The Satansplain merch store has launched! T-shirts, stickers, phone cases, and more! Go to this link! Order before March 18th for 27% off the normal price! Currently there are only two designs, but you’ll also see one more design each for Dr. Vincent Schitz (from the meme page of the same name) and Satanbear from The Devil’s Mischief.
Category: non-episodes
Thoughts on A.I.-generated George Carlin
EDIT: I wrote most of this before giving a full listen to the A.I. generated “George Carlin” special. Recently I gave it a listen, and will add my thoughts to the end.
Part 1: Pre-listening Thoughts
Somebody used A.I. to “create” a new George Carlin comedy special. Kelly Carlin, his daughter, is livid. A number of people have been asking me what my take is. I’ve only heard a few samples so far, but here are my thoughts:
Like any fan, I have had that lingering thought in the back if my mind of “What would Carlin have to say about the state of the world today?” I think we can make some intelligent predictions, and AI likewise offers a way to do that in a more calculated way. However, it seems a lot of AI algorithms interject some bias of its programmers, especially political bias. I’ve seen a number of examples exposing this.
On top of this, we can only draw on his material up until he died in 2008. If Carlin had been alive 2008-2024, he could very well have ended up having a different perspective on things; that’s a significant period of time when lots of people were changing their mind on things. So again, I’m a bit skeptical of the overall predictability accuracy.
Also, Carlin’s specials typically included some topics that weren’t really topical at all. So how any AI program could predict and write a specific zany observational comedy routine on some apolitical topic (“the little world” as Carlin called it), I don’t know. I’m sure it’s possible though if you asked for something specifically. For example, “Write me a comedy bit on doughnuts, in the style of George Carlin”, and then insert that. Who knows, you might get something that would pass for a Carlin routine. (Especially given the general gullability of people who find bogus quotes attributed to him online and accept them as authentic, but I digress.) I suppose you could replace “doughnuts” in the request with “a trending, apolitical topic”. But whether anything like this was even taken into consideration, I don’t know.
But back to the political bias problem: I see a lot of people who presume Carlin would take their tribalist side on a lot of hot issues. I’m not so sure about that. For example, a lot of left-wingers hold up Carlin for his rants on religion and abortion, ignoring his condemnation of things like voting, politically correct language, and environmentalism hysteria. Conversely, I see right-wingers sharing clips of Carlin talking about “the owners” a.k.a. “deep state” of the country, ignoring all of his conservative-bashing material.
Finally, most self-proclaimed Carlin “fans” in my experience haven’t even heard most of his already-existing catalog of work. As a Carlin fanatic myself, I’m a bit disappointed when I run into somebody who says Carlin is their favorite comedian, yet has never bought a single album, book, or video of his, nor had made any effort to see him perform live back when they still had the chance. I realize that for most people, comedy typically doesn’t generate that same sort of level of devotion and support to the artist as, say, music does. But I don’t see why the world necessarily needs artificially-created Carlin when most of its target audience haven’t even heard “Class Clown” or read “Brain Droppings“.
I’ll probably get around to sitting down and listening to the whole thing, and then have more to say on it. But I don’t see the endeavor in and of itself as “blasphemy” to the work of Carlin (we’ve already seen living people rip him off) so much as something few people in the end really want and I’m skeptical could be done well. As much as I cringe at the idea, I’ll still have to listen and judge for myself.
In the meantime, as Kelly points out, it does bring up some important questions about AI and intellectual property. Should A.I. programs be barred from scraping copyrighted material and making something new out of it? And one of the questions I have: Is it fundamentally different from a living, breathing artist drawing from a set of influences and creating something new? I don’t have all the answers. But as the inherited and rightful owner of Carlin’s intellectual property, nobody should be taken aback by Kelly speaking out against, at the very least, somebody creating a product being passed off explicitly as a “George Carlin special”. Granted, I’ve been using an artificially spliced George Carlin introduction in episodes of The Devil’s Mischief for many years now, but it’s obviously no more serious than National Lampoon‘s album of spliced Nixon recordings. I’m sure however that if I were to use A.I. to create a “new Led Zeppelin song”, and then try to market it as such, Atlantic Records’ lawyers may very well knock on my door.
