We explore real-life reformation here in this informed, online community.
If the contest is digital, the A.I. contestants look like whatever the computer artists design on their computers. They design something out of their respective imaginations – their best attempts at the epitome of feminine beauty.
For the 2024 “Miss A.I.” Beauty Pageant, some of the fake contestants look a lot like the photoshopped human fantasy-standard models that appear on beauty magazine covers. Some look like the Instagram fantasy-standard to which so many desperate female content creators are trying to conform. “Look at how beautiful I am on the outside!”
Some look like Bratz dolls. Some look mean. Some look jaded and miserable.
Why has our culture been pursuing a standard of human beauty that simply does not look human, or beautiful, or real? It's not because the airbrush, photoshop or A.I. technology can’t replicate photorealism. But real beauty is not someone’s exhibitionistic fantasy.
Who will decide the A.I. winners and set a new cultural “standard” of beauty? The organizers of the contest will be using some of the same A.I. algorithms which produced the digital images in the first place - as judges. And so we have artificial judges, artificial contestants, and artificial beauty for our artificial and confused culture. Who will be declared the winner? Who will be deemed the most beautiful?
Well, it will be interesting to see. Some of the designers, who don’t live and work on Madison Avenue or in Hollywood, seem to be sending a message. Less exhibitionism. Less of the sultry. Less makeup. Less immodesty. Perhaps this A.I. exercise will turn into a sincere quest for more natural and objective beauty. Below is one of the imaginary contestants from a real human computer programmer.
A few weeks ago, an image went viral. In Belgium a migrant used the eternal flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to cook an omelette. For many, the desecration brought to mind a quote from French author Jean Raspail, written in 1973 in his novel Camp of the Saints, about a sudden invasion of Muslim, Indian and African migrants into France:
“Your universe has no meaning to them. They will not try to understand. They will be tired, they will be cold, they will make a fire with your beautiful oak door.”
“Beware of two errors: despising the world God sustains, or worshipping the culture He restrains.”
— Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace Vol. 1, Ch. 30
"[Successful NY Mayoral candidate] Mamdani built his campaign on the infrastructure of the Democratic Socialists of America. The DSA and its city allies can dispatch activists across New York and, with a network of progressive partner organizations, can mobilize young people, get out the vote, and do the work of door-to-door politics.
"We saw this dynamic many times in the twentieth century: socialists rise to power, their policies degrade the quality of life, and, as they enter the endgame, they tighten their grip on power and offload resentments onto their ideological, racial, and economic enemies.
"...the twentieth century taught us that left-wing voters have extraordinary defenses against reality."
-- Christopher Rufo
