I guess I don't derive my personal value from the esteem of others.

And I don't mean that as an insult, because I get that different people do things for different reasons, and we all get our dopamine hits in different ways.

I just think that if the only reason you choose to do something is because you think it's going to get attention on the internet... Then you probably shouldn't be doing that thing in the first place.

I produce things because I enjoy producing them. I share them with my friends and family (both in person and online). That's plenty. Historically... that's the norm.

> I guess what we should really ask, is why on Earth should anyone produce anything, if the end result is not one sees it?

This is a really rather disturbing view of the world. Do things for you. I make things because I see it. My family sees it. My friends see it.

I grow roses for me and my neighbors - not for some random internet credit.

I plant trees so my kids can sit under them - not for some random internet credit.

Context. Note that we're having a discussion about people putting up websites, and being upset about AI snarfing that content.

> I guess what we should really ask, is why on Earth should anyone produce anything, if the end result is not one sees it?

>

> And instead, they just read a summary from an AI?

The above is referring to that context. To people wanting others to see things, and that after all is what this whole website's, this person's concerns are about.

So now that this is reiterated, in the context of someone wanting to show things to the world, why would they produce -- if their goal is lost?

This doesn't mean they don't do things privately for their friends and family. This isn't a binary, 0/1 solution. Just because you have a website for "all those other people" to see, doesn't mean you don't share things between your friends and family.

So what you seem to dislike, is that anyone does it at all. Because again, people writing for eyeballs at large, doesn't mean they aren't separately for their friends or family.

It seems to me that you're also creating a schism between "family / friends" and "all those other people". Naturally you care for those close to you, but "those other people" are people too.

And some people just see people as... people. People to share things with.

Yet you seem to be making that a nasty, dirty thing.

You conflate doing something with sharing it online. A lot of people do things for themselves, then they post about it and share it because they like the idea of someone else enjoying and getting something out of it. The thing LLMs might get them to stop doing is not the doing of the thing, but the sharing, to the detriment of everyone who actually would have liked to see it.

And no, people sticking to the LLM summary won't get the ideas I shared. They get a crappy, broken, incoherent, messed-up, bland, averaged version of it. Purified of all the personality, insight and thought it might have had in it. That's why people getting an LLM summary partially derived from their data will never seem like a suitable replacement to someone who does it not for the views or credits, but because they actually want to share something of themselves.

I do agree that the solution would best come from the demand site. People realising the inherent blandness and horseshitness of LLM replies, especially when compared to something written by an actual human with thought and intent, ditch the low-quality LLM turds and demand real content again. The problem I see right now is that pretty much everyone would prefer the human version to the slop, but the megacorps force-feed the slop and spend billions trying to make it as inconvenient as possible to interact with other humans.