MrBiffo
patreon
DIGI FACES... THE RECKONING
🕑 Added 2025-02-02 12:21:07 +0000 UTCSo. Welcome to February. Thanks if you’re still here. Sorry, this is probably going to be another big blog post. You’ve had a lot this week. You don’t have to read it.
Anyway.
We lost 20 patrons this month – half of them since Digi Level 2 went up and I posted about the use of AI. So, that is, one way or another, a clear message to Sanja and I.
Not every exit survey mentioned AI (though some did) – some it was for the usual financial reasons, another said it was because we don’t make enough stuff, another because we made other videos instead of finishing DL2. Tips of icebergs, maybe?
Much as I’ve tried to offset the ethical use of AI in making that show, while also exciting myself creatively, the whole energy/water use issue is clearly an insurmountable one for now.
Since the other day I’ve been looking even harder into ethical AI models that aren’t trained on data without permission, but… that doesn’t get away from the fact that people feel it’s drinking all the water and eating all the energy. I stand by feeling that viewpoint could be seen as a tad hypocritical given there are other industries that are far, far worse - that we all use - but I also accept that I might be wrong, and it’s not an argument I’m going to win.
It’s a black and white issue for a lot of people. Fair enough.
As I said before, I know part of me was coming at it from an attitude of… “Yeah, but where were you when the TV professionals, who have lost their jobs, needed people sticking up for them?”.
BIG SHAT
The whole not-doing-enough content is a bitter pill for us to swallow.
Between the big cat video, the UFO video, and the two final eps of DL2… we’ve made around six hours of what I feel is the best content we’ve ever done, at both extremes of what we offer. Those videos took time - we've been researching our next ones for over a month - because we tried to prioritise quality over quantity, and they were the kind of videos that get us excited to make… Both Sanja and I want to make things we’re proud of, and not just churn stuff out. Even when there isn't a new video, we're still working on it.
And I didn’t know a way to have made them any faster, especially given the end of 2024 was chaotic, hectic, and confusing and emotional, and I was really, really burnt out, and needed to reset my nervous system and emotions and I’m 53 years old and tired and my toes hurt all the time.
But… that’s the biggest single-month drop in Patrons we’ve ever had. Evidently, we’ve done something badly wrong here. We’ve miscalculated.
Albeit some of it was unavoidable, at least in terms of the frequency of our output - losing my dad, grieving, my mum getting dementia very suddenly, selling a house, the TV industry in crisis so I had to work ten times as hard at the day job, having six kids and two grandchildren we need to give time to blah blah.
You must be sick of hearing about it… I know I am, but every time I mention it I think I’m trying to say to people PLEASE try to understand what it has been like for us, because clearly, and look at what we’ve done IN SPITE of it all - and from the exit surveys, it hasn’t gone in for everyone, or they just don’t care and think we should be machines working for them exclusively.
Sometimes the lack of empathy hurts in those exit surveys, especially when I’ve tried SO hard to keep you updated on what we’ve had going on, while other times it’s completely fair enough – everyone has a right to spend their money how they wish, and if someone doesn’t want to support us for ethical reasons, then that’s completely fair enough. I’m still sorry to see them just go, rather than try to engage us in a dialogue.
FOR ME
I try as much as possible to make stuff for me first and foremost, because I don’t think any of you reading this want to support a creator who’s putting out content that they don’t enjoy making.
But at the same time… Patreon is a vital part of our income, and other businesses don’t have the luxury of stubbornly pissing off their customers and going “But I’m an artist, darling…!”.
Right now, I don’t know what that means for us. We’ll try to block it out and stay creatively true, but we both feel down about it. Since changing our main channel content - and because of the audience we already had - we're always fighting the feeling that we're making videos that the existing audience doesn't want.
Just know we appreciate those of you who are still here, and we’ve heard what those who have cancelled have had to say. I wish this hadn’t cast a bit of a cloud over tonight’s DL2 finale, but… it has, inevitably. I’m braced for shitty comments and people making their feeeeeeelings known. The point of my posts the other day was to try to head this off, explain my approach, and say: "Look! It was just a small part of a huge undertaking".
