Hail, Comrade.
You have come hither to learn of my advocacies. Good. Please keep an open mind and take the time to thoroughly understand what I have written here. Depending on who you are, what you might encounter might or might not agree with what you personally believe in.
When that happens, I would rather you stay and keep reading than turn away.
☭Disclaimer: Politics
To start it off, I will make it absolutely clear: I will be "political" here. There is simply no way I can talk of my advocacies without being political in any way whatsoever.
The reason for this is quite simple: everything is political. Whether or not something is or is not political is not because it is intrinsically so, but because that is what the powers that be have so decided.
The only ones who could afford to claim apoliticality or political neutrality are those who are privileged enough not to have their existence politicised.
A good example of this is marriage: no-one bats an eye when two lovers marry, provided that they're a man and a woman. But should two women desire to tie the knot, they are not allowed to do so; when they ask that same right that straight couples possess, people who have no stakes in their lives fight against their advocacy and the whole matter becomes a contentious political issue.
Cisheteronormative ('straight') people are not a politically repressed class. Therefore the institution of marriage is available to them without it being "political". LGBTQ folk, on the other hand, are a politically repressed class, therefore simply availing of marriage as an LGBTQ couple is a political matter.
☭Humanism & Communism
I am a humanist. I believe that the betterment of human life is of utmost importance.
To exist is to be miserable; it is the duty of every single human being as well as society at large to avoid adding to the misery of human existence, as well as to alleviate that what misery is present whenever possible.
In a fully just and humane society, we the people will see ourselves living full, happy lives without any needless suffering and where we realise our full potential
Alas, we do not live in a just and human society. In fact, we live in a deeply flawed society, where lives are seen as expendable and people are deemed "undesirables" and systematically subject to greater misery for no fault of their own.
We live in a society of extraction, where the rich siphon money off the labour of the poor and flaunt their wealth as a sign of their 'hard work' and 'smarts'. We live in a society where it is functionally impossible to achieve any measure of comfort if you are unwilling to exploit the labour of another.
We live under capitalism.
It is thus that my own humanist ideals lead me to Socialism, and from there, Communism.
☭☭Why Communism?
Communism is the political and economic ideology that puts humans—and not capital—at the forefront. Communism carries with it the dreams of a society where wealth and prosperity is not the sole purview of a chosen few, but instead given unto the masses.
"From each acording to their ability, to each according to their need" lies at the heart of this ideology. You are given what you need to survive—food, shelter, healthcare, and community—and in exchange you offer what labour you are capable of. Should you desire luxuries, then if society is capable of supporting it you can work harder for said luxury.
While communism alone is not enough to address all issues that afflict modern human society (LGBTQ rights, for example, are a social issue rather than an economic issue), they are closely linked. A majority of communists (but not all) are supportive of other social struggles. And furthermore, those social struggles can't be truly resolved so long as we exist under capitalism, for their seeds are deep, pervasive, and come from the same wellspring as capitalism.
That said, I am by no means an authority on Communism. I would encourage you to read Karl Marx's works instead. You can start with Das Kapital.
☭My advocacies as a creator
Now that you know where I stand, you can better understand my advocacies as a creator.
☭☭Advocacy I
First and foremost, as an artist, I am fundamentally opposed to Generative AI, especially in the realm of art. There are many reasons for this.
First and foremost is the matter of data ethics. Generative AI relies on data that has been acquired unethically, without informed consent from every single contributor. People who argue on reddit, post photos of their loved ones on facebook, and artists who upload their work on social media—all of them will see their data scraped by bots and subsumed into training data. Academics, copyrighted work, and the sort. In other words, a not-insignificant portion of the data that fuels generative AI is stolen data.
And all that aggregated data, when used to generate new data, will inevitably result in bits and pieces of stolen data showing their faces. There have already been lawsuits filed over this issue. You can look at this piece from Stanford University as an example.
Second is that generative AI has already caused significant social harm. There are already several suicides attributed to Generative AI (chatbots), and studies like this one from MIT have shown a correlation between Generative AI use and cognitive decline.
With Generative AI it has become harder to determine what is and isn't real. We can easily see Generative AI used to create convincing false evidence, on top of creating a general atmosphere of distrust—one that makes the people susceptible to trust misinformation and disregard real information. Where before we can see things that go against our personal beliefs and be forced to contend with the fact that they're real, now people can simply dismiss it as "AI Generated" and refuse to engage with themselves critically. This is principally an effect in favour of fascists.
Generative AI also relies on massive datacentres that consume obscene amounts of water and electricity. This coverage from the London School of Economics and Political Science talks about the risks that Generative AI technology poses to the climate at large. We already live in a world facing pressure from climate change and increased greenhouse gas emissions; do we truly need to support a technology that deals so much harm, and in return accelerates climate change?
And if you're a tech enthusiast, you should hate Generative AI for the simple fact that they made electronics inaccessible. AI Companies have been buying out RAM and scalping GPUs in order to fuel their datacentres, and are specifically looking for high VRAM. This has lead to a massive price hike for RAM chips, and will likely affect electronic gadgets in general
The job market has also become painfully unstable with AI in the mix; I myself am a casualty of the AI boom. I lost my job back in 2024 precisely because of Generative AI.
And adjacent to that is the sheer disrespect generative AI has towards artistic integrity as a whole. There are people who generate pictures with generative AI and call it 'art', and those who abandoned their dreams to create art with their own two hands because someone with a keyboard can just make a photo or a song with just a couple of prompts.
And yet, Generative AI media will never, ever be art. Art is something that is shaped by our personal experiences and our thoughts. Art is a reflection of what makes us human.
If you have the time, I would strongly suggest watching this video essay by Farya Faraji.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of the reasons why I stand against Generative AI, but as a media creator I seek to make my stand against generative AI by, first and foremost—creating. I create art in defiance of Generative AI; I will not make it part of my workflow and shun media that makes use of generative media technology. I am a human. I am an artist.
☭☭Advocacy II
Another advocacy of mine would be feminism and LGBTQ rights. Aside from the fact that I myself am LGBTQ, this is an extension of my humanistic politics.
I dream of a day where in the Philippines, women are no longer subject to the cruelty of patriarchy, and where LGBTQ people stand on equal ground with cisheteronormative people in both law and social status. A Philippines where gay people do not have to accept being second place or endure discrimination. Where trans people can transition with full support and acceptance from their peers, and where our identities are not a thing to be debated. Where poly people can marry all their partners at once without having to worry about their neighbours being scandalised.
We are humans, after all. And we were born this way. Why should we have to accept being seen as second-rate, to be stereotyped as lecherous or greedy? Why should we accept that some people will simply not hire us or constrain us to stereotypical positions simply because we're not straight? Why should we be not allowed to marry our partners? Why should we 'accept' cohabitation—and forfeit the rights to be seen as our partners' own when it matters?
I seek to write, and to draw, and to sing. To create art that decries and condemns this inhumanity, while simultaneously uplifting those like me.
☭☭Advocacy III
And one last advocacy I would like to describe (though this is by no means exhaustive) is my own pride in being Visayan.
I hope to, eventually, create art in my native language. To stir pride in it. I've only lived but thirty years so far, and yet in my lifetime I've seen my own language erode. Now I hear more Tagalog words slipping into Cebuano sentences, and habits like 'po' and 'opo' manifesting themselves when those honorifics are quite emphatically not a part of the Cebuano language.
To this end I wish to learn more about and to produce my own Cebuano literature. And sing to, if only to myself.