One Thing About Me and Indigestible Fat

A couple of years back there was a trend in short videos. People were rapping over an instrumental version of a Nicki Minaj song¹. The first lyric of these raps would be “one thing about me” and folks would share some surprising story about their past. Some of them were quite funny and interesting. I don’t really do TikTok, but I do watch short video content sometimes.

Yesterday I recalled the trend to a few people who missed it. I looked up some of those old videos and then wondered what story I would tell were I to make one of these videos today. I also wondered how I would tell it.

After going to bed early, I woke up late in the night and had a creative. Could I make my own version of this trend in the middle of the night without getting up out of bed? And then could I get back to sleep?²

Details about the workflow (tools and uses)

1. I researched the style by searching Google, finding TikTok video examples.
2. I wrote the lyrics³ entirely in Google Docs.

3. I asked ChatGPT to help me come up with a musical style prompt that would get me close to the target sound.

   • This had limited success, but gave me a starting point.

4. I used Suno to combine the lyrics with some music.

   • This took several generations, which is typical. And, honestly, if I’d been working on this not in bed, I would have probably tried a few more generations. Or I would have trimmed off the end and re-generated it. There are several things I might have done to improve the song. Suno is a hit or miss process.
5. I downloaded the Suno song as an MP3 onto my phone.

6. I used RunwayML to generate some versions of the potato chip bag character.

   • There are several image generaiton sites I would have used if I weren’t getting tired by this point, but Runway had ImageGen built in, and I’d forgotten that I neede to start with an image, so I just went with what it suggested. MidJourney is where I would normally go for this.

7. I used RunwayML again to create three different 10-second animations of the dancing bag, all starting from the same pose.

   • Having the same starting place meant that they would be essentially seamless if I made sure one ran into the other on that same frame.

8. I imported the clips into a mobile version of Filmora.

   • It’s the free video editor I happen to have on my phone. I think they make money from the AI features that I don’t use.
9. I duplicated and reversed each 10 second animation so that I had three 20-second clips that all began and ended on the same frame. They could be played sequentially and relatively seamlessly. That made a whole minute of video. I exported that video and re-imported it so I could make two copies (unfortunately necessary). Now I had two minutes of video. I filled in the rest of the time with the 10 second clips.
10. I imported the Suno MP3
11. I exported the whole video, and Filmora asked me if I wanted to create a short video for YouTube. So I did.
12. I logged in to YouTube to download the short so that I could add it to my Instagram/Facebook story. Because Filmora didn’t save a version to my phone. I posted that.
13. I uploaded the full version of the song to YouTube (which is what you see above).

This probably took me a couple of hours. In bed. In the dark.

Generative AI and Human Creativity

I woke up with an idea and I was able to follow through. It took time and effort, but it was so easily within reach that I didn’t even need to get out of bed to do it. Being able to scratch a creative itch like this can’t be overstated for those of us who get so many good and bad ideas, but miss having the sort of time to follow through on them.

Today you can focus on the parts you’re relatively good at (or just enjoy doing) and fill in the blanks with generative tools. Just like TikTok creators have been sidestepping formal video editing and creation to just get something off their chest or make people laugh. There are several valid reasons to critique TikTok, mostly from the perspective of being a consumer on the platform. However, it’s undeniable that, starting back in the Musical.ly days, TikTok has cracked the code of getting people involved in digital artifact creation through the arts of copying, combining, and transforming⁴. There’s at least something of a lesson there.

Not all of us want to stand in front of a camera holding a little earbud microphone.

New technologies are a trade-off. Generative AI played an enormous part in the creation of this video, both used outright and built into tools. Ideally (and realistically) generative AI will be used to push the boundaries of human creativity. One obvious way is that it can increase participation in some sort of creative process in the same way TikTok converted so many people from consumers to creators in its own way. Despite AI hype having already gotten out of hand, Anti-AI posturing has made itself ridiculous to the point where people are performatively pre-disengaging in a way that prevents any discussion from taking place⁵.

There are and will be a lot of questions about AI use and impact. One perspective is to think about the purpose of copyright law which exists to enable more creativity in our society. It protects works not as some sort of absolute, but in order to give people the ability to use their work in certain ways that generate a benefit to them. But the exclusivity granted by copyright is and must be balanced by an understanding that the culture grows and thrives on new ideas being spread, copied, combined and transformed in some ways that must be allowed⁶. Tools with new capabilities will challenge how that balance is reached. I think the law is one of the best places to let this play out.

In the meantime, I will do what I suggest you do: consider how to become more engaged in creative processes. AI can certainly do your work for you (sometimes badly). But what creative work from your own mind could it possibly bring within your reach?

1. You’re going to have to look up the details, but I believe the challenge was variously called the “One Thing About Me” trend or “Super Freak Challenge” because the song they were rapping over was an instrumental version of Super Freaky Girl by Ms. Minaj. The original song is racy. It sampled the song Super Freak by Rick James. Here’s the first example that came up for me in a Google search. That’s a TikTok link, y’all. ↩

2. Yes. I can almost always get back to sleep any time unless something is really bugging me. ↩

3. I have nobody else to blame for the use of “fervor.” Poetic license… this is not how I would generally used the word. But it hat to rhyme with server and there aren’t a lot of other words that do that. ↩

4. Borrowing this definition of creativity from Kirby Ferguson. ↩

5. If you call training generative AI theft, you’ve opted out of the conversation. I think I’ve spent a couple of years cowed by this sort of language. The result is bitterness, realizing the rhetorical bullying worked for a time. I don’t respect that accusation anymore. It’s time to focus on more nuanced discussions of the problems and promises of AI. With people willing to engage in good faith, and not purely on emotion. And I speak as a knowledge worker in several fields that will be impacted AI, and that people are even hoping to obsolete with AI. The difference is that I know letting a wave hit you full force by digging in and screaming at it angrily isn’t a practical strategy. ↩

6. It’s Kirby again. ↩