This is number 139 in the blog series, “My Writing Life.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
I’M EASILY ADDICTED. Or maybe it’s one of the byproducts of ADHD or being a little OCD. God knows, I’m on the spectrum someplace.
Here’s what I mean.
When I was writing the Team Manager series, I started following women’s high school basketball in Iowa. It started with the high school team I was using as a model for my team in the book. Then, I had to consider what colleges they might go to and started following the American Rivers Conference Division III teams. When I was viewing that, I became aware of the buzz surrounding the University of Iowa Hawkeyes team and the phenomenon of Caitlin Clark. When she got drafted into the WNBA, I became an instant fan of the Indiana Fever. I had to try out the new Unrivaled league games as well. I was still watching my favorite ARC teams, the Iowa Hawkeyes and Big Ten teams, and the Fever.
I admit that I’m watching fewer ARC games, mostly only University of Iowa Big Ten games, only Indiana Fever games, and just my favorite three Unrivaled teams (out of eight). I no longer really watch any high school basketball, and can see that my days of watching Div III are numbered. The addiction is waning.
However, the entire Team Manager series is still available as eBooks on ZBookStore.
A while back, I discovered short dramas on a phone app that played audio episodes. I’d listened to a couple thousand episodes when I got completely caught up in my November Novel this past year. I haven’t listened to an episode in three months. (Doesn’t that sound like I’ve been sober for three months?)
But now, I’ve discovered short drama reels. These hit my Facebook feed and I quickly became addicted to some of the stories. In fact, I get 150 gigabytes of high speed hot spot each month, which is what I use for all my work, posting, television, and streaming needs. So far this month, I’ve used 177.45 gigabytes and I still have 8 days in my billing cycle to go.
Dang it.
I bring all this up as a bridge from my post on artificial intelligence to my intended subject of violence as entertainment. You see, I’m pretty well convinced that the stories on Pocket FM and the Reels I see on Facebook are at least partially AI generated. If the story itself isn’t, the audio track certainly is.
There are numerous Facebook accounts that post the short drama reels. They are usually posted in fifteen to thirty-minute episodes, and the account never posts the whole story. You are expected to purchase and download an app that feeds the reels to your phone. Watch the advertisements, pay for episodes, and bow down to the AI gods of Apple, Google, and Meta.
There are essentially only half a dozen stories, though I’m sure I could uncover a number of variants.
1. The billionaire CEO in disguise.
2. The neglected and abused child who returns to have revenge on the family that mistreated him/her.
3. The Kung Fu grandmaster who looks like a bum but saves the heiress and is revealed to the big boss as being the head of all the martial artists.
4. The child prodigy who saves the mother or father with an exceptional talent and gets a new stepparent in the deal.
5. The reincarnated ancestor who returns to punish the degenerate descendants.
6. The scorned and divorced spouse who is later revealed to be royalty or an heiress/heir to a great fortune.
7. The female drudge working on the military base who is revealed in a crisis as a retired sniper who can make an impossible shot of 3-6k or more to save a pinned down patrol.
I’m sure if I spent even more time immersed in these short dramas, I could find more storylines, but it seems they all follow a similar story arc.
An interesting (to me) phenomenon is that there is obviously a script, which may or may not have been written by a human, and in most but not all of the reels, actual human actors play the parts. Some do use AI generated images. So, the actors say the lines in some language or another. Then the AI dubs it into another language based on the audio track or script. I can tell it is AI because it will treat things like “Mr. Smith” as a sentence finished after “Mr.” and a new one begun “Smith.” It will also leave Asians in some Kung Fu dramas with completely western names like Mr. Smith, Mr. Clark, Mr. Jones, etc.
What gets me is that I often read the subtitles and they appear to be generated from the dubbed audio, not the script. They often mistake words for things that sound a little like what has been said or even spell the same name half a dozen different ways, based on what the narration sounded like. The same is true with the audio dramas as with the reels.
My currently running serial and recent eBook and paperback release, Forever Yours, is a story about a young programmer who sees potential in the development of artificial intelligence, but doesn’t consider it to be well implemented. He correctly sees that artificial intelligence has been developed for the benefit of the developers and not for the people it is sold to. Personal information is reported back to the corporation who owns the program. The programs spy on the users and turn that information into targeted advertising—a ‘feature’ that no user actually needs.
Verena Holt sent me an unsolicited review of Forever Yours that began:
Forever Yours stands out as a deeply human exploration of technology, ambition, and emotion. Blending speculative science with intimate storytelling, it captures not just the rise of artificial intelligence but the complex lives of those building it. The story’s balance of intellect, vulnerability, and vision makes it an unforgettable look at how connection endures in an increasingly digital world.
Not bad for a review attempting to convince me it is an actual human being offering the services of a non-existent Literary Pathway Curator Network to help with expanding my audience to book clubs around the world! I especially love the identification of the book as a “deeply human exploration.”
The thing is, I can’t argue with anything in this AI-generated message I received on Facebook from a user that no longer, and probably never, existed.
Forever Yours is available as an eBook at ZBookStore or as a Signature Edition paperback at online retailers. It is available in serialization at SOL online.
So, here we have the connection from artificial intelligence to my current but waning addiction to short drama reels. I’ve even included a nod to the unsolicited email I receive from AIs trying to sell me services that don’t actually exist. But what does all that have to do with violence as entertainment? I’ve already exceeded my intended length for this blog post, so that will have to wait until my next post.
I’ll just say that I have not watched a reel in which no one got slapped! Unless they were beaten by a martial arts master, or outright killed. It got me thinking: Do I do that in my books?
Oh, yeah.
Okay, if I can get around to it this week, my next post on violence as entertainment will be “Pow! Wham! Thwack! Zap!”