

Also, my good friend Heather, said, This piece really annoyed me. As a former culture film music snob, former teen pick me too, I feel so free as a woman who can proudly enjoy popular music and TV out loud now and no longer enjoy certain art for the male gaze, which I think is more of it. The summer I turned pretty is still art, sue me. but hey i also love david lynch reading about brutalist architecture and radio head you can enjoy both

and there are still more intellectual art you just have to seek it beyond the mainstream like always thank you so much for listening this week and for all of your incredible thoughts on this topic just a reminder to say that we are on instagram and ticot at everything as content pod with extra behind the scenes content and ways for you to take part and suggest topics for upcoming episodes If you enjoyed this episode, please do leave us a rating and a lovely five-star review on your podcast player app. It means the world to all of us. See you as always on Friday. Bye.