Dear Internet: Please Stop Making Me Think Articles About AI Are About "Weird Al" Yankovic
On April 20th, the website Consequence of Sound ran an article confusingly titled “Drake Baits Kendrick Lamar with Weird AI Diss.”
The internet collectively responded, “Huh?” This was followed shortly by, “Wait, what?”
Because I am a forty-eight-year-old man who grew up with Weird Al Yankovic's music and had the honor of collaborating with him on multiple books as an adult, I read that headline and wondered why Drake would bait Kendrick Lamar by dissing national treasure “Weird Al” Yankovic.
What could that possibly accomplish? Why was Drake mad at “Weird Al” Yankovic? What did Al do to the Jewish Canadian former child star that made him want to attack him in his lyrics?
For that matter, why would releasing a “Weird Al” Yankovic diss song bait Kendrick Lamar? Is Kendrick Lamar a “Weird Al” Yankovic super-fan? Are they close friends? Are they working on a project together? Why would Kendrick Lamar be baited by a “Weird Al” Yankovic diss song? If Drake is so angry with Lamar, why doesn’t he just diss him directly instead of directing his anger toward the most successful parody artist in American history and a man who has had a huge positive impact on my life and career?
Then I read the headline a second time and understood that it was not referring to a “Weird Al” Yankovic diss released by Drake as a weird chess move in his ongoing feud with Kendrick Lamar. Instead, the headline was about an unusual (or Weird) guest verse created through the dark magic of Artificial Intelligence (more commonly and succinctly known as AI) and directed at Lamar from Drake.
I know I was not alone in being confused by the headline, as well as the fact that rappers are now using AI to diss each other using other rappers’ voices.
I am old fogey, but when I was a young man, rappers were cool and hip and badass and didn’t do unbelievably lame bullshit like lazily employing evil technology to make it sound like Snoop Dogg is insulting someone you have beef with.
The more I learn about Drake, the lamer he seems. I know he thinks he’s tough because he survived the vicious crucible of child stardom, but his posturing is obnoxious, and his misogyny is regrettable.
This speaks to a larger pet peeve of mine regarding the internet. Whenever I see an online article referencing AI, which is a bigger and more terrifying threat every day, my brain first processes it as Al.
My brain then unhelpfully automatically adds “Weird” and “Yankovic” to that AI so that I continually think that I’m about to read an article about “Weird Al” Yankovic, one of my favorite artists and someone I have devoted much of my life and career to studying, rather than more bullshit involving AI.
Seeing what I initially assume is an article about “Weird Al” Yankovic makes my brain happy. More “Weird Al” Yankovic can only be good both for the functioning of the universe as a whole and my career in particular.
Then I have to hold up and concede, yet again, that what my brain initially processed as an article about beloved musical funnyman “Weird Al” Yankovic is instead a piece about how AI continues to make our lives worse, creepier, and less human by the day.
This really cheeses me off. It angries up the blood. The dumb sudden ubiquity of AI is consistently tricking me into thinking that content about a cultural plague is instead about one of my favorite people in the world.
I don't know what can be done to stop this. A capital A next to a capital I looks exactly like a Capital A followed by a lowercase l. So, I will continue to be confused and annoyed by this unconscious cosmic bait-and-switch.
At some point, my brain will probably get so used to reading about AI and seeing those letters that I’ll stop confusing it with the name of a man who should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and also get the Presidential Medal of Honor for his contributions to the arts. And that, friends, will not be a positive development at all because it means there will be endless odious AI to come but only a limited amount of Al.
Al is only one man, after all, in an entertainment sphere increasingly dominated by robots pretending to be human.
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