On a text-based platform, there's no difference between what's ephemeral and what's permanent simply because there's much faster churn in what you can see. But it still bothers me that thoughts I have off-the-cuff can live permanently. Maybe that's why I tend to stay quiet on these platforms.

Is it only art if the ultimate way of enjoying it requires it to be destroyed? I also think that this sort of ephemerality takes away from the perfectionism that affects most artistic work. Like, I am most prolific on insta stories because I know that's going to die in 24hrs.

Really, what we're looking for is mastery rather than output. So when I see artists working on plating it creating the most beautiful cakes (or especially cakes that look like non-cakes), I wonder what the point of it all is if the ultimate way to enjoy the cake involves destroying it

And generative AI tools are the most easy example of it. It's not that midjourney (which I use and attribute) doesn't make pretty outputs. It's that the entire process of creating art is one of the main reasons we are invested in it. The technique, the form, how one practice leads to a result. 2/

Thanks for the shout-out Rob, but yeah @danabramov.bsky.social this has been a running thought my whole life haha