(Thread IKs:
Nuns with Guns)
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doctorfrog posted:I'm probably thinking too small, but if I wanted to grift me up a quick book, I'd edit and "modernize" a public domain work. Canterbury + Tales, set in los angeles
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Sep 28, 2022 17:57
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| # ? May 28, 2024 09:39 |
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actually nobody steal that
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Sep 28, 2022 17:57
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doctorfrog posted:I'm probably thinking too small, but if I wanted to grift me up a quick book, I'd edit and "modernize" a public domain work. You can do that, but there are barriers which keep shadowy types from flooding the market. Most retailers will not accept a pd work unless its either the first version to be submitted or if the work is substantially different to other versions on the marketplace. I've done something similar with old and rare pd books I've accumulated in my research and have since been stuck with. I transcribe them (which can be a nightmare) add footnotes where time has marched on and write up explanatory introductions to the work and author. If they're accepted then its a small amount to put towards new purchases, if not I upload to a blog. Which is a lot of effort, and its not guaranteed to be accepted and even when it is there's going to be competition. Not saying you can't make some serious money doing it but the odds are pretty stacked against you.
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Sep 28, 2022 18:19
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i say swears online posted:actually nobody steal that too late bitch the knight is now an ex cop and ive ruined it
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Sep 28, 2022 18:38
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Baka-nin posted:No, not even close. The content mills can only work so long as they make real people do the writing, otherwise they'd just be a middleman that the client could cut out if ai could reliably make texts that would pass the checking process on the bigger marketplaces. Parakeet vs. Phone posted:I doubt it. It's just sadder gig grind stuff. I don't think an AI can write like that and it'd almost certainly trigger plagiarism checkers. My own personal theory is that at least some of these freelancer working for these ghostwriting content-mills have to be using at least some degree of AI in their process, if only because the actual grind of unassisted nonfiction writing on an assigned topic would be way too much of a workload to justify how little they're being paid. My own experience with AI copywriting is that the algorithms are smart enough to rearrange copy in such a way that it passes things like plagiarism checkers, but not sophisticated enough that the content it produces reads like it was actually written by a human being. Basically it's spitting out copy that's grammatically correct, but doesn't have much concern for if its output sounds conversational or communicates the intent of the actual piece. So, my likely guess is that the more savvy freelancer on these platforms are plugging existing content on these topics into an algorithm to beat a plagiarism-checker and then going through and manually editing the output so it reads like something written by an actual human. This would still take a decent amount of effort and work hours on the freelancers part, but is going to remove a lot of the more time consuming and draining parts of the process highlighted in Dan's video like research and concept creation.
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Sep 28, 2022 19:34
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Eh, that was one thing that I'd "push back on" a little in Dan's video is that some of the freelancers at that level know that they're churning out garbage and don't torture themselves with real research. One place I worked at had an interesting moment in the writer's discussion forum when the project manager had to step in to tell the genuinely too picky editors to cool it. That the project was about writing product descriptions and filler articles in an incredibly specific template for $12-$20 an hour and that it wasn't going to be perfect. Fine was fine and all the client cared about was bulk. Some people do try and put in the effort and they are also the ones that either move on or burn out. He kind of addresses it at the end when noting that the low pay sets up a dystopian system that can only churn out garbage that no one wants to read written by underpaid people who were miserable writing it. Also the standard of writing is so low for self-published. Dan was hard on the book he wrote but if it has solid grammar and no spelling errors it's easily in the top 90% of non-fiction (which is more a statement of how much garbage is there). But rewriting stuff is pretty easy without an AI. There definitely used to be a thing called article spinners that could automatically turn about 1 article into 5-10, but they took time to set up, Google was decent at fighting them, clients knew to watch for them and they were a pain to set up and wouldn't work unless you wanted to make 10 eBooks and spam them all...which, somebody definitely has done. Edit: Oh, and before I forget, the funny thing about modernizing an old novel is that that was definitely a thing back when we had the Goons writing porn thread. It's been years but I used to drop in since it was kind of interesting. For a time, if you could write 8,000 words of "50 Shades of Gray but there's full penetration" or "Twilight Fanfic but my gay werewolves gently caress!" without too many spelling errors and buy and crop an okay stock image you could get a few hundred bucks and maybe a few bucks of passive incomeTM. I think the Amazon Kindle pricing change ended the era, but yeah. Funny to think back on. Parakeet vs. Phone fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Sep 28, 2022 |
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Sep 28, 2022 20:29
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New izzzyzzz video about Killswitch - the creepypasta about a supposedly lost Soviet-era video game. As someone who remembers Killswitch from when it was first proliferated as a creepypasta on 4chan and the like, I'm kind of baffled that anyone ever thought it really existed? Even just the descriptions of how the game supposedly worked on a technical level were a pretty dead giveaway that it was a work of fiction. I think it's probably a case of generation gap, in that I was actually around when video games of the sort that inspired Killswitch were actually being released and have a bit more of an ingrained understanding of what would and would not have been technologically possible in that era that people born in the early 2000s wouldn't. I also think Killswitch stands out in my mind because it's one of the few video game creepypastas that actually kind of holds up? Creepypastas about video games generally tended to be the real bottom of the barrel during the big creepypasta craze, and even some of the more memorable ones from the era don't really hold up to a modern reread (I'm thinking of Ben Drowned in particular. While the baseline "haunted Majoras Mask" story element will works pretty well, it also has a bunch of garbage sections of the narrator loving around with CleverBot and being all "Wooooooo, maybe it was the ghost talking to me or something?"). The fact that most of these stories were based around actual video games was a big factor in why they tended not to work: It made them way easier for the casual reader to disprove and kind of locked them into a really strict formula of either "This old video game I bought at a yard sale had a ghost in it" or "The creepy and disturbing lost episode of Mario Party 3!". By centering its narrative around a fictional, lost game, Killswitch kind of ended up having more longevity since it captured the aesthetic of actual video games from the era without leaning on the reader being familiar with an existing franchise. Honestly, I'd be really interested in a deep dive video into the history of the creepypasta phenomenon, since I have some very vivid memories of its early days in 2006-10, before it really blew up with teenagers, that I don't often see represented in these sorts of retrospectives. It would be interesting to see a video that tracks the shift of creepypasta short, repeatedly shared posts on 4chan and scattered bits of webfiction into poo poo like Jef the Killer and Sonic.exe. Still a very interesting video.