We’ll see where this goes. In the meantime, Carlin already left us with a wealth of actual, authentic work. So I suggest going out and buying the real stuff.
Part 2: And now that I’ve listened…
I have now taken a listen to the actual A.I. creation, “I’m Glad I’m Dead”. And overall, it was pretty much what I expected: a limited caricature of him. It was like the A.I. program was only fed the audio recordings of his special Life Is Worth Losing (2006) and maybe also You Are All Diseased (1999) and Complaints & Grievances (2001), and then a set of politically-biased Google news searches and Gen-Z Instagram posts picked the material, offset by maybe a handful of meme-driven opposing views.
To give some praise where it’s due, I think the A.I. generated some of the style and subtlety well. For example, Carlin’s occasional rapid listing of things rhythmically, or quickly rattling off statistics. Some of the topic transitions, too. The voice tone kept going back and forth between certainly sounding like a 65 year-old Carlin to unfortunately sounding like…I don’t know, some 20 year-old man.
As for the choice of material itself, I can see how somebody with a superficial knowledge of George Carlin might think it’s very much his style, but I would argue otherwise. We start with a rant about religion and monotheism, where it’s really a rehash of the same talking points we see on a typical atheism forum. This is a topic he already addressed in 1999 at the close of You Are All Diseased. So why would he just rehash the topic in 2024, especially in a more disconnected way? My guess is the A.I. was offset by the disproportionately large number of shares of the religion rants by atheists.
This eventually flows into a rant against gun ownership, which consists of just repeating the Democrat talking points we’ve all heard. It’s true that Carlin described himself as, when push comes to shove, politically left-leaning. He also took some shots (pardon the pun) here and there at “gun enthusiasts”. But this segment here was just one-way rhetoric done with a bad Carlin voice. Likewise, the calls throughout the special here and there for things like “equity” are out of place for somebody who was a shameless misanthrope, let alone fiercely against tribalism.
As I said earlier, I wasn’t sure if the whole thing would be social-political commentary (a lot of dweebs in the YouTube comments seem to be under the delusion he was a spoken word commentator and not a comedian; the reality was he was a comedian first and foremost). However, there were some segments that weren’t. This is what we would expect in a real George Carlin special. There was for example a fart joke, which, for something A.I.-generated, I was somewhat impressed by. There was also a segment on names and spelling, which I’m sure was inspired by his bits about people’s first names and his material about the English language in general.
Somewhere around the 40-55 minute segment in though, we get into something I think is more of Carlin’s style: criticizing the cowardice and incompetence of humans. There was also even some criticism about A.I. itself and self-referential material about whether the voice you hear is even real. Ironically, some of this matches the angry replies from the “George would have hated this” protesters in the comments.
I’m sure this won’t be the last attempt to create a “new George Carlin special”. Like any technology, I imagine A.I. will get better over time. We’ve already been living with A.I. in some form or another for years, whether it’s an ATM or a video game. But just as we have cinema CGI today that makes the CGI snake in Anaconda (1997) look like the low-bit pixelated snake from the Atari 2600 Indiana Jones game (1982), we may very well end up with A.I. and “deep fakes” that look indistinguishable from the real thing.
The next decade is going to be interesting. Maybe I should get to work on learning how to copyright myself.
Bill M. on The Devil’s Salon podcast
Recently I was a guest on The Devil’s Salon; a Satanic talk podcast for Satanic gentlemen. This was the Novemver 26, 2023 episode, titled “Comedy and Masculinity for the Satanic Gentleman with Magister Bill M.”. The show is available on a variety of platforms, including the links below.
