It's never what it seems "How I am learning to Stop Worrying and Hate the Noise"

"Screenshot from Identity Oblivious "

I write this, as usual, at a conflicting time in my life. It’s a post I’ve meant to write for almost the entire summer now, but I’ve been contemplating, reflecting, and living it all the same for the past 30 months—around the same time this madness around AI began for the world, and for me, in one way or another. The more I wait to write this post, the more concrete it becomes, and the more realizations I gather along the way.

As a matter of fact, I’m writing this right as I’m returning from an intense, four-month trip to Egypt, which followed an extremely busy summer filled with more projects than I could handle (though I somehow managed). My month began with me presenting my first academic paper at a conference—something I never thought would happen, given my determination to stay clear of academia, which I find myself both too lazy and perhaps too unconventional to be involved in. Then there I was, presenting my work on the Giza Plateau, likely marking the first time Generative AI has been featured in that setting, a location that holds such personal significance for me.

This period also included my first solo exhibition in my hometown, as well as my participation in two more exhibitions, showcasing Gen-AI in an art context—probably the first digital artist to be shown in both CIAD and Tale of Two Cities. This doesn't even cover the numerous panels, talks, lectures, and interviews that became too many to count, nor the incredibly kind people who stopped me after talks (or even at random events) to take pictures and express their admiration for my work. It feels like my career, whether you call it art, design, or philosophy, is truly taking off.

On the other hand, looking at social media—the platform that initially granted me these opportunities and led me to this blog on a website with my own domain—it seems like it’s all going downhill. This year, I keep losing more followers than I gain. My posts, which once reached millions within minutes, are now limited to a mere 3% of my audience. My DM requests are filled with scam messages. This trend holds regardless of how often or when I post, or even the quality of my work.

This isn’t something I take lightly, especially when one’s presence in the world is so closely tied to these platforms. For a creative, an artist, or whatever term you might use, this poses a serious risk, along with the mental toll of what social media does to those same creatives. The FOMO, the depression, anxiety, and fake euphoria brought on by those red notifications keep us on the edge, yearning for more.

Earlier this year, especially after I began posting about the situation in Palestine, I started seeing the dark side of the virtual world in a new way. This experience led me to make what seemed like a risky decision: to stop focusing on a social-media-driven career and mindset, and instead to focus on something else, something I haven’t quite figured out yet (and maybe never will). I didn’t know what this decision would mean for me, as my entire professional network depended on my social media work and my website, which at that time had almost nothing.

Alongside this, I noticed that it was becoming increasingly easy for others to replicate my work (or be “inspired by it”) with generative AI. Gaining followers with AI content isn’t hard; you just need to stay on top of trends, use the latest tools to enhance quality, stick to the algorithm, and keep posting. Eventually, you can reach six- or even seven-figure follower counts with generic work.

This trend can be frustrating, especially when I see someone’s AI work based on an idea I had originally posted (or so I believe), or when I see someone winning an “AI Best” award for a concept they essentially copied from me. I can tell because the images are strikingly similar to concepts I’ve developed over the past year, and I know they’ve been following me for a while. At the same time, I recognize that I might be part of this loop from the other side as well. Despite my efforts to avoid copying or even being heavily “inspired” by others, it’s possible I’ve done so without realizing it. And while I believe that ideas can’t truly be “owned” in a capitalist, post-digital society, the contradictions in my feelings are clear.

The world is changing too quickly for me. I struggle to keep up with my processes, to develop my concepts, or even to understand what I’m doing that’s making me gain more followers and attract more media attention. Everyone seems to want a piece of me—almost literally.

Looking for the positive side of things, I realize that many well-established artists have far fewer followers than I do, yet exhibit and showcase their work at a level I once aspired to reach (and maybe still do, sometimes). They seem largely unbothered by their social media presence (or maybe it just appears that way). Adopting a similar mindset has, by almost the end of the year, led me to a more fruitful year in the real world than I could have imagined, and a relatively disappointing year in the virtual one (no more Jennifer Garner slipping into my DMs to share my work, I suppose).

The way I see it, social media is just noise. A fellow artist and friend once told me something similar—it's all about finding yourself among the noise. Social media, generative AI, and all of this have changed my life, definitely for the better in some ways. They're helping me find myself, or at least attempting to; yet they're also driving me insane, filling me with insecurities, and challenging every attempt I make to stay true to myself and to those who follow me or are waiting for me to tell them the future of AI and the human race.

The fact is, I'm just a human working very hard to find my place in the world, conflicted with the reality that we are animals driven by desires to dominate and to insatiably win at whatever cost, as long as it's framed as legal by entities hiding under the guise of social justice and equality—as if they really care. I try to create a meaningful existence for myself and my family, all the while trying to make enough money to buy the things I need to survive and navigate through a barrage of things I don't really need but want because of my animal instincts and how cloud-based companies keep analyzing my browsing history to put me in a bubble (for more about this, read Rushkoff's Team Human). I'm a person who is incapable of separating my personal life from my work; I believe that the only way to live a purposeful life is to follow your beliefs in everything that you do. I look at the world and try to connect my behaviors with it, and if you look closely, analytically, and try your best not to have a biased mindset, you can see patterns forming—especially when you become a node of influence in this 'Iron Sky' that's fast becoming our mind.

All these things I've mentioned are constantly on my mind as I move from one river in the world to another, from one coast, from one small airport to a huge one, from receiving media requests to years of sculpting a mountain of missed opportunities. This journey is driving our connection to each other and the world. It's shaping how we see beauty. I don't think that finding beauty is an individualistic endeavor. The relationship between us and what we find beautiful, between us dictating what is good or bad, is more important than the concept of beauty itself. That's exactly why I like to use AI—because it's not mine. And as much as I hate what social media is turning into, the more I appreciate how it's allowing me to see the world in a different tone, allowing me to face the fact that my existence—in real life, whatever that means, or in a virtual one—is absolutely meaningless if it's out of the context of relationships that define me to myself and to the world.