Every year in April, I used to check whether someone had uploaded a new video of a giant squid. I was always so excited! When I was growing up, these things were mythologized nearly to the same degree as unicorns or dragons, so seeing them, even in tatters and bobbing across the surface of the water like a mess of smelly pool noodles, was a nearly religious experience.

I quit this year because AI videos are all that I can find. I don’t need chopped up videos of giant squids stating that they’re “colossal squids” in uncanny AI cadence written by an AI and edited by an AI. I don’t need AI-produced replications of giant squids swimming or melting. I just want to find out whether any more scientific expeditions have filmed a creature I used to consider a legend.

We live in an era beyond objective, filmable truth, and that pisses me off.