Mailbag #181
/Just wanted to add some additional context to the part about Paul Romhany in the latest Dustings.
He's been obsessed with AI for awhile now. I actually sent you an email about him awhile back. He has a second Facebook "Paul R" (and an Instagram) where he posts a combination of AI generated performances and real performances of tricks. The real performances are a mix of Paul doing magic, other magicians doing magic at conventions, or snippets from trailers.
According to Jeff Prace, Paul doesn't ask permission before posting these performances at conventions and does not credit the original performer in the videos.
A new thing he has been posting lately is clips of magic trailers with their voices dubbed over with AI. Like here’s one where he just took a clip of Craig Petty from the new Sucker Punch trailer.
There was also a big controversy where he used AI [for an image in CAM Magazine] and it turned Rachel Wax into a completely different person. She called him out for it and then he said he had a family emergency and didn't have time to edit the [image] and that he was being bullied and harrassed for it.
That's about it. Just wanted to let you know how deep the Paul Romhany AI rabbit hole is.—AO
Oooh…I see. So this isn’t a one-off. He’s like a weird goon, then? That’s good to know. I was feeling kind of bad for him because he had to use AI to generate discussion about his magazine. If he hadn’t tried to pass the AI hosts off as real people, I would have just quietly pitied him.
But I guess he’s into all sorts of weird AI stuff. He’s definitely got a “grandpa just discovered ChatGPT” energy about him. A “Grok, take this picture of my neighbor and put her in a bikini” vibe.
Most confusing to me is, of all the things about Craig Petty you could use AI to replace…you chose his voice? That’s the part of Craig you take issue with?? If you asked Craig what he’d change about himself, I’m not sure his voice would make the top 50. If you’re going to steal his content and unnecessarily alter it, at least go all-in. Give us Craig Petty post-LASIK, post-hair transplant, and six months into a vigorous course of GLP-1s.
I need your advice. I have a venture in the magic world that I’ve been trying to get off the ground for a while now and I’m having a hard time getting traction with it. I’ll spare you the details so you don’t think I’m just trying to get you to promote it, but it’s similar to what you’re doing: putting out magic content and having readers support it. I’ve been trying my best but haven’t found an audience yet. My question isn’t how to get an audience but at what point do you bail on a project if you’re not finding support?—AH
Ideally, you decide that before you start. That's when you're least likely to confuse "I still believe in this" with "I've already put too much into this to stop."
Let’s say I'm opening a restaurant. (It’s a grilled cheese and chocolate milk restaurant. But that’s not important.) Before I sign a lease, I decide what would make me want to keep running it two years from now. Maybe that's two metrics:
$10,000 a month take-home.
More customers walking through the door than a year earlier.
If I hit both marks, great. If I miss both—I'm nowhere near the income I need, and the customer base isn’t growing even slowly—the decision is painful, but it isn't mysterious. If I hit one, I have a judgment call to make. But at least I know I’m partially on pace.
You can do the same thing now, even though you didn't do it at the start. Pick a date, maybe six months from today, and decide what would make the project worth continuing for you. It could be a number of paying readers, a monthly income, or steady growth that suggests you're on your way. Include what the work costs you, too. A project that earns little but gives you enormous pleasure is different from one that earns little and makes you dread sitting down to write.
Then give it an honest shot until that date. When it arrives, judge the project by the standards you set today—not by how much you've already poured into it, or by the one encouraging comment you got on a day you were thinking of quitting.