Create Anyway
Every conservative uprising tries to kill weirdness, and we always find a way to bring it back to life. The world always tells us to smooth out the edges, and to make something that can fit inside a scrollable square and “perform.” But the truth is, the art that matters has always been the shit that didn’t fit anywhere. It’s the stuff that makes people uncomfortable, or confused, or obsessed. It’s the drawings done on bathroom stalls, those diy shows that never find an audience, and the half-finished art shared with friends who actually get it.
We were never meant to be predictable, and creativity was never meant to be brand-safe. There’s something unholy and fucking amazing in the act of saying fuck it and making something the wider society would never approve of. You have to understand that the entire system wants you to stop trying. They want you to doubt your instincts, think your ideas are “too much” or “not enough,” that your skills aren’t “there yet.” They want you to hesitate long enough to give up, and outsource your imagination to some fuckass machine that promises convenience at the cost of soul.
But weirdness, that raw, sicko, “what if I just did this?” type shit, is the last real freedom left. It’s where art lives. It’s what happens when you let yourself be weird and human and driven by impulse instead of popularity. That’s where originality actually lives, not in some perfect vision or trendy aesthetics, but in the fuck-ups and the flickers of something honest.
When you make something by hand, you’re not just producing; you’re revealing. It’s your frustration, your joy, your need to be known... All pressed into form. And that form, even if nobody ever sees it, is proof you were here. That’s the kind of proof the world can’t mass-produce.
So listen to me, you need to stay weird and make shit. Let the proportions be off, let the lineart be weird. Make ugly things, make beautiful things, make things that scare you. The second you start worrying about what will get hits, you lose the part of you that wanted to create in the first place.
Art isn’t about showing how perfect you are, it’s about leaving fingerprints all over what you touch. It’s about saying this was mine to imagine, and I did it, and no machine can ever take that away from me.
The Human Core
Every culture that’s ever existed left behind some form of art. We painted before we farmed, sang before we wrote, and carved before we measured. Before there was language, there were marks on a wall that said I was here. And that same urge still lives in your hands every time you pick up a pen or open a blank document.
We create because we have to translate what it feels like to be alive. Because the inside of the human mind is unbearable without outlets, and art is how we build doors. Every drawing, song, essay, or sculpture is a piece of consciousness externalized; it’s a human trying to process the impossible weight of being alive in a world that won’t stop moving.
But somewhere along the way, that got corrupted. Capitalism convinced people that art’s value depended on whether it could sell, and whether it could make engagement metrics move. We were told that our need to create had to justify itself economically. That unless your art “made it,” it was a hobby. That’s the lie that kills more artists than failure ever could.
The truth is, creating is a birthright, and it doesn’t need a price tag or a purpose statement. When you draw something and don’t show it to anyone, you’re still participating in one of the oldest forms of community there is. You’re in conversation with every ancestor who ever scraped pigment on a rock or told a story by firelight.
AI can pretend the form, but it can’t replicate the need. It doesn’t wake up with a lump in its throat, wondering how to turn a feeling into something visible. It doesn’t know what it means to stare at a piece for hours until it finally feels right; not because it’s perfect, but because it finally says what you meant to say. That’s being human. The trembling hand, the failed attempt, the do-over, the accidental brilliance... those are signs of life.
So fuck the idea that art has to be “useful.” You are not a product line. Every sketch and verse and draft is proof that something inside you refuses to go numb. You create because you’re alive, and to stop would mean accepting a world where expression is optional. And it’s not.
Art is how we create our existence, and it’s beautiful.
Against the Machine
There’s a reason the tech-bros selling you automation talk about efficiency like it’s some kind of religion. They want you to believe that faster means better, like you can algorithm your way into meaning; but art doesn’t live in the efficient. It lives in the wasted hours, the drafts that go nowhere, and the obsession of perfecting something nobody else will ever see. That’s the part machines can’t touch, because they can only replicate the outcome, never the ache that led there.
AI doesn’t dream. It doesn’t stay up until 3am wondering if the thing it made is good or garbage or both. It just produces. And the most disgusting part isn’t even the theft of human work that trained these models, it’s the theft of human faith in their own ability to make something from scratch. They’ve convinced people that pressing a button is the same as creating, and that inspiration and generation are synonyms, when they’re not. One comes from living, while the other comes from scraping what living people made and spitting it back out in the ugliest, most inhumane manner.
The idea that art can be divorced from the artist is a capitalist fantasy. It’s the same type of thinking that built sweatshops and ghost kitchens, it’s the fantasy of the end product without seeing the process. When you strip the human from creation, what you’re left with garbage.
There’s a violence in the way AI makes art and it’s creators feel obsolete. You can see it in consumers who’ve stopped commissioning artists because “AI can do it better,” or losers filling every art website with AI slop because they can make it in seconds. All that tells me is that you do not respect art, and you do not not respect humanity.
So fight it. Make...anything. Keep your hands in the work you do, let your lines shake, let your words stumble. Machines can generate art, but only humans can mean it. And meaning, is what they’ll never be able to automate.
Let Your Soul Speak
The thing about making art is that it’s never really finished. You release it into the world like a message in a bottle, not knowing if anyone will ever find it, but feel the need to send it anyway. That’s the soul; you love you creation, because you brought it into existence.
Every act of creation is a declaration of life, and I refuse to be reduced to data. I love making art so much, and I love that I get to take my time working on it. I love giving form to what’s otherwise unspeakable. From the first songs hummed to keep animals away at night to the graffiti sprayed in abandoned train stations, humans have always made things to say we were here.
That’s why you cannot stop creating. Every time you create something, I don’t care what it is, you’re keeping humanity alive. You remind the world that humanity isn’t just a byproduct of capitalism, but the reason we survived it. We build worlds out of scrap heaps, we make colours out of pain; and we keep doing it even when it feels like no one gives a shit, because deep down we know it matters.
The people pushing automation and profit will always underestimate that. They think art is content. They don’t understand that every single piece of art made by somebody, is a fragment of someone’s consciousness made visible. That’s something they can’t replicate, no matter how much data they steal.
Let your soul speak, and do not wait for permission. Don’t wait until it’s good enough. Just make. The only wrong art is the art you never let out of you. The rest of it, all of it, is beautiful.
We need your voice now more than ever. We need the human touch, because this world; this sterile, over-optimized, over-produced world, is starving for something real. Every time you create something by hand, by will, you are feeding that hunger.
AI can’t replace the soul that made art possible. It just can’t, in any type of way you try justify it. It’s ugly, it’s soulless, and it’s without a heart. It can’t replace that joy of seeing your own work finally take shape.
So please keep creating, keep showing up, and letting the world know you’re still here, still making, and refusing to be erased. Because the human spirit, is the one thing they’ll never fucking take from us.