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Sep 28, 2022 22:41
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the best video game creepypasta will always and forever be nes godzilla still the best 1973
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Sep 28, 2022 22:45
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Funny enough the archive she links in the video is one of fishmech's.
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Sep 28, 2022 22:47
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KingKalamari posted:New izzzyzzz video about Killswitch - the creepypasta about a supposedly lost Soviet-era video game. I admittedly still have a fondness for the 'legend' of Polybius. AVGN had a great Halloween... honestly short film on it.
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Sep 28, 2022 23:15
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Terrible Opinions posted:Funny enough the archive she links in the video is one of fishmech's. lmao
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Sep 28, 2022 23:18
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if you're linking any kind of archive website on the internet you have a 60% shot at it being one of fishmechs
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Sep 28, 2022 23:29
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The Video Game Hoaxes/Urban Legends thread here on SA (good lord it started in 2010 apparently, excuse me while I crumble into dust) is where I first read about Killswitch and I have to agree that it's definitely one of the better gaming creepypasta stories
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Sep 29, 2022 00:15
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Speaking of gaming urban legends the Australian government has decided they need to find out the identity of the person behind meme game Kanye Quest 3030. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZiJnQrsyiM
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Sep 29, 2022 05:49
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Cam and Alexei’s previous investigations of trivial mysteries, Finding Drago and Finding Desparado are absolutely worth listening to.
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Sep 29, 2022 07:58
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KingKalamari posted:(I'm thinking of Ben Drowned in particular. While the baseline "haunted Majoras Mask" story element will works pretty well, it also has a bunch of garbage sections of the narrator loving around with CleverBot and being all "Wooooooo, maybe it was the ghost talking to me or something?"). To be a little fair, Ben Drowned was a trailhead for an ARG about like moon people or something, so it wasn't really trying to be Yet Another Haunted Video Game Creepypasta. ...But, it's very poo poo at that since a lot of people missed it and never even knew that was even there in the first place. And even if you did know, the ARG stuff was boring as hell and arguably even worse to boot. It's got the Wyoming Incident problem of just constantly dumping wikifiller lore forever and not really doing anything else interesting or noteworthy at all.
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Sep 29, 2022 10:10
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Terrible Opinions posted:Funny enough the archive she links in the video is one of fishmech's. Who?
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Sep 29, 2022 10:19
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carrionman posted:Who? https://forums.somethingawful.com/dictionary.php?act=3&topicid=2006
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Sep 29, 2022 10:20
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip9VGZeqMfo Hour long video on the Sand Cave disaster.
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Sep 29, 2022 15:28
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Well that was a long sad tale of humanity summed up in a tragic nutshell.
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Sep 29, 2022 22:40
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slowly dying trapped in a dark confined place is probably at the top of my list of fears, so i think i will skip this one 😅
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Sep 29, 2022 22:43
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That seems to be the one that the Dollop covered, so on top of being terrifying it's also a case of everything that's wrong with people and the media on top of that.
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Sep 29, 2022 23:16
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DeafNote posted:Well that was a long sad tale of humanity summed up in a tragic nutshell. Parakeet vs. Phone posted:That seems to be the one that the Dollop covered, so on top of being terrifying it's also a case of everything that's wrong with people and the media on top of that. Seriously that story whip-lashes between the best and worst of humanity. I had heard this story before but not what happened in the years after. Christ.
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Sep 29, 2022 23:31
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Yeah, drat, at least the Nutty Putty story ends with respecting the basic dignity of the man that perished. gently caress that judge who ruled that buying a guy's land meant also buying his son's remains.
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Sep 30, 2022 00:59
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Delphisage posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip9VGZeqMfo
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Sep 30, 2022 04:17
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KingKalamari posted:New izzzyzzz video about Killswitch - the creepypasta about a supposedly lost Soviet-era video game. I was surprised to find out that Catherynne Valente wrote the original story idea. She's one of the most interesting speculative fiction writers I've encountered recently. Radiance is a near-masterpiece and Space Opera gives me strong conflicting feelings that will probably require me to make a video essay to fully explain. It feels like when I learned that Kris Straub wrote Candle Cove.
