What makes you cringe in tango?

Most East Asians in my tango community in the West Coast are mandarin speakers. Nowdays you'll find less and less Cantonese.
Agree. Cantonese is spoken far less.

Recent immigrants from past five or six decades speak mandarin. The immigrants who have been here for a few generations (like in Chinatown) speak Cantonese.
 
Agree. Cantonese is spoken far less.

Recent immigrants from past five or six decades speak mandarin. The immigrants who have been here for a few generations (like in Chinatown) speak Cantonese.
Kinda generational as well. My grandparents spoke to each other in Japanese, to their children ( my parents ) in Taiwanese and to their grandkids ( us ) in Mandarin. A lot of the movement out of China from the Cantonese also happened before 1997 Hong Kong handover.
 
Rampant usage of AI aside, I also find his aggressive marketing very annoying. All his posts seem performative and pretentious, despite repeatedly trying to portray himself as a down-to-earth and humble guy.

I enjoyed reading some of his blog posts in the past, but if I consider his approach to social dancing in the light of his other actions — they give me the scent of a used car/snake oil salesman, given how much he pushes his own products — I become suspicious.

(Apropos of that, maybe he's removed all his blog posts from his website to better sell them, or maybe I'm recalling another blogger!)

I think that in his attempts to appear authentic and soulful and thoughtful, he overdoes it to the point of instead seeming disingenuous.
He’s shilling AI slop now? I’m surprised no one has called him out, guess the tango community online is too nice.
 
He’s shilling AI slop now? I’m surprised no one has called him out, guess the tango community online is too nice.

I don't think all of his stuff is AI generated! But a lot of it is. For example, the cover of his latest work of fiction. I have not read it, however, so I cannot comment on how much of it is AI generated or AI slop.

I see a lot of organisers using AI generated images to advertise their events, and people generally don't seem to care; though I will admit, I am much less likely to go to such events. I think at least a few teachers/performers do use AI to some extent, but I can't recall any egregious over-usage of LLM-generated text; I assume they use it mainly to pad their content more and for editing purposes.
 
I see a lot of organisers using AI generated images to advertise their events, and people generally don't seem to care; though I will admit, I am much less likely to go to such events. I think at least a few teachers/performers do use AI to some extent, but I can't recall any egregious over-usage of LLM-generated text; I assume they use it mainly to pad their content more and for editing purposes.
A few of the newer models like Google’s recently released Banana Nano Pro that target realism will make detecting AI images harder. This could be a blessing for promoters who normally can’t afford to hire decent illustrators for their events. A lot of the more savvy advertisers for events usually notice that a simple canva created image with text or just a picture of the milonga can be just as effective. It’s in the much smaller communities with zero budget and not a lot of tech folks where I see rampant bad AI.
 
I don’t mind AI for event notices and stuff like that since that’s rarely taking an artists/designers job.
That guy who always post super dramatically may as well be AI slop though since it’s always the same shtick.
 
It’s in the much smaller communities with zero budget and not a lot of tech folks where I see rampant bad AI.

More of people with bad taste, I think — I've seen generated images that were actually tasteful, but the vast majority of the stuff generated for tango purposes have been nothing but sloppy AI slop.
 
More of people with bad taste, I think — I've seen generated images that were actually tasteful, but the vast majority of the stuff generated for tango purposes have been nothing but sloppy AI slop.
It's easy to dismiss it, but once upon a time there were dot-matrix printers which suddenly provided different fonts, which we thought gave added kudos. I remember adjusting the code for a simple word processor to provide line justification. One was suddenly freed from the tyranny of secretaries to get reports written! It then goes to the other extreme. I once had a 600+ page auto-generated software description document! I doubt anyone read it, but it had to exist.

So it is now with AI images. Unfortunately usually either stereotypes or promoting the originator's perspective. It's not taking anyone's job because they wouldn't have paid an illustator or designer. Probably better than FB privacy invasion images! Choosing a stock image for some groups may break their budget.

But it is more than unfortunate about the words and some of the perspectives.
 
But it devalues the people who can paint themselves. My only reaction is to not take these "creators" seriously, to ridicule them, and to become arrogant.
Possibly. Time will tell. I read sometimes more recently that the AI bubble will burst. I see some (!) of it more as another tool available to be used in the toolbox. But the value of some new tools is overhyped. At the moment people are experimenting, and not all experiments are successful. It still comes down to the viewpoint propogated behind some of these. They're using it as a tool for their purposes. It's not yet become autonomous - and will still require vast quantities of power and cooling to operate, which is likely to limit aspirations.
 
But it devalues the people who can paint themselves. My only reaction is to not take these "creators" seriously, to ridicule them, and to become arrogant.
Even DJs, through technology, are massively devaluing people who can make music themselves. As a result, musicians are usually no longer "in the budget".

However, in my opinion, EL RECODO TANGO is assembling the tools (track database and identifier, access and player statistics, tanda generator and management) to train an AI model that can devalue DJs. We can stagnate personally, but we will not stop progress.
 
Even DJs, through technology, are massively devaluing people who can make music themselves. As a result, musicians are usually no longer "in the budget".

However, in my opinion, EL RECODO TANGO is assembling the tools (track database and identifier, access and player statistics, tanda generator and management) to train an AI model that can devalue DJs. We can stagnate personally, but we will not stop progress.

The AI can't read the room yet. Apart from that, I could already write a program to generate serviceable milonga playlists based on my own curation if I wanted to, but I am not sure it is a good idea to release such a thing.
 
The AI can't read the room yet. Apart from that, I could already write a program to generate serviceable milonga playlists based on my own curation if I wanted to, but I am not sure it is a good idea to release such a thing.
Just thinking the same myself. Given a rule-based choice, it's not difficult to code a servicable selection without resort to AI. The problem there is eliciting the rules. The bigger problem is reading the room mood for the choice of next tanda.
 
But it devalues the people who can paint themselves. My only reaction is to not take these "creators" seriously, to ridicule them, and to become arrogant.
You are going to lose out and become a minority. A couple of examples.

Take phone cameras in particular and digital cameras in general. You could make the same argument that it devalued the film photographers.

Right now Generative AI is devaluing good writers. In fact good writers face a dilema. Because they write well, people suspect it is AI generated.

I am not touching AI generated music :)
 

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