But, I suppose, even if you do a load of great work for charity... and then kick a dog, then that's going to overshadow everything else.
Cheapshow has a smaller audience than us, but they make a lot more from Patreon. They do the same thing every week, and they don’t rock the boat. Even though I know Paul – as he states publicly sometimes – gets frustrated with that approach, it works; they give people exactly what they signed up for every single time.
I… can’t do that. I wish I could. I’ve tried. It would have made life so much easier.
When we were doing those same nonsense desk videos every week, it was wearing me down. Sanja didn’t especially enjoy them in the end either. It became a chore.
With Cheapshow there’s zero controversy, their audience is deeply loyal because they know what they’re getting, whereas there are times it feels I’m a magnet for controversy, without meaning to be, because I have this sort of creative restlessness.
BAD BRAIN
I dunno if it’s ADHD, or what, but I want to explore, I want to try new things, keep moving forwards. I still have the mindset of when I was a kid, when all I’d do is draw, or make things, or record stupid audio dramas – y’know, explore the limits of what I could achieve creatively. I enjoy learning new things and pushing myself.
But balancing that with the responsibility and pressure of an audience's expectations is the thing I struggle with.
I like making stuff; that’s ultimately it. And yeah, I'd like to get paid for it - which helps! The original Digi on Teletext was perfect, because nobody needed to know who I was. I was employed by a company to do a thing. I could hide behind the screen.
Being out front comes at a cost, and clearly that cost is that… I keep pissing people off, one way or another, without meaning to. It’s tiring.
From Larry trolling me because he was annoyed he wasn’t some sort of regular co-host on Digi, to changing the style of our content, to the AI storm… even pissing off the former lead singer of Marillion thanks to our podcast… it’s just… it’s so exhausting.
I don’t want to upset anyone. I don’t want to be controversial. I don’t want people getting pissed off with me. I strive to just be a decent person, and I hate that I seem to somehow fail at it again and again, because of a having a big gob and a stupid brain. Oh, to be a sociopath!
So I dunno. I'm fighting the urge to just pull the duvet over my head today. I'll be in the chat at 7pm, and we'll see how it goes down.
Again. Thank you for still being here.
Paul
Comments
Paul Rose (Mr Biffo)
As I've said elsewhere, I hate that people will get AI to just copy other people's styles or make derivative stuff. That - for me - is where it's at its most unethical. I aimed to impose my imagination on it (which wasn't as easy as you might think), and try to go "Look! It can be done!".
Paul Rose (Mr Biffo)
Yeah, it's not actually easy getting it to put out good results. Or, at least, the results you want. I think that's one of the myths around it. You see so much of that slop online where they've typed a prompt and just shared whatever their results are. I had a very specific aesthetic in mind, so it was a slow process of refinement and tinkering, and manipulating it myself. I guess it was important to me to use it creatively - so at least I could go "Look! There's a human brain driving this!".
Lee Chrimes
I'm another lifer in terms of patronage, but I'm also someone who probably shares a lot of ethical and environmental concerns over the use of AI. However, what I want to see more of is people using it as you are - as an embellishment to existing work, not letting it do the work for you. Your points have helped me rationalise parts of this debate I was struggling to put into place, so if anything your use of it is making me figure out if, how and why I want to use it.
David Gibbs
Just got done watching Digi Level 2 live with you guys. Was fantastic. Really enjoyed the use of AI in that episode. There is a real knack to getting AI to produce what you want, I watch a channel on YouTube called Doopiidoo, where all the music and video is produced by AI and a AI artist input. I think AI will become like another medium, like paint or pencil, where anyone can draw a stickman with a pencil, but it takes someone with imagination and nuance to make something special. If you're into Heavy Metal/Death Metal etc - or even if you're not - check out Doopiidoo. https://youtu.be/eWBYDJbqh-c?si=Kb2d6UtE7ZPHQwY0 Don't beat yourself up Paul.