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Sep 30, 2022 04:51
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carrionman posted:Who? fishmech is a data hoarder who used to post on SA before she got a lifetime achievement permanban. You could replicate her posts by programming a robot to be rude about a random post, start an argument, and then randomly generate new reply seeds off an assortment of words in any replies it gets and have it never stop. Nuns with Guns fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Sep 30, 2022 |
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Sep 30, 2022 05:50
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fishmech was once only allowed to post in the place where deleted threads go
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Sep 30, 2022 05:57
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Solitair posted:I was surprised to find out that Catherynne Valente wrote the original story idea. She's one of the most interesting speculative fiction writers I've encountered recently. Radiance is a near-masterpiece and Space Opera gives me strong conflicting feelings that will probably require me to make a video essay to fully explain. It feels like when I learned that Kris Straub wrote Candle Cove. I remember reading The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making back when it was a web novel and somehow after all these years missed that it got published for real AND has a couple of sequels. I read through the stuff she wrote for Invisible Games and I'm really impressed with her stuff.
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Sep 30, 2022 06:05
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Grondoth posted:fishmech was once only allowed to post in the place where deleted threads go this is still funny to me a decade later or w/e
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Sep 30, 2022 06:31
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Delphisage posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip9VGZeqMfo It's agonizing just how close they got to actually rescuing Floyd despite a low tech, ramshackle rescue operation spearheaded by the victim's brother, the victim's best friend, and a journalist who just happened to have the perfect combo of thin waistline and gigantic brass balls. The account of Gerald saying he'll be out of the cave within an hour Floyd in tow only to see the cave-in he'd spent hours clearing had re-collapsed and just throwing himself at the rubble in desperation until the cave dropped a boulder on his back as if to say "but really, no" was just  Honestly by the time the organized rescue force with actual experts and digging equipment showed up it was probably too late to save him, even if they hadn't run into their own snags.Always remember folks: 
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Sep 30, 2022 06:33
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Sydin posted:It's agonizing just how close they got to actually rescuing Floyd despite a low tech, ramshackle rescue operation spearheaded by the victim's brother, the victim's best friend, and a journalist who just happened to have the perfect combo of thin waistline and gigantic brass balls. The account of Gerald saying he'll be out of the cave within an hour Floyd in tow only to see the cave-in he'd spent hours clearing had re-collapsed and just throwing himself at the rubble in desperation until the cave dropped a boulder on his back as if to say "but really, no" was just the rust marks on those screws at the corners are very interesting
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Sep 30, 2022 06:38
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i say swears online posted:the rust marks on those screws at the corners are very interesting thats what happens when you put a sign underwater, yeah
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Sep 30, 2022 06:39
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i have seen videos of cave diving and don't understand it. even for adrenaline junkies there has to be a better way to get a fix than belly-crawling through a 3x3 tube of rock for half a kilometer. at least pick something that kills you quickly if it goes wrong
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Sep 30, 2022 06:47
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I get freaked out doing that in Tomb Raider no idea how the gently caress anyone could do that for real
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Sep 30, 2022 06:54
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cave diving is the scariest thing i can imagine. i'd rather be Laika and i'm totally serious in saying thatAlaois posted:thats what happens when you put a sign underwater, yeah i guess it was placed at an extremely consistent Y branch? that seems like a very detailed sign to be totally underwater 100% of the time
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Sep 30, 2022 07:10
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Oxxidation posted:i have seen videos of cave diving and don't understand it. even for adrenaline junkies there has to be a better way to get a fix than belly-crawling through a 3x3 tube of rock for half a kilometer. at least pick something that kills you quickly if it goes wrong Yeah I'd do a thousand sky dives before you could convince me to squeeze through a narrow cave opening once. Granted I have merinthophobia on account of an incident as a kid where a hospital hosed up and left me strapped in a papoose board for over an hour and had to pause the video a few times and walk away when they were describing the position Floyd got trapped in. The idea of being trapped in his position with no freedom of movement below the neck for even just a couple minutes, let along 130+ consecutive loving HOURS would basically be my personal hell. That he held out to the end for rescue and never hit a point where he just asked for the next person to bring a gun or a pillow or something and make it quick is incredible in it's own right. Dude had a steel nerve.
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Sep 30, 2022 07:50
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i've been dying alone before and it was super scary but at least i had mountains to look at and that probably helped. gently caress caves
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Sep 30, 2022 08:04
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I remember a long time ago doing some cave exploration as part of a school trip and at one point it got really narrow, like near crawling height and there was a lot of water and yeah, gently caress doing anything like that ever again
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Sep 30, 2022 08:18
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| # ? May 28, 2024 09:39 |
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The fact that what largely doomed him was 'too many people suddenly going into the cave to help him' is what hurts the most. Even knowing his fate from the start, the whole story kept going as if there was still hope somehow.
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Sep 30, 2022 08:27
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