The Stepford Homesteads
There are two specific commitments I have made to myself regarding this blog. One is to not ever use AI to generate content. The other is to post twice a week on Monday and Thursday. I may drop down to once per week while I’m building our home but not until then. I like to have posts all written out and ready to go so that they can be scheduled ahead of time but, to be honest, I’m not always really great about that. Sometimes I’m still making changes on the day of. On Monday, my morning was busy cleaning because the real estate agent was coming to show the house we’re temporarily living in. Then I sat down to get the post finished up and Mary reminded me that I needed to go pick something up. It was an hour away and I figured I could get it and be back pretty quickly and I would have time to finish my post. What I didn’t anticipate was that we had a strange bulge in our truck tire. I ended up pulling over and spending a considerable amount of time trying to get our spare tire off. You’d think it would be simple enough, but it’s a more complex system than just loosening a few bolts and the mechanism was seized. After struggling for over an hour, I realized that the spare tire was flat so it wouldn’t do us any good even if we got it off. We ended up just driving home slowly. By the time I got back, it was just getting dark. I had my post all written and uploaded, but I needed a few images. The lighting was not good for the photo I wanted to get. I do have a portable studio lighting setup, but I don’t know where the lights are and honestly I wanted to spend time with the kids before bed. Once the kids were in bed, I had this thought come to me. “You could just get an AI generated image.”. Don’t worry, I didn’t buckle to the pressure! I decided to just get the image in the morning and I know that the world won’t end because I am a day late publishing a post!
Some people might wonder why I’m so opposed to AI. I have a lot of reasons. I think that AI is making the world a lot more disconnected. I personally find AI images to be repulsive. They have an otherworldly feel to them where they are almost real, but not. If you’ve ever seen the Stepford Wives movie, it’s about a community where all the wives are seemingly perfect. **Spoiler Alert** The women seem too good to be true because they have actually been murdered and replaced with robots. That’s about how I feel about AI right now! If I was just interested in getting content out there and making money, I wouldn’t care, but this blog is part of me. It is me giving you a glimpse into who I am. It’s real and I will stand by my commitment to never use AI to generate content for this blog.
On that note, I feel like I need to give a warning. I see people fall for AI videos, images, and written content being fooled into thinking it’s real. Homestead and off-grid life are some of the most frequently targeted topics I see for fake images. I see overly idealized images of homesteads in the woods with perfect gardens and dreamy homes. I see people commenting on it and sharing it all over social media. The way I see it, it is harmful in two ways in particular:
First, there is someone behind that who is using deception to earn money. You’re basically paying someone else to deceive you. It changes the algorithms (which are basically also AI) so makes it more difficult for real people to get connected. It waters down any real and meaningful content. It also ads an additional shroud for scammers. Recently I saw an advertisement for an online permaculture class. Normally that kind of thing would interest me but the cover image for it was obviously fake and AI generated. It made me instantly suspicious. So being the skeptic that I am, I investigated. I clicked on the name of the homestead that is putting it on. I found that account to be suspicious as well. Every single post was either AI generated, or was just a picture of a plant with information. The information was… well it was bland. It was just bare facts. It was well written, but it had no life. I realized that it also was AI generated. So I realized that the person running this class may not have ANY real life experience but instead, they are using AI to build an entire fake business. It could have been anybody and they are targeting people interested in permaculture. There just wasn’t enough information about who was behind it and there was no personality in it. Everything seemed too good to be true. It was a Stepford homestead.
Second, it creates false ideas and expectations about this kind of lifestyle. It isn’t always rainbows and butterflies. If you are a homesteader you know that it’s often dirty, and gritty, and difficult. The kind of fake content that is being passed around is like homestead pornography. It is designed to please but sets people up for long term disappointment. I just can’t support that!
So as you read my posts and you see that I take long tangents, have typos, make odd connections, post less than ideal pictures, and make lots of mistakes. At least you know I’m a real person!
