There are two completely distinct differences that jump out to me initially that I think may help justify your feelings:
1: Reading a long book demands focus on a longer timespan than scrolling TikTok, and with focusing on a single thing for a long time, we get a sense of accomplishment. I don’t know how to justify this as valuable, but for some reason I feel that it is.
2: The Song of Ice and Fire (and GoT) were consumed by a huge proportion of people, and you now have this in common with them. This act of consuming entertainment also grants you a way to connect with other humans - you have so much to talk about. Contrast that with an algorithmic feed, which is unique just for you - no one else sees your exact feed. Of course, there are tons of people that see some of the same snippets of content, if their interests overlap with yours, but it’s not nearly as universal as having read the same series of books (and there’s much less to talk about when you’ve seen the same 17-second short form video than when you’ve both invested dozens of hours in reading the same series of books).
I don’t think these thoughts fully justify your belief, but hopefully they provide some support to it.
I think the point 2 will rub many people the wrong way (me included) though. That would make reading Fourth Wing or Twilight a more connecting experience than most classics. (Nothing inherently wrong with that, but... you know...)
The classics were classic because they were the most available and the most popular stories of their time, and they meant more in an era where creating and disseminating media was difficult. I love to romanticize a world where we go back to the classics to connect with our past and present better, even if just for the sake of efficiency. For better or for worse media is more ephemeral which means getting to a common vocabulary is one step removed. It's really a fun time to be alive.
The thing is that literature, and art in general, should be more than just entertainment. It should edify the reader, communicate some concept, moral lesson or keen insight about the world.
Remember when you were taught to extract the "moral of the story" in school? That was the whole point. That form of communication is what makes art valuable and it definitely is what makes some art more valuable than others.
Welcome to the future, where the notion of "classics" is just a point in the memetic information manifold:
https://x.com/theo/status/1973167911419412985 (Music video with Sam Altman as Skibidi Toilet)
This is pretty fun.
These keep getting wilder and wilder:
https://x.com/MatthewBerman/status/1973115097339011225 (Kinda gross)
https://x.com/cloud11665/status/1973115723309515092 (Japanese)
It can do cartoons:
https://x.com/venturetwins/status/1973158674899280077 (Rick and Morty)
https://x.com/TheJasonRink/status/1973163915476611314 (Family Guy)
https://x.com/cfryant/status/1973162037305024650 (Family Guy Horror)
Incredibly convincing anime:
https://x.com/fofrAI/status/1973164820863262748
Minecraft meets GTA:
https://x.com/Angaisb_/status/1973160337752121435
Super Mario in the real world:
https://x.com/skirano/status/1973184329619743217
Super solid looking movie trailer:
https://x.com/jasonjoyride/status/1973142061114335447
Damn:
https://x.com/theo/status/1973210960522559746
If you think this stuff is going to last longer than four months, dog, we're cooked.
I've been watching these videos for about an hour now.
I really want to call this the "Suno moment" for AI video.
Prior to Sora 2, you had to prompt a lot of clips which you then edited together. You had to create a starting frame, maybe do some editing. Roll the dice a lot.
Veo 3 gave us the first glimpse of a complex ensemble clip with multiple actors talking in a typically social media or standup comedy fashion. But it was still just an ingredient for some larger composition, and it was missing a lot of the soul that a story with a beginning-middle-end structure has.
Sora 2 has some internal storytelling mechanic. I'm not sure what they did, but it understands narrative structure and puts videos into an arc. You see the characters change over the course of the video. They're not just animated Harry Potter portraits. They're alive. And they do things that change the world they're in.
Furthermore, Sora 2 has really good "taste" and "aesthetic", if that makes sense. It has good understanding of shot types, good compositions, good editing, good audio. It does music. It brings together so much complexity in choice and arranges them into a very good final output.
I'm actually quite blown away by this.
Just like Suno made AI music simple and easy - it handled lyrics, chorus, beat, medley, etc. - this model handles all of the ingredients of a 10 second video. It's stunning.
Sora 2 isn't the highest quality video model. It doesn't have the best animation. But it's the best content machine I've ever seen.
I can see this, it's extremely impressive from a technological standpoint, and I've already been caught by the first convincing fakes on Reddit (an army person giving an anti-Trump speech). But I'm also worried, as it's a super easy channel to create convincing fakes, mass produced 'content' for mass consumption, etc.
Now these things aren't new, fake videos / images go back decades if not a century. But they took some effort to make, whereas this technology makes it possible for it to take less effort than it took for me to write this comment.
Of course, it's always my choice; if I stop visiting Reddit and touch grass instead it really won't affect me directly.
Maybe some MAY end up in compiliations in ten years, much like Vines do today. But there will be a million times more tiktoks and a billion times more AI generated videos than there were vines, so if 0.01% of vines became memetic, the amount of AI generated ones will be infintesimal.
Content is all ephemeral on some time scale, but you can cache the near-term content to maximize the views and cut back on compute costs. Some model or human made it (the cost), it's trending (the value), so keep it around for a bit.
Everything has a relevancy and penetration decay curve.
The funny thing is, I think this law applied in the classical era (1950's, 1990's, etc.), we just weren't creating at scale to realize it.
Maybe it's just one dominant variable: novelty. I'd be curious to see how we might model this.
the final one is not AI, it’s a glorb video from years ago: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NkYSK-_hVDQ
> Super solid looking movie trailer:
> https://x.com/jasonjoyride/status/1973142061114335447
This isn't AI generated. They're a production company and they made a short film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGLoTjxd-Ss
I think that short film is AI generated. I only watched like 30 seconds of an office scene in the middle but it spontaneously changed from daytime to nighttime with zero explanation.
He says it's not: https:/x.com/jasonjoyride/status/1973164183798816773
>> How do you get HD renders? im getting like super low res shit
>It's because this isn't AI
I haven't watched the film, but the premise is something about an orbiting space station. I could easily imagine scenes featuring rapid day/night cycles like astronauts experience on the ISS.
That movie trailer isn’t made with Sora (or AI at all, as far as I can tell?)
The irony is not lost I hope.
you are right, its an actual movie called Planet
If you've read the classics, then you will likely find a circle you can connect too. I've gone through "The Malazan Book of the Fallen" and it's a signal to know who are truly in epic military fantasy.
> That would make reading Fourth Wing or Twilight a more connecting experience than most classics.
I prefer classics myself, but this is exactly why booktok works (and why Fourth Wing blew up the way it did).
Reading the classics, in some sense, connects you to everyone who ever read them across all of human history. That's not nothing.
Depends if you are trying to connect to your contemporaries or to mankind in general. Aren't "classics" just timeless pop?
You're missing what I think is the major one: fulfillment.