Creative/media queens - have you pivoted?

Real estate.

I’d love to see ages along with the pivots,

Scary times for many

SOS. Gen x is the forgotten generation

I feel bad for the young creative folks going into the creative professions now. I can't mentor them anymore because all I want to tell them is "go learn a trade like plumbing or HVAC."

Forgotten but resilient. Gonna be ok.

R5 that quote was on a sign above my great grandfathers shop. He had a great business as a blacksmith for the towns horses and had a horse shit removal business for the city streets on the side.

He always said things are gonna be ok

Normal is familiar but it is not always healthy. It's ok to move on to the unfamiliar.

This is what Gen X voted for. Part of what flummoxed me about the 2024 election was that we were then entering and are now in a great realignment in which entire segments of commerce are going to be dramatically altered, and rather than vote for the candidate that was talking about preparing and doing things to make sure that people survive, Gen X voted for the guy who is accelerating — and cheering on — the decline of intellectual/creative fields... and is happy to tell skilled educated professionals to go work at Starbucks. To wit, Trump absolutely hates Hollywood, so is happy to watch production circle the drain (and wants to tariff film productions, to make it worse).

Of course, this is nothing new. The Boomers voted in droves for Reagan only to have him turn around and decimate skilled labor. I remember listening to men talk about how Reagan was going to solve all these problems they faced and yet were shocked when he turned against them and, for instance, killed the PATCO (air traffic controllers) union. But they were boomers and got handed everything, so they bounced back.. Gen X'ers, on the other hand, have been handed nothing and rather had nothing but impediments put in their way, so while they're resilient, recovery looks bleak. And with the advancements in robotics on the horizon, even unskilled labor should be terrified.

We are not headed toward the utopia in which no one [italic]has[/italic] to work; we are headed toward a dystopia where there are no jobs, no way to feed your family, and no government willing to help. It didn't and doesn't have to be this way, but this is what Gen X voted for.

I only hear about Reaganomics and how that era was the boom times. But there were back to back recessions during his admin and a huge savings and loan scandal.

what boom times?

It was boom times for the wealthy, R9. Reagan convinced the working and middle classes that despite putting them in well-paying solid career-length jobs, setting up a system of security in retirement, and creating the best environment for personal freedom and growth in the history of the world, the Democrats were evil, wanted their hard-earned dollars to go to browns in the ghetto, and were baby killers. And so the working and middle class voted away their opportunities, job security, and futures so that the wealthy could pay far less in taxes (which were used to do things like build hospitals, schools, and roads). Hence, we fell into four decades now of declining infrastructure, jobs being exported to low-wage countries, and a social safety net that was stretched beyond its limits... and rather than fix these problems, we vote again and again for billionaires to pay less in taxes and to put life-saving essentials on the national credit card.

As I like to say, we learn nothing from history. And here we are a hundred years later, and we're again doing exactly the thing — tariffs — that caused* the Great Depression. And somehow, even after we've worn out the phrase "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and yet expecting different results", here we are.

* Yes, I know academics argue tariffs only contributed to the Depression, but as I've said to several prominent economists, including face-to-face with Paul Krugman in a post-book-tour meet and greet: "Let's face facts. It was only a recession before Smoot Hawley. It was the tariffs and resulting trade war that made it a depression."

Creative work has always been a precarious way to make a living, but AI has been way overhyped.

Seriously, R11? You could not be more wrong on both counts. Creative work is what made America what it was, from the [italic]Mad Men[/italic] era of the late 50s and early 60s to the chronicling of the [italic]Mad Men[/italic] era in the 2010s, about 50 years. And if you think AI is overhyped, all I can say is that you don't know AI. It is seeping into [italic]everything.[/italic]

I saw my dermatologist last week and making small talk, I asked him if he was concerned about AI taking his job. He laughed and said, first, he already does surgery via robot; second, he just performed surgery on a patient that he would have advised wait when he saw a small bump but AI identified it as cancerous and suggested removal. The doctor said it saved the patient from a host of issues down the road... as he photographed a mole and two warts and said he'd be in touch if the AI "thinks" he should remove them.

[quote]so I'm just wondering, has anyone here been affected?

It’s unavoidable. I used to tell people, “Learn how to work with AI, because whether you like it or not, it’s not going anywhere.” The truth is, when a tool can help people do something faster or cheaper, even if it’s lower quality, it wins. That’s not pessimism, it’s history.

I’ve seen writers replaced outright or told to use AI to speed up “their process.” Designers pushed to generate art faster, not better. Editors watching software replicate rough cuts they used to get paid for. Is it artistic yet? No, but it’s catching up, fast. Sound design can be done with AI mixing and mastering all your tracks and now we have, "completely generated from your words," AI video.

I remember when AI-generated images looked like melted crayons with 10 fingers. Now it’s generating clean visuals, readable text, and fooling people into thinking it’s real. That shift happened in under two years.

The only thing you can do in the long term is learn how to use it because it is seeping into everything.

Everyone who has become outdated and no longer needed it’s always painful. But it never stops change keeps happening.