Anton LaVey was an atheist and Satanism is a non-theistic religion
Despite the claims of some illiterate devil worshipers, Anton LaVey was an atheist. Meaning, he did not believe deities to exist. That includes Satan as an actual deity. There are multiple, independent sources where he states this position. You can read many of these in the article “What, The Devil?” at https://www.churchofsatan.com/what-the-devil/ .
Here is an additional quote, from 1971, from his “Letters from the Devil” column: “The Satanist fully recognizes that Satan is nothing more than a symbolic entity representing man himself; his carnal and physical desires, his freedom from enshackling doctrines, and his intellectual capacity to reject those elements of man-made law which prevent him from engaging in life to the fullest. To suppose that Satan is a substitute for the Christian “God” is entirely erroneous. Man himself is the God; Satan is merely the symbolic representation of the WHOLE man and is given a place in Satanic ritual as a strengthening device to affirm one’s own convictions.”
The topic of atheism and non-theistic religions is also thoroughly covered in Satansplain #016:
In 1973, a double-record set called “The Occult Explosion” included an interview clip of LaVey, explaining Satanism. He explicitly states at the start, “Satan is to us a symbol, rather than an anthropomorphic being.” Some devil worshipers try quote-mining the next parts where he explains that any members of the Church of Satan “who are mystically inclined, would prefer to think of Satan in a very real, anthropomorphic way. Of course, we do not discourage this because we realize that to many individuals, a picture — a well-wrought picture of their mentor, or their tutilary divinity, is very important for them to conceptualize, ritualistically. However, Satan, symbolically, is a teacher: the informer of the whys and wherefores of the world.” He then goes on to explicitly state that Satanists are not Satan worshipers. In any case, using anthropomorphic images of Satan for ritualistic purposes and to help conceptualize concepts still isn’t “theistic Satanism”, and LaVey stresses that Satan is only a symbol.
Another tiresome claim is that LaVey claimed to believe in Satan in a 1974 Cloven Hoof newsletter. The letter in question was written by Michael Aquino, whose conflicting theistic beliefs led him to his exit from the Church of Satan. Anteater-worshiping Aquino of course spent the rest of his life trying to discredit LaVey and the Church of Satan. Read LaVey’s words from his essay Hoisted by His Own Patois.
Yet another lame argument is that Magistra Blanche Barton “confirmed” LaVey’s belief in a literal Satan in “The Barton Letter”. But rather than answering the question “Did Anton LaVey believe in Satan?”, she chose to answer a different question: “Did Anton LaVey believe in Satanism and the Church of Satan?” He certainly did.
Additionally, keep in mind that an atheist who personally eschews the term “atheist” for themselves is still an atheist. George Carlin for example didn’t like using the term for himself, even though he undoubtedly was an atheist. The same with Tom Lehrer, Bill Gates, and many other famous atheists. A lot more people who don’t believe in a deity, however, became more comfortable with using the term by the 2000s with the New Atheist movement. The fact that the Church of Satan has likewise become more open with using the term still doesn’t change the fact that we’ve always rejected the notion of gods, thus making us atheists by definition.
Another common argument we hear is, “You can’t be an atheist if you say you are your own god. Because that means you believe in a god and are thus not an atheist!” This argument stupidly overlooks the fact that saying “I am my own god” is symbolic. When a Satanist says, “I am my own god”, it does not mean, “I believe myself to literally be a supernatural deity.” Rather it means, “I put my own self in the role that most other people put ‘God’ in. Meaning, I am the one whom is most important in my life. I am the one I ultimately aim to please. I am the one most responsible for my life, for better or worse. If I run into problems in life, it is ultimately up to myself, not an actual deity, to find a way out of those problems.” An analogy I use is that it’s similar to how an entrepreneur can simultaneously say, “I don’t have a boss” and “I am my own boss”; only an illiterate would call this hypocrisy.
In summary, people claiming to be “Theistic LaVeyan Satanists” seemingly can’t read, or at least lack the mental capacity to comprehend metaphors. Anybody claiming that Anton LaVey “really” believed in a literal Satan and that the Church of Satan’s position somehow changed later, is simply lying. Don’t take my word for it; look at the documented evidence instead of going by hearsay, anecdotes, or by poetic waxing misread by people who can barely type.
Bill talks about Clive Barker’s “Nightbreed”
Recently I was a guest on the Reaper’s Underground podcast, this time to rant and rave about my favorite movie, Clive Barker’s “Nightbreed” (1990). I also talk about some of the Satanic significance of this film, read an excerpt from an essay written by Church of Satan High Priest Peter H. Gilmore from a rare reprint of the novel “Cabal”, show off my Nightbreed merchandise collection, and also read a bit from the original novel.
Bill M. returns to Reaper’s Underground
Bill has been invited back to Reaper’s Underground. This time, the Reaper and Bill review and roast various trolls from Twitterland, and also answer some of the listener questions. Fun times.
The Devil’s Mischief turns 20!
Bill celebrates 20 years of his other podcast (and presumably the longest-running Satanic podcast ever), The Devil’s Mischief! This will be the first in a series of 20th anniversary specials. Listen to almost 2 hours of religion-bashing comedy selected from the first year of Devil’s Mischief episodes, some of which you’ve no doubt heard during Satansplain in commercial breaks.
Reaper’s Underground, June 20th @ 8pm Central
I’ll be a guest on the Reaper’s Underground podcast this upcoming Tuesday, June 20th at 8pm Central. This will be a live stream, probably running about an hour. Description from the Facebook page:
Special announcement my Demons! I’m truly honored and humbled to announce that the Church of Satan Magister Bill M., host of the Satansplain podcast show will be joining me in the Underground THIS TUESDAY June 20th 8pm CST! This special edition is not just for me as a fellow Satanist, but for everyone who has been wanting to know what being a real Satanist is, misconceptions, and truths! We’ll be discussing all things Satan, his amazing informative podcast show Satansplain, history of the CoS, Anton Lavey, modern day Satanism and so much more! Join us this Tuesday to interact with Magister Bill and get your questions answered!!!
DISCLAIMER:
No ignorance will be tolerated of any kind, the comment section will be monitored, no political discussion will be had, this interview will be a safe, fun and informative discussion!
Catch all the laughs and debauchery that will ensue live only on Reaper’s Underground and Black Flame Entertainment Facebook pages and YouTube channels! Be there. No excuses. You bring the snacks, I’ll bring the bourbon. Hail Satan.
Support Satansplain via eBay
Some listeners have said they’d like to show their support for this show, and asked if I have a Patreon or similar place to accept tips. At this time, I do not. You can however greatly help me out by bidding on any of my eBay auctions. I have lots of stuff. And I mean LOTS. And I like to see this stuff go to homes where it will be better appreciated. So if you’d like to help out, my eBay channel is here. On most orders I’ll ship worldwide.
I also plan on having some special items this summer for The Devil’s Mischief’s 20th anniversary. Stay tuned. Hail Satan!
Total Environments presentation (Sunday, April 16, 2023)
From Churchofsatan.com news:
“Westworld: Anton LaVey’s Total Environments, Gamification and Ghosts in the Machines with Anders Lundgren and
Caligula as a Dionysian Affirmation of Life with River.“
An Online Presentation by Morbid Anatomy
Date: Sunday, April 16
Time: 2 pm EDT
PLEASE NOTE: This lecture will be recorded and available for free for Morbid Anatomy’s Patreon members at $5/month and above. Become a Member HERE.
Ticketholders: A Zoom invite is sent out at 12:30 pm EDT on the day of the event to the email used at checkout. Please check your spam folder and if not received, email info.morbidanatomy@gmail.com. A temporary streaming link will be emailed after the event concludes.
Follow this link for detailed information.